Sarah Krepp and Olivia Petrides: DOUBLE/FORCE

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.