Jason Urban & Leslie Mutchler: Speculative Geologies
Next week, Jason Urban and Leslie Mutchler’s exhibition, Speculative Geologies, will open in EE’s Main Gallery! We are so excited to have their work in our space. Join us on May 5th from 7-9pm for an opening reception, we will have snacks and refreshments! To RSVP to the Facebook event, click here.
Speculative Geologies, a project by collaborators Jason Urban and Leslie Mutchler, brings together their interests in mysticism, animism, geology, color phenomenology, and material dichotomies between technology and nature. Contemplating the rare earth minerals that generate the “magic” of our smartphones, each specimen in Speculative Geologies is associated with a hypothetical attribute or action of our digital devices. Bringing together the banal, a rock or mineral that counts your steps, and the momentous, a rock or mineral that remembers the old mythology, each rock/mineral form is associated with an imagined function.
From folklore and superstition to organized religion and spirituality, magic’s divine power is often harnessed through the use of geological matter- crystals, hag stones, pi stones, and chumpi-khuyas to name a few. This revered role of material stands in stark contrast to Western culture’s history of exploitation and extraction of natural resources. With this relationship of physical to metaphysical in mind, Speculative Geologies postulates new forms perhaps uncompromised by the past and by preconceived notions. Using 3D modeling, Urban and Mutchler present a catalog of colorful, imagined rocks and minerals that ponders the Wild, the Virtual, and the Unthought.
Artist Bios
Jason Urban and Leslie Mutchler are collaborators based in Brooklyn, New York. The pair has had solo exhibitions at Center for Book Arts (New York, NY), Monaco (St. Louis, MO), the Delaware Contemporary (Wilmington, DE), NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY), Grizzly Grizzly (Philadelphia, PA), The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA), Centre for Fine Print Research (Bristol, UK), Space Gallery (Portland, ME), and Atelier Circulaire (Montreal, Canada), among others. They have been awarded numerous residencies including Edition/Basel in Basel, Switzerland, Cork Printmakers International Visiting Artist Residency in Cork, Ireland and the Workspace Residency at Dieu Donne in Brooklyn. They are currently affiliated with Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY where Mutchler is Chair of the Foundation Program and Urban teaches publishing courses in Communication Design. Their work in the studio is informed by on-going experience as educators.
Show Documentation
Photo Credit: Ksenia Korniewska
