Gallery 16 is pleased to present Grammar of the Ground, an exhibition of recent paintings by Jered Sprecher. This marks Sprecher’s fourth exhibition with the gallery and will be on view through December 22, 2018. The artist will be in attendance for the opening reception on Friday, November 2nd from 6 to 9PM.
Grammar of the Ground is a collection of oil paintings, as well as a large, woven wall-hanging entitled Become. Made from alternating strips of spray-painted and printed wallpaper, Become creates a flickering pattern of dark and light, much like the light emanating from a campfire or a backlit screen. Sprecher explains, “As humans we like to stare at things that emanate light. Moon, fire, smartphone, stars, movie screens, a firefly, and glowing embers are all things we gaze upon. We can easily lose track of time staring at a fire or staring at a screen transfixed.”
The artist’s work acknowledges the ground, soil, or earth as the source for both nature and technology. Sprecher references resources found in the ground—flaxseed, rare earth, roses, silica—as well as a range of life that emerges and depends on soil. Whether roses from the garden or cell phones made with rare earth metals and silicon, Sprecher draws upon imagery of nature as it comes into contact with technology. His paintings feature images of trees, flowers and birds interfacing with reflections on glass, screen errors and test patterns. These images compressed on a touched surface—some with a double, triple, or quadruple exposure—reference both fingers touching a screen and also the images on the device that are "touching" the screen.
Jered Sprecher lives and works in Knoxville, TN. Sprecher is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Solo exhibitions include Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee; Jeff Bailey, New York; Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston. Group exhibitions include Anxious Abstraction at Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; The Drawing Center, New York; the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC. Sprecher has been an artist in residence at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas. He received a BA in History and Studio Art at Concordia University, Seward, Nebraska and an MA and MFA in painting from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.
