Was/ Is/ Ought Catalog by CarrieSecristGallery

WAS/ IS/ OUGHT_

Was/ Is/ Ought

Whitney Bedford Zach Bruder Antonia Contro Stephen Eichhorn Brendan Getz Diana Guerrero-Macia Hilma’s Ghost Anne Lindberg Chuck Ramirez Kay Rosen Amanda Ross-Ho Scott Stack Oli Watt Agustina Woodgate

September 18 - November 13

CARRIE SECRIST GALLERY

CHICAGO IL

All images courtesy the artists and Carrie Secrist Gallery.

Installation images courtesy Nathan Keay.

Cover image: Installation view of Oli Watt’s 101 Useless Decoys, 2021

Essays by Britton Bertran

Over the last two years, since the beginning of the pandemic, time has proven to be the great equalizer within the world wide population. The end of 2019 will mark history in most of our lifetimes as the last we knew as “normal” or what Was life as we knew it. The new world landscape of 2020 ushered a paradigm shift toward intensely present living, for what we understood to be what Is began to shift precariously and constantly beneath our feet. The unchartered, ever-changing situation rede ned any efforts toward planning or prediction as a fool’s errand. As the dust begins to settle, we move toward a hopeful and trepidatious post-pandemic world, carrying forward resolutions in science, politics and personal reassessment of purpose / importance of all things. 2021 is the rst year of what is next, and how it Ought to be Dating back to the cave paintings of Lascaux to the present day, artists have revealed their core purpose… to be the translators of time. They are the interrogators, the interpreters, the reporters, the recorders and ultimately the myth-makers – utilizing time as a medium for storytelling to present generations and those centuries yet to come Moving forward from the known or the Was, philosopher Herbert Marcuse generally stated that the present (is) creating what (ought) to be, i.e. future/world building and imagining...This interpretation states that time – as an entity – is in two places: 1. the present (ie what is happening this very instance) and, 2. the future (or, what ought to be happening next). So, in order to get the future successfully, or meaningfully, one has to be wary of complacency and use their imagination – in order to achieve it (the future). And this imagination is where art making/creativity is planted

The fourth in our series of survey exhibitions in 2021, Was/Is/Ought will follow the participating artists through the arch of what could arguably be described as the most pivotal time in contemporary life.

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Chuck Ramirez (LEFT), Amanda Ross-Ho (CENTER) and Zach Bruder (RIGHT)

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Oli Watt

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Whitney Bedford

Whitney Bedfor Whitney Bedford’s (Los Angeles) Vedute series, presents paintings that are simultaneously of the moment and re ective of the past. Taking the subject of landscape – a major theme throughout the history of art – these paintings simultaneously pay homage to master artists of the past while signaling a concern for the environmental impact we as a society have on nature today. Bedford’s paintings include her re-interpretation of famous sublime landscapes from antiquity, positioned behind her own landscapes which often include stark natural interpretations of the Los Angeles fauna that she lives with. This mashup of the bucolic and the acidic combine for striking imagery that brings to mind what might be called an aesthetic collaboration across time, space and energy

Bedford’s two paintings on view in Was/Is/Ought, Vedute (for Picabia) (2019) and Vedute (Vuillard Park) (2021) include the art historical measure of repainting a master landscape. Bedford’s visually severe ink and oil renderings of trees (a recognizable motif that previously appeared in earlier bodies of her work) juxtapose with what appear to be architectural moments, such as the outlines of a room. These corners subtly dimensionalize the paintings, wrapping the art historical component around the contemporary motif, and placing the viewer inside the double-landscape. For here is where the viewer becomes implicated: admire the past, beware of the future

Whitney Bedfor Veduta (Vuillard Park), 202 Ink and oil on pane 38 x 27 inches

Whitney Bedford, Veduta (for Picabia), 2019, ink and oil on panel, 28 x 37 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW, Zach Bruder

Zach Brude Zach Bruder (New York) works with multiple motifs in his technically conversant paintings that activat the mnemonic devices in all of us. The central themes of allegory and mythology are steeped in th iconography of folkloric time, creating tension between the then and now, collapsing time and leaving a sense of discomforting familiarity. Metaphors for society’s dependency on symbols, for answers to murky questions and what the past can tell us about tomorrow, are intermingled The two paintings presented side by side in Was/Is/Ought have a striking presence that together may convey a narrative on their own. One, Insignia (2020), depicts a singular long-eared dog in a lazy jump under a thin tree-like plant and the other, Little Green (2019) features a snoozing hatted Ichabod Crane- like gure under a large tree being visited by two strange little folks con dently (aggressively) striding towards him. Together or individually, the paintings imply a self-interpretive opportunity for the viewer to reach deep down in their own rolodex of memories. What they might nd there would be a deeply personal experience, good, bad or somewhere in the middle

Visual narratives are a form of storytelling that usually follow an arc of beginning, middle and end, along with a con ict and resolution completed by a protagonist. What remains is the morality play, a de nition of personi ed concepts of good and bad wrought from reality in the form of ction. These can be delivered and interpreted in an ever-expanding way dependent on the author’s social, cultural and even political intentions. When narrative takes the visual form of a painting by Bruder, the viewer is tasked with deciphering what point of the arc they are experiencing. This type of narrative does not have a beginning or an end, but does come with clues and a gentle aesthetic push. Finishing the story means looking at that rolodex and perhaps becoming your own protagonist

Image courtesy of the artist

Zach Bruder, Insignia, 2020, acrylic and ashe on linen, 50 x 60 inches

Zach Bruder, Little Green, 2020, acrylic and ashe on linen, 50 x 60 inches

INSTALLATION VIEW featuring work by Antonia Contro

Antonia Contr Antonia Contro’s (Chicago) sculptures and sound work investigate the utility of time that looks backwards and forwards with a poetic intimacy. Contro conveys the idea that time is knowledge and that although this concept of time distributes itself in curious ways, it is always owing. In Contro’s words: “We all desire to understand time. Whether we view time as a line, a loop, a wave, a spec, we yearn to codify, measure, and order its passage. We record our histories and forecast our futures in the hopes of capturing the present, seeking to delay what is imminent and preserve what is eeting. While images in my artist books may function as the seeds for subsequent drawings, sculptures, lms, and audio installations, books are my drawing board and my subject matter. Books represent knowledge and invite learning and interactivity. A book is a time capsule that contains actual imprints of human touch alongside the felt passage of tim and memory. The turning of a book’s pages invites a sensory relationship of the reader to the page, a haptic exchange that hearkens the book’s vulnerability to the advance of digital technology Ad In nitum (2015) is a digital print of a close-up image of pages of a handmade paper book. I chose to leave the pages in this book blank, embalmed in time. The book captured in the image was made in Venice, Italy, the origin of my mostly now deceased paternal family. Another breath (2011) is a sonic work that conveys the varied experiences embodied in a book. For me, sound is often more emotionally affecting than touch itself. breath is a meditation on hearing, seeing, and feeling. On the work Existential (per Siri) (2016): Sundays were my day for connecting with Andy. We communicated - via phone or text - on his drive from his farm in a valley of the Mission Range to Missoula, where he worked as a psychotherapist. One Sunday, as we were having a repartee about art, I received a dictated text from Andy: “For art to remain relevant, it has to retain an exit stencil position.” “Exit stencil?”, I queried Andy replied, “Fucking Siri… I meant “existential

”

I immediately imagined creating a simulacrum of the text and of an actual exit sign - in the for of a die cut. Chance, meaning, process, innuendo, and word play looped and circled to reveal the mos existential dilemma of the human condition.

Antonia Contro, Existential (per Siri), 2016, die cut wood veneer, colored paper, 11.25 x 15 inches

Antonia Contr Ad In nitum, 201 Digital print in lightbo 51 x 12.75 x 3 inche

Stephen Eichhor Stephen Eichhorn (Chicago) creates collages on board and paper using sourced imagery of plant matter such as cacti or succulents and euphorbia. Meticulously cut out and speci cally placed, a single artwork by Eichhorn can contain hundreds of small images of these plants

The cultural and historical nature of cacti, euphorbia and succulents is rooted in the spiritual. Many of the plants in Eichhorn’s collection, as well as represented in the artworks themselves are native to the Americas and retain a spiritual signi cance to the indigenous peoples who lived in the same natural environs. The plants themselves, some of which can live 100 to 1000 years and have poisonous or psychoactive properties are symbolically associated with strength, endurance, protection and puri cation.

Over the course of the pandemic, Eichhorn researched, collected and attended to a wide variety of the same plant matter that adorns his artworks. In concert with his vigorous studio practice, the real-time care of these plants all coincided with the shared anxiety and upheaval of life as we knew it. The resultant body of work, including the artist’s contribution to Was/Is/Ought, Déjà vu (never-ending) (2021), takes on potent additional meanings – the ux of time, the caretaking of species and the essential communal embrace of life.

Déjà vu (never-ending) (2021) is a large collage work that consists of owering desert plants arranged on a striking electric orange panel in what could be described as a trident-shaped sigil (a sign held to have occult power in astrology or magic). This agglomerated grouping of this mystical plant imagery encourages the viewer to peer into the portal supplied by images of these ancient earth-bound entities to perform another symbolic task these plants are known for: the ability to see beyond what is visible with our naked eyes.

The future, however strange and eminent, is coming, and some of us would like a guide.

OPPOSITE: Stephen Eichhorn, Deja Vu (never-ending), 2021, collage on acrylic coated panel, 60 x 48 inches

Brendan Get Brendan Getz’s (Los Angeles) paintings present objects, space and time all on equal footing. The imagery itself is everyday familiar and calming, but often reproduced (reworked, recycled, replicated) over and over, changing slightly or dramatically, depending on the circumstance of time. The implications of this repetition as a dedication to an object or space has a spiritual connotation, but also a reliance on the potential of the future with all its fraught meaning. Occasionally, the same painting is recycled/repainted over multiple years creating an encased time capsule, static but full of potential. On view in Was/Is/Ought is framed view, studio window (air conditioner) (2013-2021). The subject of this painting is a large air conditioner unit on the roof of another building visible from the window of the artist’s studio that functionally works as a sundial for Getz’s painting practice - a way to check how much daylight he has left to work with. This particular painting has been reworked/recycled several times over the past 8 years on the same canvas. The painting’s frame, intrinsically a part of the painting – as an object in and of itself – has been the same frame over this duration but has also changed alongside the painting The conceptual underpinnings present a framework for the Ought component of this exhibition-especially as it relates to the Is, the painting itself a demonstration of the philosophical implications of this dynamic As relayed by Getz: “The Is/Ought problem or the Is/Ought fallacy (as it’s sometimes referred to) is a signi can philosophical problem that has emerged in different forms, but most notably with David Hume in 1740. Sometimes called Hume’s Law, it’s a distinction between facts and values – that facts about the world in a descriptive sense are not necessarily bound to values about the world in a prescriptive sense. In other words, just because the world is this way, doesn’t mean the world ought to be this way. It can be read as a treatise against a status quo, and something I nd hopeful in the space of world building beyond the given. It opens the future up. I’ve found the Is/Ought problem to be generative and think about it often in connection to how the world can reproduce itself over and over again in a fear of change, or where that gap becomes the capacity for progress, imagination and hope.”

OPPOSITE: Brendan Getz, Framed view, studio window (air conditioner), 2013-2021, oil on stretched canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Diana Guerrero-Maci Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s (Chicago) second solo exhibition with the gallery was slated to open on March 28, 2020. Titled The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married, this exhibition of a full body of new work -textile “paintings” and collaged works on paper, was created within the previous year and a half. By March 20, the day the governor of Illinois’s shelter-in-place order summarily shut the city down due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the hung and ready for viewing exhibition had been seen by a total of four people: the artist, Carrie Secrist, the gallery’s preparator and a professional photographer As unfortunate as this mandated closure of the gallery (and Chicago) was, this body of work that incorporated time as a way of recalling, or recollecting, speci c autobiographical memories alongside art historical references, went on to become a transformative moment for Guerrero-Maciá. The artwork that was made for this exhibition became the centerpiece of the artist’s successful application for a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship which she won in April of this year, 2021. The Award, “appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise”, will allow Guerrero-Maciá’s practice to grow with time and resources Bringing this episode full circle, included in the exhibition Was/Is/Ought is Guerrero-Maciá’s painting A Perfect Day (2020), originally shown in The Devil’s Daughter is Getting Married. The artist’s notes on this work allude to a sentiment and feeling about a certain time that contextualizes the artist’s approach to rst-person expression, art historical references and vibe Coastal beach vibe - obstacles we must overcome – The rock tethers us to th world. There is no absolute. The present moment. Bright &amp; hopeful. Cal before and after the storm. American quilt patch work, Barnett Newman, Joa Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler. 2020’s In addition, the artist installed a oor-based prototype installation titled Drunkard’s Walk (2021) which playfully deters the viewer from getting close to seeing A Perfect Day, while complimenting its structure, composition and sensibility. Finally, in the spirit of Was/Is/ Ought and to encapsulate the nature of time’s omniscient hold on the past, present and future, Guerrero-Maciá has installed a working studio in the gallery which she has visited several times a week over the duration of the exhibition. Creating a series of watercolor studies on paper, this Is, rendered from what Was, Ought to become the next step in the creative process of an artist’s state of being.

OPPOSITE: Installation view featuring work by Diana Guerrero-Macia

Diana Guerrero-Macia

A Perfect Day, 2020

Wool, dye, deconstructed clothing, rock and canvas

57.5 x 49.5 inches

Diana Guerrero-Macia, Drunkard’s Path, 2021, tyvek, gouache and wool, 160 x 111 inches

Hilma’s Ghos Dannielle Tegeder + Sharmistha Ray (New York) are the founders of the feminist collective Hilma’s Ghost. Their mission is to seek to address existing art historical gaps by cultivating a global network of women, nonbinary, and trans practitioners whose work addresses spirituality. The ABSTRACT FUTURES TAROT Project is their rst artmaking collaboration and debuted at The Armory Fair in New York in September of 2021. Consisting of 78 drawings of Tarot Cards (based on the well-known structure originally designed by Rider-Waite-Smith and Illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith) Tegeder+ Ray’s scaled-up gouache, ink, and colored pencil works measure 17 x 9.75 inches each. The works in Was/Is/Ought are a part this collaborative project in which Hilma’s Ghost put an abstract lens on a traditional tarot deck, interpreting signs and symbols to generate divinatory meanings that can be unlocked through an interpretation of abstract forms. Working together in their respective studios for over 300 hours, Tegeder and Ray developed a collaborative strategy that incorporated the ar historical reverberations created by the re-introduction of Hilma af Klint’s work in 2018 by the Guggenheim Museum In addition to the drawings, Hilma’s Ghost created a series of paintings at varying sizes– that are an amalgam, or a manifestation, of Tarot Card readings. Pulling between three and six cards per painting, a Tarot Card reader read the futures of the artists and the artists combined the imagery of the cards into a single canvas surface. The resultant imagery is colorful geometric patterns incorporating both Major and Minor Arcana. The titles of each painting als give a hint into what the reading said Not everything is as it seems right now. You are unsure as to which way to go next. It feel uncomfortable to be so unsure, but you must make a decision because standing still or remainin in place is not an option. Make your choice Both artists hold extensive knowledge regarding western and non-western abstraction, with Tegede pulling from Bauhausian and Minimalist traditions, and Ray from spiritual and esoteric forms from Sout Asia, as well as the patterning and craft traditions of Asian textiles. Within these drawings lies a ric sensibility for color, shape, and compositional elements, enlisting hybridity of abstraction that i intrinsically experimental and daring

OPPOSITE: Installation view featuring work by Hilma’s Ghost

To open an additional catalog featuring all the works in the Hilma’s Ghost Tarot Series,

CLICK HERE

Installation view of Hilma’s Ghost ABSTRACT FUTURES TAROT Project by Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray at The Armory Show, 2021

Installation view featuring work from the Abstract Futures Tarot Project by Hilma’s Ghost

Spencer Carmona, Nocturne, 2019, oil on canvas, 30 x 50 inches

Installation view featuring work from the Abstract Futures Tarot Project by Hilma’s Ghost

Hilma’s Ghost

Giving and giving and giving leads to the burnout of too much generosity, 2021

Acrylic and ashe on canvas

20 x 16 inches

Hilma’s Ghost

Why are you torturing yourself when you have already healed?, 2021

Acrylic and ashe on canvas

20 x 16 inches

Anne Lindber Anne Lindberg’s (Ancramdale, New York) abstract color-pencil and graphite drawings are developed with a meticulous approach and deft hand while integrated with an un appable awareness of her surroundings. From her light- lled studio in the Hudson Valley, Lindberg takes inspiration from her natural environs as the evershifting tones and colors of the day create a variety of moods and atmospheric shifts Presented in Was/Is/Ought is temperatures (2021), a triptych with a mixture of hard to soft grays and shocking reds, yellows and oranges with occasional blues and greens. These horizontal lines use contrast and abrupt shifts in color across the three drawings to culminate literally and guratively into plausible imagery. What is revealed - through abstract means - is something more than visual. Here is a re ection of the time, or the psychological state of both the maker and viewer under the auspice of the cycle of nature and its perceived imposition upon us As Lindberg writes in late summer 2021: “Climate change is the challenge of our times, and the coronavirus is a vivid messenger asking us to pay attention. My father was an energy economist and geographer who, in the 1970s when I was young, often spoke of access to potable water as the future shortage of greatest magnitude He studied and advocated for the economic viability of renewable energy sources. He and my mother taught me and my brother the beauty and signi cance of history and helped us understand that the way we live in the present etches a path forward that affects the future. Time is turbulent and always being rede ned. With increasing temperatures, colossal weather events and economic inequalities worldwide, we must change our relationship to time.

”

OPPOSITE: Anne Lindberg, temperatures, 2021, graphite and colored pencil on mat board, 24 x 81 inches

Chuck Ramire Chuck Ramirez’s (San Antonio, 1962-2010) heartfelt photographic series Quarantine 2000 was completed in 2000 and printed in 2011, the year Ramirez whose life tragically ended in a cycling accident. Twenty year hence, the term “quarantine” has become synonymous with daily life as our collective forced engagement with COVID-19, or these pandemic times, is rampant. As an HIV positive individual, this particular series epitomizes the particular trope of mortality that is explored throughout Ramirez’s oeuvre The Quarantine 2000 series revisit the Dutch vanitas genre which represents the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, while contrasting symbols of wealth and ephemerality. These photographs of bouquets of owers that have slightly surpassed the healthy phase their arrangement where collected while Ramirez visited his ailing grandmother in the hospital. With pops of colorful vibrancy in the ribbons that surround the vases to the slightly wilted and browned edges of the owers, a sense of sustenance and remembrance The photographs themselves lend these images and their meanings to a sense of the forever. With th pain and grief of loss associated with terminal illness, these oral arrangements in various states of deca are formally presented in a re-contextualized format, creating a new narrative through their object-hood Here, mortality is compounded with dignity. Ramirez shows us that the uniqueness of the individua experience within the strata of time - de ned as the past, present and future - should not be con ned t one layer. The memories of those we lost should never be completely discarded, but remembered, n matter how much wilting happens.

OPPOSITE: Installation view featuring work by Chuck Ramirez

Chuck Ramirez

Quarantine: Purple Ribbon, 2000, 2011

Pigment inkjet print

46 x 34 inches

Edition 3 of 6

Courtesy of Ruiz-Healy Art

Chuck Ramirez

Quarantine: Turqoise, 2000, 2011

Pigment inkjet print

46 x 34 inches

Edition 3 of 6

Courtesy of Ruiz-Healy Art

Chuck Ramirez

Quarantine: Pink Ribbon, 2000, 2011

Pigment inkjet print

46 x 34 inches

Edition 3 of 6

Courtesy of Ruiz-Healy Art

Kay Rose Kay Rosen’s (New York and Indiana) Blue Monday is one of the artist’s early lists. It was originally created in 1991 in response to an invitation from Michael Shamberg to contribute to a CD-Rom about “Blue Monday,” the best-selling 1983 hit by the British rock band New Order, for whom Shamberg was the producer. In 2005 it became a web project for the Bronx Museum, and in 2015, it was published as a continuous video in an edition of 100 by Krakow Witkin Gallery. Blue Monday systematically combines every day of the week with each of the six colors of the spectrum in order to explore the alternatives to the colloquialism, “blue Monday” and to discover the poetic andpersonal associations of colors and days. Rosen’s piece begins on “Blue” Monday and cycles through 6 colors over the course of 7 weeks, taking 42 days to return to “Blue” Monday, all the while, the viewer experiences Orange Thursday, Green Friday, Yellow Saturday and 38 other color/day of the week combinations. In order to cycle through the entirety of the spectrum with the days of the week, it takes 9 minutes and 12 seconds. An ominous bell – the sole sound in the video - rings as each transition appears on the screen What becomes clear in viewing this video is that the embedded conditions of time and color in our own lives can become rich, complex and interwoven. Further, notions that challenge our idea of language and time should be welcomed as the former is ever evolving and the latter should be challenged. Blue Monday serves as a guide to unlocking the mysteries of these two ever-present entities, acknowledgin their complexities while underscoring the mechanisms they represent.

OPPOSITE: Installation view of Kay Rosen, Blue Monday, 2015, continuous loop on dvd, 9 minutes, 12 seconds, Edition of 100

Video still of Kay Rosen, Blue Monday, 2015, continuous loop on dvd, 9 minutes, 12 seconds, Edition of 100

Amanda Ross-H Amanda Ross-Ho’s (Los Angeles) oversized fabrication Time Waits for No One (2011) hangs front and center in Was/Is/Ought. With prophetic signi cance this wildly outsized (36 x 89 inches) needle work wall-hanging declares in no uncertain terms the ominous and well-worn truism. Whether it be an epitaph, call for action, or homey saying, “time waits for no one”, is a reminder of our eeting existence and an urgent reminder (now more than ever) that the clock is ticking Ross-Ho’s use of language and scale as vehicles for investigating ways to amplify, literally and guratively, cultural meaning is a prescient gesture for a work made in 2011 and exhibited here in 2021 - as we come out of the haze of our shared pandemic. The phraseology or locution of “time waits for no one” is brought to fruition through the technique of scale-shifting and the use of materials (wool and needlepoint canvas) that would mirror a normal home décor version. Decoding language in this measured gesture alongside the process-oriented artmaking makes for a striking dichotomy Ultimately, Time Waits for No One, both in phrase and form, is a challenge to humanity. The philosophica discourse that has always surrounded the notion of time is fraught with arguments about the essentia existence of time. Within this discussion are three frameworks 1. 2. 3.

Presentism: the nature of time where the view is that neither the future nor the past exists only the present Eternalism: the nature of time that takes the view that all existence in time is equally real, ie past, present and futur Growing block universe: the nature of time wherein the past and present exist while th future does no

The monumental challenge here is that there can be no singular answer as to the nature of time. Wha can happen is the essential acknowledgment of it’s existence, regardless of its elasticity and/o in niteness. Time is also personal, and the reminder that it exists to begin with, as Ross-Ho deftly does hopefully allows us to be more human.

OPPOSITE: Installation view of Amanda Ross-Ho, TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE, 2011

OPPOSITE, DETAIL, Amanda Ross-Ho, TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE, 2011

Scott Stac Scott Stack’s (Chicago) visually complex abstract paintings offer an opportunity for both introspection and exploration. As with any abstract entity, visual or otherwise, the act of seeing and understanding can only come to meaningful fruition if one brings their own past (experience), is present (initiation) and open to the future (knowledge). Interpreting artwork’s that are bereft of instant logical conclusions can lead the viewer on a very particular kind of journey of wonderment that encourages curiosity outside of the con nes of a gallery. These qualities, or endgame, are desirable for the both the artist and the viewer, and Stack’s paintings are particularly attuned to this The three paintings on view in Was/Is/Ought have several optical considerations that utilize different and sometimes competing – visual codes and strategies: color balance, blending and patterning 1

The paintings are comprised of three base colors and all the colors that can be mixed between two of the base colors (there is not a three-way mixture of color.) Generally, the paintings have a light color, slightly darker medium grey (warm) and dark colors. As a result, the painted areas in the painting are more or less balanced between light and dark. The light color in the pattern is the same area as the dark and grey color combine

Stack also maintains the pattern and location of the color through careful blending. Sometimes the colors are delineated by sharp lines and sometimes they are blended. Where blended, the “sum” of the color remains the same: the lighter colors go through a gradual mix with the darker color but the amount of color (lightness and darkness) remains unchanged

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3. The pattern used is a typical checkerboard repeat tile pattern that implies dimension because it can be interpreted as shaded planes depicted isometrically. While walking towards the painting the strict pattern degrades. The expectation in the brain is that the details will resolve, and the space wil become more understandable, or at least predictable. However, the closer one gets the more the painting reveals the blended or unblended edges. Buried i the overall noise of the patterning are competing rectangles and rounded shapes. Thi preserves the pattern while also exploiting light, shadow and dimension

This capturing of light and and pattern bending seemingly harnesses a luminosity creating an overal visceral experience. There is an in niteness to their structure that envelopes the viewer, warpin perception and breaking apart the concreteness of time. The simultaneous expanding and contracting o Stack’s paintings are reminiscent of the way time has become more and more abstract itself over the pas year and a half.

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As Stack says, “I think that we are active participants in how we see. With the barest visual evidence, w will construct a pattern and with any anomaly, we will look harder to see if we can incorporate it into new understanding of the pattern.

Scott Stac Didn’t Realize That the Light Had Changed, 202 Oil on canvas over pane 78 x 66 inches

Scott Stac Fold test PK, 202 Oil on canvas over pane 40 x 30 inches

Scott Stac Fold Test LGR, 202 Oil on canvas over pane 40 x 30 inches

Oli Wat Oli Watt (Chicago) became enamored with the imagist artist Roger Brown’s strange but beautiful duck decoy collection during a residency at the deceased artist’s home in Michigan during the early stages of the pandemic (just prior to Chicago’s o cial lockdown).

Primarily known for his printmaking and works on paper, Watt went into the lockdown with a new idea for a project: 101 Useless Decoys. This series, begun in April of 2020 and still on going, has produced to date just over 50 Decoys, the majority on view in the exhibition Was/Is/Ought. Situated as a group on a 20-foot-long low-slung table in the shape of a T, the Useless Decoys – in all their various static forms – are inoperative but almost seem sentient among the other artworks.

These hand-made decoys come across as whimsical and also somehow as very familiar objects. They bring back memories of visits to cabins in the woods, or basement dwellings and garages where duck decoys from days past sit either waiting to be used or simply decorating their surroundings. This paradox of form vs. function is further investigated in Watt’s Useless Decoys. Made with a wide variety of materials, the decoys mostly incorporate wood, but also Legos, kids building blocks, clothes hangers, a wasp nest, rocks, plants, and additional everyday found objects found by the artists on walks between his home and studio.

With equal doses of humor, nostalgia, and craftmanship, these Useless Decoys represent a process-oriented project that Watt undertook during a tumultuous period of time. These hand-made sculptural objects are ultimately beholden to a form of catharsis, enabled and embraced by the artist, and gifted to the viewer.

ffi

OPPOSITE: Installation view of 101 Useless Decoys by Oli Watt

To open an additional catalog featuring all the works in Oli Watt’ Duck decoy series,

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Oli Wat Travis, 202 Pine, as 13 x 8.5 x 9 inches

Oli Wat Trix, 202 Pine, kids blocks, as 8 x 6.5 x 9 inches

Oli Wat Tanker, 202 Pine, found plastic and pewte 15.5 x 14 x 19 inches

Installation view of work by Oli Watt

Oli Wat Rock Bottom, 202 Found decoy head, found roc 6 x 3.5 x 6 inches

Oli Wat Stacks, 202 Found wood and pin 13 x 4 x 9 inches

Oli Wat Periscope, 202 Walnut, bass, pine and found deco 16 x 7 x 25 inches

Agustina Woodgate Augstina Woodgate’s (Miami) primary interest is centered around the interplay between human beings and their surroundings. Her sculpture Over Time (2019) is a manipulated industrial clock that has a small block of sandpaper attached to a single minute hand. As time turns it slowly scrapes away the numerals that make the clock visually operate. By altering the clock’s mechanical function in this small but effectual manner, the grind of time literally and guratively distorts, deteriorates and disappears This distortion, or erasure of time, is metaphorically embedded in everyone as the clock embodies the disintegration of time on our collective march into the future minute by minute. More speci cally, this clock, which is an industrial grade National Time wall clock, is meant for and often seen by particular individuals in particular settings: prisons, government of ces, schools, and factories The relationships these objects have with each other very much represent our contemporary power structures. This installation is a display of reality, nothing is made up. This is just how things work In the context of Was/Is/Ought, Woodgate’s contribution of Over Time represents a socio-politically engaged connection with the concept of Time – time as an automated tool of labor and, by extension, value. Additionally, the entropic nature of the physical things around us, here extends to the cerebral concepts that time represents. The manipulation of this tool by the artist, though slight in actuality, symbolizes a signi cant gesture pointing at the systems that we are ruled by.

OPPOSITE, Augustina Woodgate, Over Time, 2019, 14” National Time wall clock, sanding sticks, 8’ orange power cord,. Various dimensions, Unique Edition, Courtesy Spinello Projects

To view the exhibition Was/ Is/ Ought, please visit us at

900 West Washington, Chicago, IL 60607

312.491.0917

www.secristgallery.com

For more information, please contact Britton Bertran at 312.491.0917

Pricing and availability of works of art listed in this document is subject to change without prior notice.