• The Megalithic Portal, Mas-Saint-Chély, Lozère, France.
    Image: Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

FROM THE GROUND UP

March 16—May 12, 2018


Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce the group exhibition:

FROM THE GROUND UP
March 17 – May 5, 2018
Opening Reception: March 17, 2018 from 5 to 8PM

Participating artists:

Woody De Othello
Josh Dihle
J. Michael Ford
Claire Larkin Pope
Jake Ziemann

The origins of human mark making as an art form, called “cupules”, were made by repeatedly striking a stone tool on a stone surface creating a cup-like shape. The earliest know examples date back hundreds of thousands of years and can be found on 5 continents. As such, human beings have been utilizing materials from the ground as a form of cultural and personal expression for an almost inconceivable amount of time in order to communicate ideas and observations.

From the Ground Up explores the sequence in which natural objects – clay, metal, natural/organic matter, wood and stone – have been directly sourced from the earth and altered by the artist’s hand. All the objects on view primarily take on the media-specific qualities of three-dimensional sculpture, but are altered from their original form by only a few degrees of separation. Cumulatively, each artist’s approach to their respective material, and hence their aesthetic concepts, lays bare an overall essential reverence to our surroundings with a sense of poetic immediacy.

In From the Ground Up, how the artist’s hand is made visible is paramount to the foundational materials used. By shaping, building, cutting and bending with those hands, the manipulation of these materials reveal forms developed from traditional methodologies but also pushing conceptual boundaries. Notions of entropy, adornment, humor and intimacy arise; contextualizing the objects in a manner that suggests the relationship to our natural surroundings is paramount to our essential beings. As these artworks protrude from the gallery walls, hang from the wooden ceiling and lade on the concrete floor; the amount of removal that can be coaxed from their earthly origins are defined by the function of the artist’s ideas and crystallized in their, albeit, impermanence. Up from the ground, through the artist studio and into the gallery and ultimately, still, these are communicable ideas and observations about the world around us.

Woody De Othello’s (San Francisco) ceramic sculptures use scale, color and anthropomorphism to humorously comment on the nature of our relationship to the objects that occupy our domestic lives.

Josh Dihle (Chicago) creates his walnut relief carvings as a form of drawing, using translations from Dante’s Inferno as a loose framework for commenting on our current socio-political landscape of uncertainty. Updated with an amalgam of bodies, places, schemas, and text that do not sort into a hierarchy, the wood surfaces are both support and image in these works.

J. Michael Ford (Chicago) uses metal piping to explore the vulnerability contained within desire. His works cite the body through expressive line that enacts a fluidity of form. Through polished surfaces and poetic collage, these sculptures delineate a metaphorical space while exploring the intricacies of human connection.

Claire Larkin Pope’s (Charlotte, NC) work explores the notion of ecstatic quietude and wonder as found in Nature during the present Age of the Anthropocene (our current epoch defined by humankind) and the evolution into the Posthuman. She has a background in wandering, wondering, collecting, making, destroying, and re-making.

Jake Ziemann’s (Los Angeles) practice is informed by notions of intimacy, co-dependency, and vulnerability. His work explores personal states of being through bodily shapes that conjoin ceramic sculpture with utilitarian support (stone, metal, leather). Ziemann’s sculptures are rooted in the process of building, and symbolize the labor involved in intricate human relationships.

Images

  • Woody De Othello
    Doing Well, 2017
    Ceramic, underglaze, glaze, paint and epoxy resin
    43 x 19 x 15 inches

  • Woody De Othello No Control, Remote Control, 2017 Ceramic and glaze 19 x 11 x 7 inches

  • Woody De Othello
    Floor Vent, 2017
    Ceramic, glaze, wood, paint and epoxy coating resin
    6.5 x 20 x 24 inches

  • Josh Dihle
    Trilogy, 2018
    Walnut
    26 x 21 x 1.5 inches

  • Josh Dihle
    Arrangement with God, 2018
    Walnut
    26 x 21 x 1.5 inches

  • Josh Dihle
    Nicholas (The Miller’s Tale), 2016
    Walnut
    11 x 9 x .75 inches

  • J. Michael Ford
    A year and a day, 2018
    Conduit, plastic, automotive paint, jewelry
    110 x 54 x 29 inches

  • J. Michael Ford
    Boys in the trees, 2018
    Conduit, plastic, automotive paint, faux flower, keychain
    108 x 52 (75 flower) x 33 inches

  • J. Michael Ford
    Boys in the trees, (detail) 2018
    Conduit, plastic, automotive paint, faux flower, keychain
    108 x 52 (75 flower) x 33 inches

  • J. Michael Ford
    Lucid Dream, 2018
    Conduit, plastic, automotive paint, faux flower, shoelace
    103 x 35.5 x 31 inches

  • J. Michael Ford
    The Perfect Man, 2018
    Conduit, plastic, automotive paint, chain, bullet
    86 x 44 x 34.5

  • J. Michael Ford
    The Perfect Man, (detail) 2018
    Conduit, plastic, automotive paint, chain, bullet
    86 x 44 x 34.5

  • Claire Larkin Pope
    Glyphs, 2018
    Mosses, resin, recycled bottles, LED lights
    6″ diameter each, approx. 20 pieces

  • Claire Larkin Pope
    Kosmos Unfolding, 2017
    Wasp nest, robin’s egg, weeds
    12″ diameter each, 3 pieces

  • Claire Larkin Pope
    The Vacation, 2017
    Collected natural materials and resin
    18 x 18 x 48 inches

  • Jake Ziemann
    not broken just bent, 2017
    Spray paint, acrylic, and gouache on ceramic, wood, felt, tool dip, powder-coated steel, plastic tubing, powder pigment and joint compound, and cinder blocks
    67.5 x 15.5 x 12 inches

  • Jake Ziemann
    not broken just bent, (detail) 2017
    Spray paint, acrylic, and gouache on ceramic, wood, felt, tool dip, powder-coated steel, plastic tubing, powder pigment and joint compound, and cinder blocks
    67.5 x 15.5 x 12 inches

  • Jake Ziemann
    right side of rock bottom, 2018
    Spray paint & gouache on ceramic, leather, brass, rock
    5 x 5 x 8 inches

  • Jake Ziemann
    when i’m lying wrapped up in, 2018
    Spray paint & gouache on ceramic, steel, rock
    8 x 5 x 7.75 inches

  • Jake Ziemann
    you go i’ll stay, 2017
    Spray paint, acrylic, and gouache on ceramic, steel, concrete sealant, spray paint on plaster
    12 x 6 x 16 inches

  • From the Ground Up Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery. 2017 March 16 – May 5, 2018 Photography by Nathan Keay

  • From the Ground Up Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery. 2017 March 16 – May 5, 2018 Photography by Nathan Keay

  • From the Ground Up Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery. 2017 March 16 – May 5, 2018 Photography by Nathan Keay

  • From the Ground Up Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery. 2017 March 16 – May 5, 2018 Photography by Nathan Keay

  • From the Ground Up Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery. 2017 March 16 – May 5, 2018 Photography by Nathan Keay

  • From the Ground Up
    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery. 2017
    March 16 – May 5, 2018
    Photography by Nathan Keay

  • From the Ground Up
    Installation view, Carrie Secrist Gallery. 2017
    March 16 – May 5, 2018
    Photography by Nathan Keay