01/12/2021
VELVET OTHER WORLD
At His Majesty’s Pleasure
Charcoal on paper 2021
36.0 × 36.0
Velvet Other World is a collaborative duo formed in 2021 by Josh Allen and Katrina Pisetti.
In their intricate charcoal drawings, VOW creates an alternate reality in which genders are blended and social statuses redefined, freed from the norms and conventions of our world.
Playing with the contrast between perceived figurative hyper femininity and hyper masculine structural compositions, they shape a third space challenging the very concept of duality. Hidden behind elaborate garments in a theatrical cloak of mystery, their royal-like figures elude our direct gaze and escape our narrowed interpretation of their very being.
Collaboration as a practice is a unique yet daunting commitment very few artists chose to take on. It requires adaptability, flexibility and a deep understanding of one another. Observing VOW at work is akin to witnessing a complex organism permanently in sync. They function as one, building simultaneously different parts of a piece with intriguing homogeneity.
Best friends of over 7 years, Josh and Kat met at RISD where their common obsession for the technical aspects of drawing brought them first to compete before becoming close. While Kat chose to focus primarily on printmaking, pushing figuration when encompassed in darkness and opacity to its limits, Josh explored redefining masculinity and how to decenter our understanding of the body. After losing touch for a few years they reconnected in 2020 with the will to share a studio. The impetus to start collaborating came organically and developed into a new form, at the crossroad of their interests and passions.
Inspired by fe**sh fashion, q***r photography or art deco glass works, VOW combines in their drawings broad yet destinctive visual influences with an idiosyncratic technical language in which smooth heavily saturated charcoal black surfaces meet expressive textural details and subtle radiant accents.
Their figures evoke pageantry and courtship, regality, Russian ballet, bo***ge and anime and live in an hybrid and fascinating phantasmagoric universe of VOW’s making.
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