Kathleen Kucka

[22][24] Kucka's work explores image- and mark-making through unconventional physical interactions and transformations that balance intention against largely unpredictable or uncontrollable forces such as extreme heat or gravity.

[2][25][3] She has often structured her compositions in linear, gridded or circular patterns that both invoke modernist movements such as minimalism and call to mind themes of natural destruction and regeneration.

[7][8][26] Her "burn" works are inspired by twentieth-century artists such as Lucio Fontana and the German Zero Group, minimalists who sought to resurrect art by first destroying or effacing canvasses.

[3] Writer Jonathan Stevenson wrote that Kucka's burning process as "an exercise in artful destruction, of sustainment against risk, more daring than ordinary painting … Within the canvas, this is swashbuckling work, adventurous but meticulously controlled.

[27][10][28][3] Critics characterized this work as naturalistic and abstract but not random, with each burn mark developing uniquely in an organic way, and in tandem, producing rhythmic sequences.

In the 2000s, Kucka shifted from the burn works to a second, ongoing body of paintings, largely in response to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, which was only ten blocks away from her living space at the time.

[7][6][33][5] The New York Times' Ken Johnson described the works in an exhibition at Jeffrey Coploff as "physically appealing abstractions … all-over irregular patterns of concentric whorls suggestive of wood grain or enlarged fingerprints.

[20][34][8] Reviews noted tensions between the often-bright plastic qualities of the materials, the built-up textures and the nuanced handling of space; they induced a perceptual wavering between microcosm and macrocosm, with the paintings' graphic appearance at a distance giving way close up to contours, painterliness, surprising detail, and rhythmic patterns.

[35][8][20] Stephanie Buhmann wrote, "In Kucka’s work, everything seems to be in flux, suggesting transient states that can be found within cell structures or cosmic star constellations.