Laura Ledbetter and Dan Rushton

People, Places and Things, April 2014 

Grizzly Grizzly is excited to announce its uncoming April exhibition, 'People, Places, and Things', a two-person show of Philadelphia-based artist Laura Ledbetter and New Yorker, Dan Rushton. Both artists will be showing new, exploratory works on paper made expressly for this exhibition.

At Grizzly Grizzly, we often pair people (artists) based on the things they make and give them a place to show. We find a connection, but then invite the artists to expand on it. 'People, Places, and Things' explores this fraught relationship; two strangers asked to share a gallery space and find commonality. The balance of risk and reward underlies the process-oriented work of both artists.

Laura Ledbetter's assembled drawings examine 'forced coexistence.' Ornate paper shards are delicately held together through tension of thread sewn directly into the substrate. Creating obstacles to overcome, Ledbetter allows the subject of the work to become the result of "compilations of actions and reactions as the elements continue to move, loosen and tighten during construction and over time."

Dan Rushton's works on paper begin as digital drawings printed with an industrial machine, a plotter, retrofitted to hold graffiti markers. They are then worked into by hand. He says of his layered, transparent works, "While appearing to be merely simple marks, the painted lines in these works are a complicated accumulation of processes that involved a constant interplan of the human hand, mechanical tendencies, and digital technologies."

All installation photographs courtesy of Jaime Alvarez