New work by DANIEL LUEDTKE

Surface Tension serves as a contemplation on the skin of things. The works in the exhibition contemplate how we overlay significance onto bodies, individuals, and objects based on their external features. The viewer is invited reconsider the surface as more than a mere façade, but as a dynamic realm where meanings are assigned, power is exerted, and our relationship with the world is negotiated.

Luedtke uses a variety of techniques, materials and processes that are combined and substituted in “queer” or nontraditional ways. In tiled floor works, foamcore and resin are used to mimic the surface qualities of “real” ceramics. These drag version of ceramic tiles reference kitchens, bathrooms and hospitals, sites of bodily maintenance and care. Several works address how medical-related media creates our understanding of health and wellness. This draws from the artist’s experience with chronic illness, medicine, and insurance industries. In other works, made with actual ceramics, the clay forms are hydrodipped into screenprinted imagery, fusing images onto the dimensional surface of the clay. The printed images overlay upon the ceramic “clay bodies” as a metaphor of the abstract units of quantifiable data superimposed upon living beings.

By questioning the world of appearances, the exhibition creates visual and formal tensions that resist assumptions about how materials and bodies should function. Without the need to classify everything, the external skin of people and things can be a site of sensation and connection.

OPENING DURING JULY ARTWALK

July 14 @ 6 PM

Generous funding for this exhibition and related programming is provided by: