The @xmasviper.incarnate moves from the streets of Kansas City to the brick walls of the @hilliard_gallery in his show Untitled Abstract Minimalism opening on May 7, 2020. 6 – 9pm, show runs through end of June.

Object Index is a collaborative exhibition that investigates how culture and technology are implicitly tied through the production of ceramic objects. Using hand-forming processes and digital reproduction technologies, Bryan Czibesz and Shawn Spangler recreate historical forms in a contemporary context.

Drawing inspiration from historical objects, Czibesz and Spangler use clay extrusion 3D printers (designed specifically for this body of work) and the potter’s wheel. Czibesz has done most of the digital and 3D printing work, examining the disconnect between hand and material via computerized construction methods. Spangler has done most of the wheel throwing, bringing a focus to the maker’s direct touch. Both have a hand in the creation of each work.

The work in Object Index highlights the junction of digital and hand-thrown processes. It also emphasizes the alliance that exists between computers and humanity, in an increasingly familiar concept that highlights digital dependencies.

SAFETY MEASURES:

Belger Arts is committed to maintaining a safe place for our visitors, studio members, and staff. To ensure this, we require that visitors wear a mask. Disposable masks and hand sanitizer are available.

Explosive energy dominates the work of Sarah Krepp and Olivia Petrides. Krepp locates a powerful gesture in found materials, in blown-out shredded tires which are gathered from highway debris. Blow-outs force the wires, embedded in the rubber, into writhing gesticulations of accumulated stress. Petrides utilizes simple tools and the basic element of drawing – the line – to enact roiling abstractions of overwhelming natural forces into baroque masses. Both artists see aggressive marking as an emblematic carrier of immense forces within urban and natural environments. Petrides and Krepp achieve a linear complexity, referencing turbulent atmospheres and tangled social workings, thus posing questions about the relationship between human actions and nature’s limitations.

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My drawings are immersive large-scale abstractions based on travels to magnificent natural phenomena such as volcanoes, icebergs, glaciers, caves, and the aurora borealis. I am interested in how nostalgic evocations of the transcendent resonate with contemporary social pressures on the environment: What is awe and wonder when saturated with guilt and regret? Me images utilize dramatic Romantic suggestions of the infinite and the sublime, which then collapse into shifting tensions that mirror our current uncertain engagement with nature. – Olivia Petrides

With these visually complex, sometimes compacted, sometimes expansive works, I strive for a different kind of communication where a poetic dynamic is felt before the content is understood. It becomes twofold. In some works, the bending and almost lyrical tire forms I couple with needlepoint stitches in the shadows and interstices. With this I look to set up an interplay between the brute/power of the road and the delicate/vulnerability of domestic handicraft. Retread blown-out tires are representative of the all-American landscape. I seek to question our indulgent contemporary society as well as present an aesthetically dynamic experience. – Sarah Krepp