9/2/2006
Jeph Gurecka
31Grand, New York
Salt, Soil, Ash. A series of paintings created solely on and from rudimentary materials. As a conceptual artist, Gurecka uses an array of materials that host his ideas of transience, reflection and transcendental states. All of the images and inspiration have been taken from Eastern Europe where the artist has had a close relationship with the people and environment for the past two years.
Jeph Gurecka
Salt, Soil, Ash
Salt, Soil, Ash, is a series of paintings created solely on and from
rudimentary materials; greatly motivated by the writings of the Czech
philosophers Ladislav Klima, Mircea Eliade, and Bohumil Hrabal. Their
philosophy drew much inspiration from Nietsche and Schopenhaur and dealt
with the paradoxical nature of pure spirituality and dark absurdist humor.
Jeph was also inspired by the work of the Czech photographer Josef Koudelka,
most known for his documentation of the gypsies from Eastern Europe and the
Balkans. Koudelka's Divadlo (theater) series are striking grainy innovative
photographs of live theater productions that capture grotesque charlatans,
masks, dramatic romance, and symbolic metaphors. When blown up these images
lose their humanism and become the souls of the theater. Jeph also seeks the
same emotion and caption of the soul in his salt paintings.
All of the
images and inspiration have been taken from Eastern Europe where Jeph has
had a close relationship with the people and environment for the past two
years. Whenever you leave somewhere, there is loss. The images become a
dreamscape and never to be experienced again. Like grainy black and white
photographs either discarded or taken from a personal past, Jeph wants his
salt drawings to evoke remembrance of the journey. This journey is between
two states a projection of the conscious and subconscious. In the piece,
'While I Slept the Sky Emptied' a site specific floor drawing of the artist
sleeping, the artist metaphorically lies unconscious in the exhibition and
at the same time he is also his own conscious fabrication. In an existential
sense he has designed his own fate. Much like the actor in his own
dreamscape, the encased salt paintings on the walls surrounding the sleeping
artist on the floor depict a world of Shamans, beasts, muses and journeys
lost.
As a conceptual artist, Gurecka, uses an array of materials that host his
ideas of transience, reflection, and transcendental states. Many of the
materials are temporary mediums that evoke historical permanence. Jeph uses
simplistic and organic materials such as salt, soil, and ash to ground the
world of illusion to the physical. Much like Mandela paintings and street
graffiti murals, Gurecka¹s work exists to reflect on the moment, the
preciousness of the past and the impermanence of the world. By
incorporating the use of resin, a plastic sealer, the images are preserved
much in a mummified way, which relate to antiquity. Stained and tarnished
from their original form, these images now become something from long ago
but assimilated in the present.
Opening reception: Friday, Feb. 10, 7-10pm
31Grand
31 Grand Street - Brooklyn
Gallery hours: F-M, 1pm 7pm