JESSICA DRENK + SHAWN SMITH

8-bit and mixed media sculptures

April 7 to May 14, 2011

Opening Reception: Thursday, April 7, 5:30 - 7:30pm

Shawn Smith, Ibex, 2011  

 SHAWN SMITH's work investigates the slippery intersection between the digital world and reality; specifically, the way we experience nature through technology.  Starting from the observation that images of "nature" on TV or on a computer screen are really only seeing patterns of pixilated light, Smith recreates three-dimensional sculptural representations of these two-dimensional images with small wood cubes, resembling 8-bit pixels, which resolve into much larger sculptures representing natural forms.  His conceptual and material practice humorously explores the changing relationship between technology and natural history, as we observe the natural world through a screen.  

Shawn Smith was born in Texas, in 1972.  He is a recipient of the Clare Hart DeGolyer grant from the Dallas Museum of Art, and has an upcoming show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2012.  His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe: at the Austin Museum of Art, Arthouse at the Jones Center (Austin), Galveston Art Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Oakland Arts Museum, Berkeley Art Center, Dean Lesher Center for the Arts (California), Holter Museum of Art (Montana), Northwest Art Center (North Dakota), Lawndale Art Center (Houston), the Armory Art Center (Florida), and the Wichita Falls Museum of Art, among others.  

He was commissioned to create a monumental public sculpture in San Francisco, CA.  Smith lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Jessica Drenk, Procession, 2011 

JESSICA DRENK's work is also influenced by systems of information. The breadth of the work included in the exhibition includes a wood pieces series (Processions), which has a direct material similarity, as well as a pixilated or digital sensibility, to Smith's work.  But while Smith starts from an accumulation of small wooden pieces to create an organic form, Drenk's work here results into non-representational imagery and repetitive, post-minimalist patterns.  Other works on display include sculptured books and a series of works made of disposable objects like toothpicks, pencils, coffee filters, Q-tips.  Manipulating these common materials in unexpected ways, Drenk creates objects reminiscent of the natural world, but entirely unique.  Drenk's manufactured artifacts force the viewer to focus on mundane, commonly used objects and materials and to ponder on identity, technology, and the creation of a conjured unnatural history.

Jessica Drenk is the recipient of the prestigious International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, 2006.  In 2009, she received an Artist Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts.  Her work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine, the Albuquerque Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art, the International Book Fair of Contemporary Creative Books in Marseilles, France, 25th of May Museum, Belgrade, Serbia,as well as in galleries across the United States.   Drenk currently lives and works in Clemson, South Carolina.