Rather than presenting her female protagonists as sensual bodies lying supine, Mel Kadel creates works on paper that depict women as workers and doers. The identical characters in Kadel’s work are industrious and daring, always caught in the grips of an adventure. Kadel plays with textures and symmetrical patterns, forgoing fully-formed story lines and fleshed-out settings in order to allow the viewers to fill in the plot details with their imaginations.
Known for working on stained paper, Kadel allows her surfaces to be sullied by the weather conditions in her Los Angeles home. Kadel has a solo show titled “Carry Your Weight” at Merry Karnowsky Gallery opening Saturday, June 22, and will be showing alongside Femke Hiemstra (previewed here) and Deedee Cheriel (previewed here). For this show, Kadel completed half of the work on pristine white paper while leaving the other half to withstand the elements of nature to create her stained paper effect. Take a look at some of the work in the show below and check out “Carry Your Weight” June 22 through July 20.