Andy Grotfeldt and Terry Suprean put forward a cooperative exhibition of new works
entitled Before Disappearing into the Wilderness October 11th at Beefhaus in Dallas Tx.
This pairing will showcase the various methods within the artists' individual practice that
address a shared yet divergent concern for the status of meaning in the modern era.
Through digital acquiescence and stubborn dismissal of technology Suprean and
Grotfeldt conversely seek a signification found in the ritualization of process.
Suprean's generous compositions result from combining a number of processes such as
installation, collage, projection and digital manipulation. These elements are
superimposed and compressed both digitally and practically into a photograph. Random
imaging and slippery coding are entangled among physical procedures and then
repeated, building lush imaginary spaces with ghostly figures that exist ambiguously
between the virtual and the physical realm. "Like Speaking In Tongues With Your
Thumbs is a series of works that at its core attempts to reach content through the process
of ritualizing technology; that is to sublimate the spinning gyre of media and technological
over stimulation we exist within into the ancient visceral drive to repeat finite actions until
meaning is reached through accumulation and simulation." Suprean translates childhood
memories of iconic images and experiences into scenarios of ghostly simulacrum using
all the means of production he has at his disposal, including "smoke and mirrors, primitive
projections, lens modification, etc." Suprean's maximalist approach, that teases the
viewer into decrypting foggy mythos colonized by familiar tropes of sexuality, religion and
death which renders complex, highly theatrical depictions of otherworldliness. Terry
Suprean is based in Houston where he works as an artist and instructor. He is also a
founding member of the Civic TV Collective.
Andy Grotfeldt is a Houston based artist whose practice is grounded in the traditions of
painting and drawing. Grotfeldt's tactile and handmade work offers a stark counterpoint to
Suprean's seductive photographic visions. Remaining intuitive and unaffected by the
whims of trending art practices, his works are conceived in the cauldron of day to day
struggles. Brooding and melancholic, Grotfeldt's paintings are sludgy and entropic
surfaces made from found images and patterned fabric that is methodically eradicated.
His drawings are accumulations of obsessive and deliberate ink marks that are slowly
built up using a grab bag of drawing supplies but relying heavily on common store bought
markers. Warm and luminous grounds are populated by singular geometric shapes subtly
recognizable as beings. These apparitions vacillate between humanistic and totemic.
These ambivalent lifeforms are projections of the artist's own personality, materialized
through the act of markmaking and surface covering. His works, though highly
emblematic, are not born from premeditated calculation. Instead, their aim is to "represent
a willingness to relinquish control over their environments and seem able to operate
functionally in a neutral state." Grotfeldt has shown in galleries in Houston and
Amsterdam, is an active member of the collaborative group Civic TV, and a legacy in the
international art movement FIUWAC.
