Curator / Nola Avienne

tension

Andy Fallat
Kirk Lang
James Ryan

September 3 – 27, 2008
Reception / Thursday, September 4, 5–8pm 

Tension affects us daily on a personal, social and global level. For September's SOIL exhibit, curator and SOIL member Nola Avienne formally assigned the charged and dynamic topic of tension to three sculptors. Interestingly, each artist interpreted tension as a different form of waiting. Tension is the pause, the uncomfortable expectation, focusing on that single moment between action and non-action. New work will be featured by Andy Fallat, Kirk Lang and James Ryan.

Andy Fallat interprets scientific theories with colloquial wisdom to prompt a discussion about our responsibilities to the world's ecology. His artifacts grow as he alters their narrative, using the sequences of events to inform how he fabricates each object. The results are a romantic undertaking of a grand scale, tempered with the ardently human qualities of a "do-it-yourself" ethos.

Kirk Lang focuses on the relationship that exists between measured and perceived time. He creates objects that metaphorically capture the human trend of performing endless tasks which yield no viable outcome yet, which are continued indefinitely. His objects question those moments but more importantly serve as a testament on behalf of the instinctual reaction ingrained into the human condition to, quite literally, move forward in the hopes of measurable progress.

James Ryan deals with weight, mass, tension and assembly to allow both aesthetics and function to become part of his visual conclusion. His work comments upon the human desire to travel and the difficulties in doing so given our current transportation crisis. The needs for travel and change may suddenly create unforeseen psychological sediment as simple rights of passage become far more complicated than accounted for.

tension creates a charged atmosphere of sculptural work which explores and parallels the precariousness of social issues as well as the formal aspects of sculpture itself. Works created both individually and collaboratively will be on view.