Catherine Sollman

Gut Symmetry

August 9, 2025 - October 11, 2025
Opening reception August 9, 2025, 1 - 3 pm

Gut Symmetry, an exhibition of paintings and prints by Chicago artist Catherine Sollman, opens at OS Projects on August 9, 2025. The exhibition continues through October 11, 2025. OS Projects will host a reception for the artist from 1 – 3 pm on Saturday, August 9.

Catherine Sollman uses basic shapes to create abstract forms that refer to the human body or environment, both natural and built. Her work is characterized by precision as well as unconventional color combinations that she often pushes toward garishness in pursuit of a particular vibrational quality.

Gut Symmetry comprises two bodies of work: small gouache paintings and monotypes, which are one-of-a-kind prints. The paintings are predicated on a limited set of rules and tools—straightedge, compass, pencil and gouache—and have evolved to occupy an important place in Sollman’s practice. They are an investigation of form, color and relationships as well as an attempt to trigger pulsations between color and shape. Sollman describes them as “a quest for sensation.”

While the gouache paintings are created directly and intuitively, the monotypes incorporate an element of chance using ghost prints, migrating motifs and the reuse and reconfiguration of the printed surface or matrix. Their imagery hints at bodily structures, the exchange of matter and the tension between exuberant impulse and the need to withhold. They reflect Sollman’s ongoing interest in exploring print’s capacity to accommodate abstraction, chance, mood and iteration while allowing for formality and humor.

Both the gouache paintings and monotype prints in Gut Symmetry function as loci of experimentation for the artist. They are also a meditation on antiquated notions of femininity, impropriety, rightness and order. Within each, Sollman strives to facilitate a type of presence—a small escape, a work that soothes and surprises, a portal to somewhere else.

About the Artist

Born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin, Catherine Sollman is a printmaker and teaching artist whose practice consists of small-scale abstract works on paper that emphasize geometry and color play. She earned her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and continued her studies with Karen Kunc, Terry James Conrad, Katie Baldwin and other notable printmakers. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across the U.S. including the Highpoint Center for Printmaking (Minneapolis, MN), Mixografia (Los Angeles, CA), Print Austin (Austin, TX) and Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL). She was a 2024 Artist-in-Residence at Weir Farm National Historic Park (Wilton, CT) and will be a 2026 Artist-in-Residence at Peninsula School of Art (Fish Creek, WI). Sollman lives and works on Chicago’s West Side.