Future Vestiges, the exhibition featuring the latest sculptures from Illinois artist, Tyler Lotz, expresses his response to manufactured objects designed to simulate the natural world. Lotz continues to create pieces from slip cast ceramics that are covered with bright, sometimes neon, acrylic paints; his new set of work transitions to forms even closer to the manufactured products Lotz means to emulate. Transitioning from whimsical spirals and reaching vines, this work employs sharp angles and heavy masses of rock, combined with exposed fasteners and slabs of concrete.
Lotz aims to demonstrate through his work two concepts: the constant battle man wages with nature to control it and the changes man makes to the natural world to fulfill needs. This battle is played out compositionally; his forms invoke twisted metal, smashed by glacier boulders, or incomplete slabs of concrete attached to floating pieces of ice. Lotz also uses his pallet to convey these harsher natural elements, moving from the bright floral colors of his past work, to a cooler pallet that mimics ice, mountains, and glaciers. Lotz states that his art, especially the new Moraines series seen in this exhibition, “…began as a speculation about what might be left behind when the next ice age recedes. The resulting masses of form and color are the residue, the tangled remains of a world where things are made and where things just occur. They are deposits of human tangibles and intangibles, our objects and our ideas. These accumulations of positives and negatives hold at once our best and worst intentions.”
Lotz is a graduate of Penn State University and received his MFA from New York State College in ceramics in 2000. His ceramic sculptures and vessels have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including Quincy Art Center, Kentucky Center of Art and Craft, and Shanghai Museum of Arts and Craft. He also has been a resident artist at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. Residing in central Illinois, he is currently an Assistant Professor at The School of Art at Illinois State University.
Please join us for the opening reception of Future Vestiges on Friday, January 14, 2011 at 6:00 pm.
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