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PRESS
RELEASE
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
San Francisco, CA. March 2, 2011. Cain Schulte Contemporary Art San
Francisco is pleased to
present an exhibition of new work by Jessica Drenk and Shawn Smith, featuring 8-bit and mixed media
sculptures.
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. Through the
process of pixilation, color is distilled, some bits of information are lost,
and the form is abstracted. Smith builds his "things"-as he
calls them-pixel by pixel to understand how each pixel plays a crucial role in
the identity of an object. His conceptual and material
practice humorously explores the juxtaposition between the natural world and the
digital world and the changing relationship between technology and natural
history, as we become more removed from first hand experience by observing the
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'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, altered
with a process that involves submerging found books in wax, then twisting and
chiseling them until they become abstract forms, as well as 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. Each
material is examined deeply, with
the artist intuitively pursuing new forms and pushing materials beyond the use
they were intended for, thus
developing her own language with each. 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.
High-resolution
images available on
request.
Contact:
Marina Cain,
Director
info@cainschulte.com
+1 415 543
1550
Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG: "My Generation",
2010, Video collage, broken computer.
251 Post Street, 2nd Floor,
San Francisco, CA 94108 USA
www.CainSchulte.com / info@CainSchulte / +1
415.543.1550
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