Scratching Below the Surface: Zach Balousek and Soumya Netrabile

Opening Reception Friday September 28, 7-10pm

Firecat Projects presents Scratching Below the Surface, a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Zach Balousek and Soumya Netrabile. Netrabile’s abstract paintings restructure parts taken from anatomy, mechanisms, and natural world. By experimentally juxtaposing, bending, and layering these parts, Netrabile tries to find new relationships and intimacies that might emerge. The final works can appear as fantastical amalgamations, interior structures of an unknown entity, or strange landscapes. Balousek is a musician and a sculptor who creates one of a kind instruments. Just as Stradivarius took generations of skilled Luthiers to “perfect” the violin, Balousek attempts to build upon the past, employing rudimentary mechanics and primitive materials such as clay, gut, wood, and bone to sculpt his own voice as unique and fleeting as the present. The works of both artists engage the idea of palimpsest where the works undergo numerous transformations before settling into their final forms. The significance of each phase, taken as a whole, forms a basis for one continuous thread that holds the work together and allows the makers to explore ideas of transformation, destruction and regeneration inside the artistic process.
  
Beverages at the opening are provided by Temperance Beer Co. and Red and White Wines, Chicago.  

Exhibition is open during regular gallery hours, M-Sat 10-4.

Above images: Combination painting #1, Soumya Netrabile, Oil on paper mounted to board; Collider I, Zach Balousek, porcelain, wood, goatskin