SECRET INGREDIENTS: Marking Time and Memory with Material

The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art is thrilled to present SECRET INGREDIENTS: Marking Time and Memory with Material, featuring works by Ginny Krueger and Bryan Northup. We invite you to join us for the Opening Reception on Saturday, May 11th from 12 p.m. through 4 p.m..

In this exhibition, Krueger and Northup showcase mixed-media works that explore personal memory, human existence, and material encounters. Through a blend of natural elements and human-made artifacts, the artists blur the boundaries between organic and synthetic, inviting viewers to contemplate the interplay of these elements.

Krueger's lifelong fascination with the wonders of the natural world informs her artistic journey. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, she metaphorically expresses her own inner world through her paintings. Using the encaustic medium—a blend of beeswax, damar crystals, and pigment—Krueger crafts vibrant works on wood panels. Each painting is a medley, a melded place where the gritty and sublime converge.

Northup utilizes collected single-use plastic and found objects to blur the lines between appetizing consumables, biological dissection, and everyday waste to highlight the role plastic plays in global climate crisis. His sculptures and wall reliefs offer abstracted glimpses of microscopic cell interactions and molecular-level contamination, inviting viewers to contemplate the profound impact of human-made materials on living systems.

Together, Krueger and Northup create a captivating dialogue on memory, materiality, and the environment in SECRET INGREDIENTS.

Ginny Kreuger Artist Statement: Since childhood, I have been fascinated with the wonders of life found in the natural world. As a painter, I find that the natural world reflects my inner world, and so I use nature metaphorically, to express my personal experience. The seasons, and the palette of each, hold significance for me.

I paint on wood panel using the encaustic medium; a mixture of beeswax, damar crystals, and pigment. This is my primary medium. The hot, liquid wax mixture is painted, then fused to the wood with a propane torch. Many layers are put down and fused atop the first. Sometimes I collage, sculpt, and scribe into the work. This medium suits me because it has a warm aroma, a lush, sensuous touch, and an unrivaled luster. I envision each painting as a medley, a melded place, where both the gritty and sublime.

In the summer, I often work in other media, including sculpture, printmaking, and glass casting.

No matter what, I am driven to make art that is elemental and evocative.

Bryan Northup Artist Statement: Using collected single-use plastic and found objects from the waste stream as art medium, I attempt to blur the lines between appetizing consumables, biological dissection and everyday "waste", to explore layers of meaning in an age where toxic materials of our own creation has saturated our environment and penetrated our species—both biologically and culturally—to the cellular level.

My sculpture and wall relief works depict abstracted glimpses of microscopic cell interactions, molecular-level contamination, a cross-section of interconnectedness, in an attempt to imagine how this very human-made material is interacting with living systems at the deepest level.

While always thinking about organic forms and textures that allude to perishables, I explore the dichotomy of decay and timelessness with a material that will never decompose. I am recording a material fingerprint, a time capsule, that implicates contemporary social values and attitudes surrounding environmental conservation, consumption, waste and how these affect our own bodies.