Blair Vaughn-Gruler: New paintings for co.elaboration show

co.elaboration: New work by Blair Vaughn-Gruler, celebrating GVG Contemporary’s10-year anniversary

August 2 – September 15, 2019

241 Delgado Street | Santa Fe, NM 87501 | info@gvgcontemporary.com | gvgcontemporary.com | 505.982.1494

BLAIR VAUGHN-GRULER

Equal Standing | oil and mm on wood on canvas | 60 x 48 x 1.5 Magne/c A2rac/on| oil on canvas | 60 x 48 x 1.5 | $7500 each

co.elaboration

Painter Blair Vaughn-Gruler and her husband, furniture designer/artist Ernst Gruler, celebrate their gallery’s 10-year anniversary with a duo show

“We’ve been collaborating for decades,” says Ernst Gruler, with a laugh. “This show is the elaboration of our collaboration.” co.elaboration features new work by Blair Vaughn-Gruler, whose process-based approach with intricate loops, lines, marks, and layers of pale-toned oil paint make for large-scale, meditative paintings. Gruler, an artist and designer, has a new line of furniture and sculptures, including “Tree Lights” as well as “Tank Lamps,” which, built from repurposed scrapyard steel parts along with fine Japanese paper, make for a strong counterpart to Vaughn-Gruler’s meditations.

With co.elaboration, the couple celebrates a decade running GVG Contemporary together, a gallery complete with two sculpture gardens on Delgado Street, part of the central, Canyon Road art district in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The show, up through September 15, 2019, fills the walls with Vaughn-Gruler’s new paintings and features Gruler’s fine-art furniture as well as his popular Sound Sculptures, bells made from repurposed steel parts and glass. This is a rare glimpse at the creative visions that drive GVG Contemporary, where, typically, visitors can also see work by a group of contemporary painters and multimedia artists whom the couple has represented over the years.

Now, Vaughn-Gruler and Gruler are at the apex of their careers, spending double-time in the studio and gallery as they build their oeuvres.

Blair Vaughn-­‐Gruler| Asemic Poetry| oil and mixed media on claybord | 40 x 60 | $6900

BLAIR VAUGHN-­‐GRULER approaches the

ideas of space and geometry through large-­‐scale, monochromaHc, structural painHngs, which contemplate the relaHonship of the physical body to the painted object.

Vaughn-­‐Gruler’s images subvert rather than build upon geometry, exploring the materiality of paint and the structure of paint as it exists when applied to a surface: “My visual vocabulary includes references to structure, repeHHon, deconstructed geometry, and the physical qualiHes of the paint itself,” she says. “As I organize paint into shapes and marks on flat or dimensional surfaces, which I also someHmes build (organize) out of wood or cardboard, it’s not the end result I’m aWer, but rather the process of translaHng my physical experience of space into objects. They are not pictures, but neither are they sculptures.”

An arHst since she was a young girl with a painHng studio in her parents’ basement, Vaughn-­‐Gruler’s work has shown in galleries and exhibiHons across the country. Having opened GVG Contemporary with Ernst Gruler 10 years ago, she holds a BFA in PainHng and an MFA in Visual Art. Noc/lucence |oil and mixed media on claybord | 48 x 36 | $5500

Rules are to Break| oil on canvas| 54 x 84 | $14,000

Making it Fit| oil on canvas| 18 x 24 x 1.5| $1400

Night Vision | oil and mixed media on claybord | 48 x 36 x 2 | $5500

Down/me | oil and mixed media on claybord| 48 x 36 x 2| $5500

Accumulated | oil on canvas| 48 x 48 x 1.5| $6900

Accumula/on Pain/ngs | oil on wood on canvas | 6 x 6 | $295 each

Paint is, for me, an ointment, which I use to mediate the space between sets of poten/ally opposi/onal considera/ons, like body and imagina/on, or past and present. My process is built around process: mark making, repe//on, accumula/on, erasure, and the viscosity of the paint itself. I am also concerned with my physical rela/onship to paint, including the mo/ons inherent in the process of mark making and the many references this mark making makes toward wri/ng, indexing, and reading.

As the mark making becomes deconstructed into lines, language is reference, but the meaning is leK unclear. This circles around the idea of asemic wri/ng, which u/lizes the formal elements and structure of wri2en language, but without the preconceived meaning. In my current work, new meanings can emerge, repeat, and forget themselves back into the paint. I like to think about how the process of compulsive mark making and visual organizing reorganize brain chemistry, in both maker and viewer.

The prac/ce of laying down mul/ple layers of media, drawing between and on the layers, and repea/ng the procedure, makes physical the thought process itself, as the pain glues ideas and experiences together. This tension between decipherment and embodiment informs and inspires my inquiry. My current work speaks to informa/on overload, organizing and compartmentalizing said informa/on, and making sense of the chaos through visual linguis/cs.

—Blair Vaughn-­‐Gruler, Santa Fe, NM, 2019

Blueprint | gouache on claybord | 30 x 24 | $2400

On the Horizon I | gouache, graphite, and oil on claybord | 17 x 13 x 1.5| $750

Morning Paper II | oil and mixed media on claybord | 24 x 18 x 2 | $1400

Square Clouds | oil on canvas | 48 x 60 x 1.5| $7500

Calendar Page| oil and mixed media on claybord | 12 x 9 x 2| $450

Night Sky | oil and mixed media on claybord | 20 x 7| $450

Single Object #14 | acrylic on wood on cardboard | 14 x 3.5 | $350

co.elabora)on

Blair Vaughn-­‐Gruler and Ernst Gruler celebrate GVG Contemporary’s 10-­‐year anniversary, yet their story in art, business, and love began decades ago

For Blair Vaughn-­‐Gruler and Ernst Gruler, celebraHng a decade together in the business of art is significant. The couple met in Michigan nearly 30 years ago when Gruler, a lifelong musician, was strumming his guitar at a gallery where he was a board member and curator. It was a moment for Cupid, and the two leW former relaHonships and started a new life together.

Gruler had a background in high-­‐end furniture and model making and was working on his MA in Furniture Design at Northern Michigan University at the Hme. Vaughn-­‐Gruler, who was already showing her work in galleries and exhibiHons across the country, encouraged him to also start showing. Their life in art together began.

For a day job, the couple opened a bouHque, selling clothing, jewelry, beads, and imported arHfacts. The business was so successful, they moved to Sedona, Arizona to open another shop, along with Vaughn-­‐Gruler’s younger son, a painter and animaHon arHst (her elder, who works with art and technology, had gone off to college by then). They found a homeland in the Southwest, but the wandering itch got them again. Gruler, aWer all, had spent a couple of his formaHve years hitching on the road, gaining life experience that likely made him the thoughgul, open-­‐minded stepfather and arHst he became. Now his adventures came with a family, not in tow, but holding the reins.

Vaughn-­‐Gruler had long loved Santa Fe and the city’s art scene, having spent several years in New Mexico back in the 1970s.

The couple sold their shops and decided to start a new kind of business: a gallery where they’d show their work and represent arHsts of similar aestheHcs. GVG Contemporary was born with a combinaHon of their names: Gruler and Vaughn-­‐Gruler.

A decade in business has seen deeply individual development. When not at the gallery, the couple shares a home together in Lamy, New Mexico, where Vaughn-­‐Gruler has her painHng studio and Gruler has taken over the bejer part of a six-­‐car garage (he also has a metal shop where he welds in Santa Fe). In the meanHme, Vaughn-­‐Gruler, who got a BFA in PainHng at Northern Michigan University in 1979, completed her MFA in Visual Art at Vermont College of Fine Art in 2010. “Going to grad school in my 50s helped me re-­‐contextualize my painHng pracHce for the 21st century,” she says.

Meanwhile, Gruler has picked up welding and acrylic painHng, and his sculptural furniture has gone through stages of refinement. Gruler has become more fluid in his use of different mediums and says his work has, in a sense, become “less linear.” A table, for example, is shaped and curved so that all seated can see each other, and there’s no head. Some tables designs are composed of two or three parts that fit together in different ways or can be separated for other purposes. In addiHon to his “Tree Lights,” made from saplings of sHll-­‐standing trees, found rocks, and handmade paper, along with his “Tank Lamps,” craWed from repurposed steel canisters opened like petals and combined with handmade paper, Gruler’s works make for a strong complement to Vaughn-­‐Gruler’s meditaHve painHngs.

Together, Vaughn-­‐Gruler and Gruler have shaped GVG Contemporary with synchronisHc aestheHcs. Individually, they are creaHng at the apex of their careers, and co.elaboraGon is their latest iteraHon of a complex collaboraHon of two creaHve minds.

GVG Contemporary is a gallery showcasing painHng, sculpture, fine art furniture, and arHst-­‐ made jewelry on the corner of historic Canyon Road and Delgado Street in Santa Fe, New Mexico, owned by husband-­‐and-­‐wife local arHst team Blair Vaughn-­‐Gruler and Ernst Gruler.

241 Delgado Street | Santa Fe, NM 87501 | info@gvgcontemporary.com | gvgcontemporary.com | 505.982.1494