18 Questions With...
Kristin Reger
Kristin Reger is a Chicago-born, New York-based visual artist. Her practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, video, and painting, and uses tension, suspension, gesture, and generative & somatic processes to create beings and experiences that are inherently unfixed, animated and interconnected. Applying AI and material experimentation, Reger expresses displacement, the incorporeal, and approaches the strangeness of being through what lies beyond the apparent.
Kristin Reger, IUDUIUDUI (2021)
What drew you away from garments and toward sculpture as a form?
Clothes are too close. It's a psychotic collapse, to be working on the body and trying to have a critical conversation about physical existence. I needed to strip it off the skin, throw it in a ball and let it come to life on its own. Floating fabric is a near-universal signal for spirit, the incorporeal, or entities we can't quite put our fingers on but know are there.
Kristin Reger, Entrañas (2019)
When you think back to your research in fashion theory, what still shapes the way you build an image or an object?
When I say fashion, I mean the West. Buttons, tailoring, mimetic-synthetic encasements. This approach is mirrored in Western medicine; both use piecemeal logics. In clothes, there can also be a sweeping whole that replaces the body entirely, like a suit. Cloth has an ability to provide a psychic chiasmus, or in the case of fetish objects - a tooth, a nail, a stiletto - a synecdoche of states. Meaning they come to represent the body itself.
What interests you about masquerade beyond disguise?
The iterations of costume that informed the course of my work function more like spiritual housing than disguise. In my PhD research, I examined phenomena such as zangbeto and egúngún in Vodún. These are not costumes, but rather a liminal synthesis of sound and materially amplified movement. They’re moments of possession, invoking very real spirits, giving them a form to visit. It doesn’t really matter if a living person is or is not inside.
When does a costume become a sculpture for you?
We live symbiotically with artifice - ornamentation is a human need. 40,000-year-old string skirts found in bogs were not to keep warm, they were to emphasize dance. The question becomes, when does something die? When it no longer moves - not necessarily in a kinetic sense. Locomotion is part of it, but there's psychic reverberation from objects. Sculpture is a bit more dead in the kinetic sense, but more alive in the charged object sort of way. It's an act of transfer.
Kristin Reger, Tender Sphinx (2017)
What does fetishism help you understand about the way people imagine bodies?
That we're afraid of each other. It's a way of swapping out the horror and particularity of the Other for generic, known territory - a road map. Mostly in sex. This is how beauty standards form. I’ve been able to abstract away from these ideas and am making more alien sort of entities and trips.
Kristin Reger, Ghostchops (2023)
How does your material vocabulary push the body away from representation and toward something more unstable?
It's a lot of time experimenting with materials and processes. Silicone, glass, epoxy, textile, resin, metal casting, fiberglass, AI videos using advertisements, skincare - I’m exploring bio plastics and robotics now. Part is fucking around, part is gossiping with art friends and letting ideas ricochet around the studio, unpacking my brain in actions.
Frieze issue 227 (May 2022)
What did pole dance teach you about balance, risk, and display?
I hang things with madness and intention, and without realizing it, this stems from constant shifts of weight and perspective that happen in pole dance. Also, everyone looks good pole dancing, it’s more akin to the experience of a sculpture as it’s experienced literally in 360 degrees. The shoes and paraphernalia are tempting clues to include, but what if we abstract to pure movement? When I met her some 15 years ago, my friend Wanda Gała did a body roll and opened her mouth and said, “We're just worms,” like she was letting her digestive orifices flow through earth. She also said movement is a specific kind of intelligence. Dance is fun in the most wild and free sense. What is immediately enjoyable is only one piece of the puzzle. But then there's intuition. It's learned movement and following the innermost voice without it even being conscious.
How do you think about color when you want something to feel bodily but not literal?
I’m confident about color. The more complex it gets the more challenging it is. Before, I wanted to incite desire and use pop & psychedelia - to make it dreamy, attractive, but also have this immediate dissonance. To do that, I'd use poppy pinks, seemingly innocuous and girly, but in uncanny forms. The walls of Burst used Comex “cerdito,” or piglet... here it got stripped out of the objects. In the glazed ceramics, I'd add tones that were harmonious or disruptive, but when the object looks organic already, it starts to feel confusing, putrid. I think about color in terms of luminosity and opacity. I want things to look iridescent, milky, moving, alien. We don't know where they start or begin, they are not clearly contained.
Kristin Reger, Burst (2021)
Kristin Reger, Tórax (2023)
In "IRRLICHT," what drew you to the idea of desire leading people astray?
I get possessed by ideas. I had a space with painting materials, so I painted…I use what I have on hand to work through ideas. The title and text came later. I started working with AI in 2023 and use it a lot now because it's a way to develop ideas without many resources. So I had all of these images I had created that I am only now starting to produce as sculpture, and for that show, I painted them to study them more. In German it's something like, “misguided light”. I also like how there’s a scientific explanation that is still mystical if you trace it through quantum electrodynamics. Or even the conditions that need to line up for it to ignite. AI is a light that is leading us astray, surely.
Never miss an interview
Create a free UntitledDb account and stay in the loop. Get notified when new interviews drop, get early access to new features as we continue building out the site, and enjoy the perks of being part of our growing community.
Kristin Reger, Wetwarp (2022)
What does the unknowable other mean to you in practical studio terms?
In the studio nothing is practical. I don’t make one-to-one representations of concepts. They're intuitive. It’s from the unconscious, and a jumbled junk drawer of information I’m constantly rummaging through, adding to and drawing from. I read and am constantly overprocessing everything. The things I really don't get - those are the good ones. I have a lot of weird rules I make up, mostly about letting things be what they are and not being too obvious in solutions. That yields a lot of surprising results.
How does painting extend your thinking beyond what sculpture allows?
Two totally different approaches that inform each other. Painting is more spontaneous and directly & connected to movement. The nature of sculpture is different - you can walk around it, touch it, even if only with your eyes, you're running over and interacting with the surface as a skin in a more physical way. There are paintings like this but still, sculpture is more spacial, involved, confrontational. But it can also be more static, so the painting tends to set me free to make more sinuous, gash-in-space sort of shapes. It's a flow state, affected by my mood & many conditions. It's an emergence, and whatever emerges, I let it be what it is. That’s the same in painting or sculpture, but one is an apparition, a depiction, and the other is a being in space.
What is your idea of corporeality when making your beings?
I’d try to come in a certain state of openness and mobility. The body and movement are not as tight - it is very physical work casting the way I do. A lot of climbing, tying, pulling and throwing. It’s finding a breaking point.
What kinds of ghosts live in your work?
It’s less about a spooky sort of thing, rather that there are other dimensions that science and technology are just starting to understand. There’s sound from blackholes somehow and video footage of cells in orgiastic movement - it’s more that there’s plenty of ways to think about life itself on different scales, through different circuitries.
What did "La Noche del Cisne" offer that made it conducive to experimentation?
It was a way to lighten up. I learned how to collaborate. It brought fantasy and community together. I made a good chunk of the sets, danced, participated in others' performances and invited friends to perform. PJ, who you'll notice took most of my photos, is my best friend in New York.
Kristin Reger and Chris of Hur, Noche del cisne (2019)
Kristin Reger, Sloop (2018)
Do you think about objects as performative, i.e. if the artifacts carry the action of their making or the actions performed with them?
I don’t really do object performance. I either have objects stand in for performance, or I perform in the sense that there’s a radical abandonment of materiality. Of course the wrought objects carry a charge of making, and activations can carry a narrative in the memory of the audience.
What have you learned through teaching that doesn’t emerge in the studio?
I'm currently teaching at Hunter College. It's taught me so much - to stay curious over being goal-oriented. To let things stay simple while insisting. To listen.
Kristin Reger, Horror Vacui (2023)
How has living in Mexico City shaped the scale, mood, or intensity of your practice?
I was there for a decade, so the transformation was radical. There were many chapters and facets - through academic settings, working with project spaces and galleries, but also nightlife as part of my practice. Ritual and magic are present in the ruins, and you live among the ruins. I had a studio next to Templo Mayor, the epicenter of the Mexica empire - that is one of the things I miss the most. But the energy is very dense. It’s real and to be deeply respected. That respect should extend to the living residents too, by the way. The Centro Histórico is chaotic in the day, and during the quarantine when the noise and chaos were cut, I knew there’d be nothing like that silence again.
Kristin Reger, Orocrux (2021)
Where do you see the strongest connection right now between sculpture, painting, and performance in your own work?
I’m having a radical return to creating in the material realm, building alien, jelly renders I made with AI years ago. It all feels possible now… I was trying to figure out with all of these industrial processes, but I prefer more direct making. If I work with a fabricator it has to be a collaboration, not a company or production.. I’m sewing plastics, and using pure paint, playing with glass and ceramic. I want things to be layers of transparency. It’s scarier than it sounds!
What's inspiring you right now?
What are you listening to in your studio?
Favorite exhibition space?
Most recent purchase?
A book everyone should read?
A film everyone should watch?
Favorite vice?
Favorite city?
Favorite recent development in the art world?
Help Us Grow
UntitledDb is run by a two-person team and funded out of pocket. Subscriptions directly help keep the lights on, support ongoing work on the platform and editorial side, and also unlock profile claiming, edit control, analytics, and additional interview and editorial content.
Guestbook
What is UntitledDb?
UntitledDb is the collaborative visual art database.
Artists and Curators: reduce research drift, follow emerging work, map collaboration networks, and assemble proposal material in one place. Exhibition spaces: document each show as a searchable record that lifts your artists’ visibility and makes it easier for curators, writers, and collectors to find them.
Browse freely. Create your profile with a free account. Upgrade to Pro or Enterprise for profile verification & claiming, edit control, and analytics.
Help Us Grow
UntitledDb is run by a two-person team and funded out of pocket. Subscriptions directly help keep the lights on, support ongoing work on the platform and editorial side, and also unlock profile claiming, edit control, analytics, and additional interview and editorial content.
What is UntitledDb?
UntitledDb is the collaborative visual art database.
Artists and Curators: reduce research drift, follow emerging work, map collaboration networks, and assemble proposal material in one place. Exhibition spaces: document each show as a searchable record that lifts your artists’ visibility and makes it easier for curators, writers, and collectors to find them.
Browse freely. Create your profile with a free account. Upgrade to Pro or Enterprise for profile verification & claiming, edit control, and analytics.

* (2021)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/816f23cf-8c43-49c0-a33e-89a07749b32a1200.jpg)
* (2019)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/d692d4e3-c474-4512-a731-cf207e81fbc11200.jpg)
* (2017)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/e9eea1ab-46d5-4e8b-b73e-d8120af37df71200.jpg)
* (2023)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/2b531317-4c09-4bf1-9977-60e3230ac4c91200.jpg)
* issue 227 (May 2022)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/5a834498-9a70-4f91-b79b-d00176db9a461200.jpg)
* (2021)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/16a9eef2-1571-4368-a375-d9de482482e01200.jpg)
* (2023)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/acfab6a6-46d2-4c15-9e23-5cf6f3ce09201200.jpg)
* (2022)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/b049bc3f-e3f5-458d-b1bf-071bd3e6235b1200.jpg)


* (2019)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/3c9d94e7-f870-48a5-a526-978a3bb66c101200.jpg)
* (2018)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/c82a7ae8-074f-4ecc-9742-5b78d7b9958f1200.jpg)
* (2023)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/7cb3d2b9-001f-44e9-a2bd-4f8a03bca7e31200.jpg)
* (2021)](https://storageuntitleddb.blob.core.windows.net/udb-interview-qa/00b830dc-7b31-4989-a9b1-31f80f44373c1200.jpg)











































