co.elaboration: New work by Blair Vaughn-Gruler & Ernst Gruler, celebrating
GVG Contemporary’s10-year anniversary August 2 – September 15, 2019
241 Delgado Street | Santa Fe, NM 87501 | info@gvgcontemporary.com | gvgcontemporary.com | 505.982.1494
co.elaboration
Painter Blair Vaughn-Gruler and her husband, furniture designer/artist Ernst Gruler, celebrate their gallery’s 10-year anniversary with a duo show
“We’ve been collaborating for decades,” says Ernst Gruler, with a laugh. “This show is the elaboration of our collaboration.” co.elaboration features new work by Blair Vaughn-Gruler, whose process-based approach with intricate loops, lines, marks, and layers of pale-toned oil paint make for large-scale, meditative paintings. Gruler, an artist and designer, has a new line of furniture and sculptures, including “Tree Lights” as well as “Tank Lamps,” which, built from repurposed scrapyard steel parts along with fine Japanese paper, make for a strong counterpart to Vaughn-Gruler’s meditations. With co.elaboration, the couple celebrates a decade running GVG Contemporary together, a gallery complete with two sculpture gardens on Delgado Street, part of the central, Canyon Road art district in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The show, up through September 15, 2019, fills the walls with Vaughn-Gruler’s new paintings and features Gruler’s fine-art furniture as well as his popular Sound Sculptures, bells made from repurposed steel parts and glass. This is a rare glimpse at the creative visions that drive GVG Contemporary, where, typically, visitors can also see work by a group of contemporary painters and multimedia artists whom the couple has represented over the years. Now, Vaughn-Gruler and Gruler are at the apex of their careers, spending double-time in the studio and gallery as they build their oeuvres.
BLAIR VAUGHN-GRULER
Equal Standing | oil and mm on wood on canvas | 60 x 48 x 1.5 Magne/c A2rac/on| oil on canvas | 60 x 48 x 1.5 | $7500 each
ERNST GRULER
Sound Sculptures (from leA to right): Circle Zen III, Circle Zen IV, and Non Shat II| repurposed steel | ranging from 32-‐67” tall, 18-‐27.5” wide, and 7.5-‐15.5” deep | $1900, $2900, and $4200
Ayer Table with 6 Fame Chairs | wood laminate and mixed media| 30 x 47 x 96 | $19,000
Blair Vaughn-‐Gruler| Asemic Poetry| oil and mixed media on claybord | 40 x 60 | $6900
BLAIR VAUGHN-‐GRULER approaches the
ideas of space and geometry through large-‐scale, monochromaPc, structural painPngs, which contemplate the relaPonship of the physical body to the painted object. Vaughn-‐Gruler’s images subvert rather than build upon geometry, exploring the materiality of paint and the structure of paint as it exists when applied to a surface: “My visual vocabulary includes references to structure, repePPon, deconstructed geometry, and the physical qualiPes of the paint itself,” she says. “As I organize paint into shapes and marks on flat or dimensional surfaces, which I also somePmes build (organize) out of wood or cardboard, it’s not the end result I’m aAer, but rather the process of translaPng my physical experience of space into objects. They are not pictures, but neither are they sculptures.” An arPst since she was a young girl with a painPng studio in her parents’ basement, Vaughn-‐Gruler’s work has shown in galleries and exhibiPons across the country. Having opened GVG Contemporary with Ernst Gruler 10 years ago, she holds a BFA in PainPng and an MFA in Visual Art. Noc/lucence |oil and mixed media on claybord | 48 x 36 | $5500
Rules are to Break| oil on canvas| 54 x 84 | $14,000
Making it Fit| oil on canvas| 18 x 24 x 1.5| $1400
Night Vision | oil and mixed media on claybord | 48 x 36 x 2 | $5500
Down/me | oil and mixed media on claybord| 48 x 36 x 2| $5500
Accumulated | oil on canvas| 48 x 48 x 1.5| $6900
Accumula/on Pain/ngs | oil on wood on canvas | 6 x 6 | $295 each
Paint is, for me, an ointment, which I use to mediate the space between sets of poten/ally opposi/onal considera/ons, like body and imagina/on, or past and present. My process is built around process: mark making, repe//on, accumula/on, erasure, and the viscosity of the paint itself. I am also concerned with my physical rela/onship to paint, including the mo/ons inherent in the process of mark making and the many references this mark making makes toward wri/ng, indexing, and reading. As the mark making becomes deconstructed into lines, language is reference, but the meaning is leO unclear. This circles around the idea of asemic wri/ng, which u/lizes the formal elements and structure of wri2en language, but without the preconceived meaning. In my current work, new meanings can emerge, repeat, and forget themselves back into the paint. I like to think about how the process of compulsive mark making and visual organizing reorganize brain chemistry, in both maker and viewer. The prac/ce of laying down mul/ple layers of media, drawing between and on the layers, and repea/ng the procedure, makes physical the thought process itself, as the pain glues ideas and experiences together. This tension between decipherment and embodiment informs and inspires my inquiry. My current work speaks to informa/on overload, organizing and compartmentalizing said informa/on, and making sense of the chaos through visual linguis/cs. —Blair Vaughn-‐Gruler, Santa Fe, NM, 2019
Blueprint | gouache on claybord | 30 x 24 | $2400
On the Horizon I | gouache, graphite, and oil on claybord | 17 x 13 x 1.5| $750
Morning Paper II | oil and mixed media on claybord | 24 x 18 x 2 | $1400
Square Clouds | oil on canvas | 48 x 60 x 1.5| $7500
Calendar Page| oil and mixed media on claybord | 12 x 9 x 2| $450
Night Sky | oil and mixed media on claybord | 20 x 7| $450
Single Object #14 | acrylic on wood on cardboard | 14 x 3.5 | $350
ERNST GRULER has developed his
design sensibiliPes over the past 25 years, aAer earning his BFA and MA in furniture design. He combines painterly aesthePcs, funcPonality, and craAsmanship to create works of contemporary fine art furniture, sculpture, and painPngs that are enduring and unique. For Gruler, creaPng art is a form of acPve meditaPon. When asked how long it takes him to make something, he says, “the sum total of my moments in life so far.” P o p u l a r w o r k s a r e h i s S o u n d Sculptures, bells melded from cast-‐offs from cars, farm machinery, and former pressure tanks or canisters. Gruler uses these repurposed steel parts to craA pracPcal, sculptural objects. He also works with tree saplings, repurposed steel, and handmade paper to create his Tree Lights and Flared Tank Lamps.
Gatekeeper III Sound Sculpture on Diamond Table with Flared Tank Lamps on Stepped End Tables | repurposed steel, wood laminate, mixed media, and handmade paper
Ernst Gruler, Navigator (leA), repurposed steel and glass & Deere John, repurposed steel.
Ernst Gruler creates sound sculptures out of the unique repurposed steel parts he finds. Clockwise, from leA: The Mighty O, Ring Gear II, Split Rim, and Gatekeeper III, ranging from $1100-‐$2900.
Flared Tank Lamps, repurposed steel and handmade paper, ranging from $1200-‐$5700
Tree Lights, maple sapling, found rocks, mixed media, and handmade paper, $4500 each.
Ayer Table with 6 Fame Chairs | mixed media on wood laminate 30 x 47 x 96 (table) | $19,000 for the set
As I Imagine 4 Top Dining Set with four chairs | mixed media on wood laminate 48 x 48 x 30 | $14,000
Schneider Dining Ensemble can be rearranged to make sehngs of different configuraPons, depending on the party size. Gruler applies texture and paint to wood laminate as he carefully craAs designs that are unique, inPmate, and ergonomic.
co.elabora)on
Blair Vaughn-‐Gruler and Ernst Gruler celebrate GVG Contemporary’s 10-‐year anniversary, yet their story in art, business, and love began decades ago
For Blair Vaughn-‐Gruler and Ernst Gruler, celebraPng a decade together in the business of art is significant. The couple met in Michigan nearly 30 years ago when Gruler, a lifelong musician, was strumming his guitar at a gallery where he was a board member and curator. It was a moment for Cupid, and the two leA former relaPonships and started a new life together. Gruler had a background in high-‐end furniture and model making and was working on his MA in Furniture Design at Northern Michigan University at the Pme. Vaughn-‐Gruler, who was already showing her work in galleries and exhibiPons across the country, encouraged him to also start showing. Their life in art together began. For a day job, the couple opened a bouPque, selling clothing, jewelry, beads, and imported arPfacts. The business was so successful, they moved to Sedona, Arizona to open another shop, along with Vaughn-‐Gruler’s younger son, a painter and animaPon arPst (her elder, who works with art and technology, had gone off to college by then). They found a homeland in the Southwest, but the wandering itch got them again. Gruler, aAer all, had spent a couple of his formaPve years hitching on the road, gaining life experience that likely made him the thoughjul, open-‐minded stepfather and arPst he became. Now his adventures came with a family, not in tow, but holding the reins.
Vaughn-‐Gruler had long loved Santa Fe and the city’s art scene, having spent several years in New Mexico back in the 1970s. The couple sold their shops and decided to start a new kind of business: a gallery where they’d show their work and represent arPsts of similar aesthePcs. GVG Contemporary was born with a combinaPon of their names: Gruler and Vaughn-‐Gruler. A decade in business has seen deeply individual development. When not at the gallery, the couple shares a home together in Lamy, New Mexico, where Vaughn-‐Gruler has her painPng studio and Gruler has taken over the beler part of a six-‐car garage (he also has a metal shop where he welds in Santa Fe). In the meanPme, Vaughn-‐Gruler, who got a BFA in PainPng at Northern Michigan University in 1979, completed her MFA in Visual Art at Vermont College of Fine Art in 2010. “Going to grad school in my 50s helped me re-‐contextualize my painPng pracPce for the 21st century,” she says. Meanwhile, Gruler has picked up welding and acrylic painPng, and his sculptural furniture has gone through stages of refinement. Gruler has become more fluid in his use of different mediums and says his work has, in a sense, become “less linear.” A table, for example, is shaped and curved so that all seated can see each other, and there’s no head. Some tables designs are composed of two or three parts that fit together in different ways or can be separated for other purposes. In addiPon to his “Tree Lights,” made from saplings of sPll-‐standing trees, found rocks, and handmade paper, along with his “Tank Lamps,” craAed from repurposed steel canisters opened like petals and combined with handmade paper, Gruler’s works make for a strong complement to Vaughn-‐Gruler’s meditaPve painPngs. Together, Vaughn-‐Gruler and Gruler have shaped GVG Contemporary with synchronisPc aesthePcs. Individually, they are creaPng at the apex of their careers, and co.elaboraIon is their latest iteraPon of a complex collaboraPon of two creaPve minds.
GVG Contemporary is a gallery showcasing painting, sculpture, fine art furniture, and artist-made jewelry on the corner of historic Canyon Road and Delgado Street in Santa Fe, New Mexico, owned by husband-and-wife local artist team Blair Vaughn-Gruler and Ernst Gruler.
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241 Delgado Street | Santa Fe, NM 87501 | info@gvgcontemporary.com | gvgcontemporary.com | 505.982.1494