Cara Ober’s paintings are activated by eccentric juxtapositions that lead to quirky, open-ended narratives. Taken together Ober’s works catalogue a full range of the more humble modes of human inscribing. She references stencils, the patterns of wallpaper and fabrics, tattoos, and illustrations from childhood books. At times, she also allows words to creep into her compositions. Like chipped and fading walls that have begun to reveal overlapping and embedded fragments from years of human efforts at decoration and expression, Ober’s paintings ask viewers to make sense of out-of-place scraps of imagery emerging against worn but still richly colored surfaces.

Kristen Hileman

Assistant Curator, Hirshhorn Museum