DOUBLE/FORCE
DOUBLE/FORCE
The Catacombs
March 10, 2023 to April 22, 2023
Explosive energy dominates the work of Sarah Krepp and Olivia Petrides.
Krepp locates a powerful gesture in found materials, in blown-out tires which are gathered from highway debris. Blow-outs force the wires, embedded in the rubber, into writhing gesticulations of accumulated stress. Krepp explains that “with the use of blown-out retread tires, handwritten text of NPR, stitching, tar and lace, I aspire to set up an interplay between the brute force of the road and fragile domesticity – targeting the chaos, confusion and instability of our daily lives. Our ability and disability to understand the fractured world around us I set against the natural vigor and exuberance that we find in life itself. Part of this is aesthetic, part positive energy, part horror, danger, and death.”
Petrides also utilizes found materials– collaged fragments of daily news –to protest the inversion of truth and facts within current political dialogue. Her work explores partisan denial of social and environmental concerns which hinders meaningful negotiation. She states “my work in this exhibit protests the distortion of facts which promote the lies of the Trump administration. News is “spun.” “Truth” is contested. “Science” is mistrusted. “Climate change” is denied. These images are an exploration of the oppositional discourse of our time.”
In DOUBLE/FORCE, Petrides and Krepp both reference turbulent atmospheres and tangled social workings, thus posing questions about the relationship between human action and nature’s limitations.
Petrides’ work in this exhibition is supported by an Illinois Arts Council Special Projects Grant and by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
This exhibition is on display in the Catacombs alongside gather/seize.
Olivia Petrides is a painter, an illustrator and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, teaching drawing and painting for the last 35 years. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Over many years, she has traveled to iconic landscapes in Africa, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, France, Italy, Greenland, Alaska, and the American West. Specific emblematic features of these landscapes are the inspiration for her paintings and drawings. Petrides has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, a Fulbright Grant, the Margaret Klimek Phillips Fellowship and several awards from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council. Her work is included in the public collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Park Service, the Field Museum, the Illinois State Museum, Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, Openlands Preservation Association, and Iceland’s Hafnarborg Institute of Art, among others.
Sarah Krepp has shown her interdisciplinary artwork in museums and galleries nationally and internationally, and her work is included in many corporate and private collections throughout North America as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Rockford Art Museum, and the Brauer Museum of Art. Krepp has received many research awards including most recently the residency at Ceill Railaig, County Kerry Ireland, and several travel grants to do research in Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany and France. With an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BS from Skidmore College NY, she is Professor Emeritus of the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was Chair of the Painting Program. And in 2002 she founded and is on-going director of DIALOGUE CHICAGO, an interdisciplinary critique/seminar for visual artists, that brings together professional artists from painting to installation, performance to time arts. She has also curated many exhibitions, including at the Rockford Art Museum, Art Chicago International Expo, Governor’s State University, Gallery 175, the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, the Krannert Art Museum, among others.
Olivia Petrides is a painter, an illustrator and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, teaching drawing and painting for the last 35 years. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Over many years, she has traveled to iconic landscapes in Africa, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, France, Italy, Greenland, Alaska, and the American West. Specific emblematic features of these landscapes are the inspiration for her paintings and drawings. Petrides has been awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, a Fulbright Grant, the Margaret Klimek Phillips Fellowship and several awards from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council. Her work is included in the public collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Park Service, the Field Museum, the Illinois State Museum, Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, Openlands Preservation Association, and Iceland’s Hafnarborg Institute of Art, among others.
Sarah Krepp has shown her interdisciplinary artwork in museums and galleries nationally and internationally, and her work is included in many corporate and private collections throughout North America as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Rockford Art Museum, and the Brauer Museum of Art. Krepp has received many research awards including most recently the residency at Ceill Railaig, County Kerry Ireland, and several travel grants to do research in Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany and France. With an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BS from Skidmore College NY, she is Professor Emeritus of the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was Chair of the Painting Program. And in 2002 she founded and is on-going director of DIALOGUE CHICAGO, an interdisciplinary critique/seminar for visual artists, that brings together professional artists from painting to installation, performance to time arts. She has also curated many exhibitions, including at the Rockford Art Museum, Art Chicago International Expo, Governor’s State University, Gallery 175, the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, the Krannert Art Museum, among others.
