Gallery Guide: Blue River by Giuseppe Licari and Gretchen Gretchen Marie Schaefer

BCA CURATES

BLUE RIVER GIUSEPPE LICARI + GRETCHEN MARIE SCHAEFER

Aug 8–Sep 8, 2019 Gallery@OMH | Old Masonic Hall FREE

In the last century, humanity has become a natural force that forges and is forged by the landscape it creates. Blue River is an exhibition by Giuseppe Licari (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and Gretchen Marie Schaefer (Denver, Colorado) inspired by the history of Breckenridge and the radical transformation of its rich physical and human landscape since the Gold Rush.

Gretchen

Marie

Schaefer

presents

delicate

paper

sculptures

in

consideration of the emotional relationships we build with a single rock, for example, collected from a riverside and placed in a pocket. The rocks don’t read as direct representations, the scale and details feel slightly surreal, instead each work holds the life and character of a unique object of nature. Rocks are simultaneously as singular as fingerprints and as ubiquitous as dirt. Removed from their original geographic context, they can become precious tokens imbued with the energy of a specific landscape and a long, cosmic history. Isolated from its natural setting, a single stone – or any seemingly innocuous object – can equally focus and abstract, reveal and confuse, and manifest and evade comprehension, creating both a depth of knowledge and an uncertain groundlessness.

Schaefer’s meditative consideration of objects is a mechanism to cope with, understand, and engage with a literal and sociopolitical landscape.

In the central exhibition space, Giuseppe Licari’s Contrappunto brings to the gallery the rapid and tempest after effects of forest fires with an installation portraying the devastation of a burnt woodland. Taken from the mountains of Breckenridge, the charred trees evoke contemplation of the rampant forest fires of the Mountain West by placing visitors within a situation that is at once natural and imitation, beautiful and confronting.

A recent study cited by the New York Times found that half as much United States forest area would have burned between 1984 and 2015 in a world not warmed by climate change.

Dredging in Breckenridge was the action of excavating the riverbeds to collect the precious minerals below, turning the earth over. This mining methodology transformed the entire landscape of Summit County. Forests were cut, and rivers have disappeared deep into the earth after the passage of the dredge boat. With the strong commitment of the municipality of Breckenridge, the Blue River is now flowing again through the city. Along nine miles, a large project of landscape reclamation has brought back to the surface the river hidden underneath. A layer of thick plastic holds the river above ground erasing the history of violent destruction.

In Licari’s Blue River upstairs installation, the artist creates a vast dredge rock field, unnaturally presented on the second story inside the gallery space. Waves in the rock simulate the waves found in dredge rock piles dumped by large machinery. Complementing the physical presence of the cobblestones is an audio piece consisting of 8 channels. The sound piece is created in collaboration with Nicola di Croce, sound artist and sound designer, who conducted field recordings of the river along the restored nine miles. The anthropogenic sound of the Blue River fills the room and immerses the spectator into the water, once hidden underneath the dredged rocks. This place, a representation of human greed and carelessness in the outdoors, now in the gallery functions as a cathartic place for the public to sit, rest, and contemplate the role the hand of man plays on the makeup of the `natural´ world and ownership of the landscape.

With a subject both of science and art, Blue River’s manufactured landscapes function as mirror and lens; in this exhibition we see the space we occupy and ourselves as we occupy it. Licari’s work is all-encompassing, massive and unavoidable, forcing us all into a conversation about the state of the world and implicating humans as a transformative force. In contrast, Schaefer presents singular works of nature that invite quiet consideration of our personal relationship with moments, objects, and beings of nature. The micro and macro stratums upon which these two artists work bring the wild world closer to us all. Alongside the trees, the river, and the rocks, we are all part of the biota, the ecosystem of interdependent organisms.

DOWNSTAIRS Front Gallery

GRETCHEN MARIE SHAEFER PERPETUAL FALLING IS FLOATING (THORNTON, CO), 2019 colored pencil on paper

GRETCHEN MARIE SCHAEFER PERPETUAL FALLING IS FLOATING (UNKNOWN LOCATION), 2019 colored pencil on paper

GRETCHEN MARIE SCHAEFER ARTIFICIAL HORIZON, 2019

papier-mâché, acrylic rods, wood shelf, paint

GRETCHEN MARIE SCHAEFER ROCK CHAIR, 2019 papier-mâché, chair

GRETCHEN MARIE SCHAEFER PERPETUAL FALLING IS FLOATING (UNKNOWN LOCATION 2), 2019 colored pencil on paper

Central Gallery

GIUSEPPE LICARI CONTRAPPUNTO, 2016

tree trunks, fire gun, gas, screws

UPSTAIRS GALLERY GIUSEPPE LICARI

WITH THE COLLABORATION OF SOUND ARTIST NICOLA DI CROCE

BLUE RIVER, 2019

34,560 pounds of dredge rock, blue filter, 8 channel audio installation

GIUSEPPE LICARI Giuseppe Licari was born in Sicily and is currently based in Rotterdam. His work focuses on the cross-border of the natural world and the built environment, exploring the territories emerging from their encounters. His heterotopic landscapes constitute places of memories, in which the emotions of single individuals become inevitably part of a collective experience.

Licari studied Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and Monumental Art at AKI Enschede, in the Netherlands. He has been the recipient of significant international grants and his work has been exhibited internationally, including at Ming Studios Boise, Kunsten Festival Watou, Ex Cartiera Latina Rome, New Holland St. Petersburg, Tent Rotterdam, Museum Sinclair-Haus Bad Homburg and Action Field Kodra Thessaloniki.

Giuseppe Licari will participate in the Breckenridge International Festival of Arts (BIFA) with his new site-specific works Blue River, Contrappunto and Golden

Shelter from Aug 9–18, 2019. His residency and installations are supported through an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, part of BCA’s ‘Ecoventions Breckenridge’ project.

GRETCHEN MARIE SCHAEFER Gretchen Marie Schaefer is interested in the ways a thoughtful change in the act of looking can shift and challenge relationships, power dynamics, assumptions, and knowledge, and how this shift can be, surprising, distressing, mysterious, and radical. She thinks about sight and perception through the making of drawings, sculptures, installations, and performances.

Schaefer was born (1982), raised, and currently works in Denver, Colorado. She holds a bachelor degree in English Literature and Visual Arts from Regis University. She is an alumna of the RedLine Denver Artist-in-Residence program and currently works at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design as the Visiting Artist, Scholar, and Designer (VASD) Program Director. She is a founding member and current co-manager of TANK Studios, LLC. Exhibitions of her artwork include group and solo shows at the CU Boulder Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, David B. Smith Gallery, and RedLine.