27 February-12 April 2014
Reception and artist talks: Thursday, 10 April 2014, 6-9PM
“Chasing Trails”: Libby Gerber and Ben Hirschkoff
With his tape collages of cartoonish cloud-like shapes and his mad-scientist-in-the-basement moving sculptures of clouds and weather systems, Ben Hirschkoff borrows archetypal symbols of nature to create objects that bask in their own unnaturalness.
Each of Libby Gerber’s map-like accordion-fold books is an ornate drawing of a crack in something: a foundation, sidewalk, freeway or skyscraper. This series of work, called “The Topography of Cracks”, is one of the ways Gerber uses her art practice to explore the distinctions we perceive between the “natural” and man-made worlds.
Together, Hirschkoff and Gerber ask us to look at what happens in the space between things and what’s left over when the subject of the action is missing. We’re made to wonder about what caused this ambiguous imagery that doubles as evidence: What caused this plume of smoke, or video-game-like cumulus nimbus suspended in a sky-less plane? Are these cracks in cement any different from the geological fractures they reference? Is there a consequence? Are we the protagonists?–or are we stuck, like the remnant cracks and clouds, in these “absurd constructions between defined spaces”? (Ben Hirschkoff)
(adapted from the gallery’s press materials)
INFORMATION
ArtsWest
4711 California Avenue SW
Seattle, Washington 98116 USA
(206) 938-0339
Hours:
Thursday-Friday, 1-7:30PM
Saturday, 1:30-7:30PM
Image:
Smoke Signal Buildup
by Ben Hirschkoff
40″x9.5″
vinyl tape on vellum
2014
Image courtesy of the artist and ArtsWest, Seattle, Washington, USA