Speculative Geographies

October 8 - November 17, 2019

Featuring: Andrew Erdos, Yasue Maetake, & Barry Underwood

Speculative Geographies incites shifts in perspective: from the human body to the environment, from the present to a hypothetical future or alternate reality. In an era defined by both new technologies and climate change, we increasingly understand ourselves as participants in a vast network of nonhuman relations. Artists Andrew Erdos, Yasue Maetake, and Barry Underwood visualize those networks. Mountainous glass sculptures by Erdos evoke topographies from another time or from some other planet. Conjuring hybrid plant-animals or fantastical structures, Maetake’s constructions in fiber, bone, metal, and resins could populate extraterrestrial terrain. Barry Underwood transforms recognizable landscapes through light and sculptural installations, making long-exposure photographs that appear otherworldly and animated by their own mysterious life-force. From the vantage point of an increasingly precarious present, Speculative Geographies envisions possible realities in which humans may or may not play a role. 

Andrew Erdos made Cauldrons by covering metal armatures with molten glass.  Cauldrons and the glowing, mountainous Incantation, on view in the outdoor sculpture garden, look like primordial topographical forms, reflecting Andrew Erdos’ interest in geological time, or the era preceding human existence. Yet the presence of found wood palettes that form the base of the sculptures gestures toward industry, and likewise toward the human impact on nature. Erdos likens the material transformation from molten to solid glass to landscapes where intense topographical changes have occurred, either on Earth of in a hypothetical environment elsewhere in the Universe. “Despite living in an age where every aspect of life and art can be defined by academic categories,” the artist explains, “we cannot forget that art has always been magic.” 

Inspired by 17th century Baroque artists who sought to convey dynamism, motion, and drama in three-dimensional, static forms, Yasue Maetake’s sculptures often appear to defy gravity. Maetake supplants the human physique—a hallmark of Baroque art—with animal bones, referring to a body of indeterminate species. Small bone and bark tripods adorned with trinkets or origami evoke talismans, imbued with the desires and superstitions of their makers. From the way the sculptures appear to float on glass-topped pedestals, to unexpected material juxtapositions, Maetake describes her process as one of trying to conjure a futuristic image. While Maetake responds to a range of influences, including SciFi, Japanese manga, and European Art History, her abstract forms resist categorization, instead speculating on what art might look like in another time, in an unfamiliar place. 

Barry Underwood’s long-exposure photographs picture landscapes inhabited by light forms. The light-based designs are actual structures that Underwood builds in situ with materials like electronic luminescent wire, glow sticks, and fishing line. The resulting images are part of a larger practice of site-based research, exploration, and interactions with local residents. Organic, diffuse illuminations suggest incursions on the environment—oil or chemical spills for example—while the geometries of the Linear Constructions look more architectural. In all cases, the abstract visual language points to the human impact on the environment. Alternately eerie and magical, Underwood’s compositions allude to mysterious dimensions of the natural world that lay beyond the purview of ordinary vision. 

—Paula Burleigh

Andrew Erdos is the youngest recipient of the Rakow Commission of the Corning Museum of Glass. Erdos’ work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, with solo exhibitions at Claire Oliver Gallery, New York; and group exhibitions at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt; Deitch Projects, New York; and the Beijing BS1 Contemporary Art Center, among others. Erdos’ artist residencies include Alfred University, New York; and Corning Museum of Glass, New York. Works by Erdos are in various public and private collections, including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; and Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee. Andrew Erdos lives and works in New York, New York. 

Yasue Maetake has exhibited internationally, at venues including Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam; Harris Lieberman, New York; Queens Art Museum, New York; and Espacio 1414, Puerto Rico. Maetake received The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture and has been a resident artist in the studio of El Anatsui in Ghana, with a research grant from the Agency for Japanese Cultural Affairs. In 2018, Artsy named Maetake one of 20 female artists advancing the field of sculpture. In 2019, her work was exhibited at the collateral exhibition at the 58th Venice Beinnale organized by London-based Heist Gallery. Maetake lives and works in New York, New York, where she is currently adjunct faculty at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology.

Barry Underwood has exhibited throughout the United States, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Ohio; The Sculpture Center, Ohio; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Michigan; Photographic Center Northwest, Washington; and Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, New York; among other venues. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Underwood won the Cleveland Arts Prize for Visual Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Underwood has been an artist-in-residence at The Banff Center for the Arts, Canada; Headlands Center for the Arts, California; and The MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire; and most recently at The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut. Underwood’s work is part of numerous public and private collections, including the The Akron Art Museum, Ohio; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Elton John Photography Collection; Georgia. Underwood lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, where he is Associate Professor in the Photography and Video department at the Cleveland Institute of Art.