Echo Mutation

Our three artists here have very distinct styles and aesthetics. Yet their approach to art-making is so similar that their artworks evoke eerie visual connections. Their attention to the process is what links their work and what cultivates their friendship. They don’t know where their art is taking them, yet they know when something they’ve done feels right. It’s about submitting a bit of control and letting the work take them where they need to. In an art world polluted by branding and self-promotion, authentic art-making can become peripheral, or worse, forgotten. This exhibition doesn’t condemn having to participate in this reality. However, it is a warm reminder to stay loyal to the process as these artists have throughout their lives. Observe how these artists uniquely transform objects and give a new perspective to pre-existing forms. Jeff Crisman re-frames the forest’s light and angles. In that process, he exposes us to a broader realm of what a tree can be. Crisman collaborates with his camera to capture the recognizable patterns our brain interprets in trees—a phenomenon known as pareidolia—leaving room for the viewer to speculate over the image they perceive. Michelle Stone transforms objects she’s collected or created through a cyclical process. For example, she might begin by staging scenes with random objects or toys and photographing them. These photographs might serve as a new canvas upon which she paints. Then, the residue acrylic plastic from her palette can become the medium of a sculpture, which later can prompt yet another painting. It’s a constant cycle of revisiting and refiguring— a play with forms and the images they can generate. David Hauptschein transforms images by following “the voice in the back of his head”. He writes AI prompts to intuitively modify digital images, using the process as a tool to explore his subconscious. We are confronted with a mind that is unafraid to face itself. The result is not only a fragment of Hauptschein’s exploration but also how an AI image generator interprets it. The work embraces the absurd to the point that the original image prompt becomes irrelevant. The images we see are not a direct reflection of Hauptschein’s imagination, rather, they represent his dialogue with the new artistic medium. These art processes shapeshift the form and the self. They are continuous conversations between the artists and their art. What you see on the walls are snapshots of these conversations. Our three artists harbored an organic mutation of their work and themselves– it is a manner of self-reinvention. These works are self-portraits, not in appearance but in essence, capturing the artists’ shifting identities through honest self-expression. – Alicja Seledec Curator