OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Eraser Drawings

Reanne Estrada

Wood Reliefs

Gregg Blasdel and Jennifer Koch

February 2 - 24, 2007
Reception: Friday, February 2, 5:30 - 8:00pm

O·H+T gallery is pleased to present eraser drawings by Los Angeles artist Reanne Estrada, and collaborative, wood relief prints by Gregg Blasdel and Jennifer Koch.

Reanne Estrada describes her work as high-relief drawing or low-relief sculpture. Occupying a hybrid state that is informed by the "in-between-ness" of her Filipino immigrant background, they blur the distinctions between drawing and sculpture, manufactured and natural, mico and macro. Delicate ink drawings reminiscent of natural forms and patterns, adorn the surfaces of colorful, mass-produced erasers (Koh-I-Noor 9600 PT20, top right) that are grouped together to form new quasi-sculptural objects. Estrada’s meticulously crafted pieces are not products of the fast-paced 21st century. "I produce work very slowly. Everything is made by hand, very physical, very analog . . . In a digital age where anything seems possible, my work is mindful of the body, its limitations and imperfections."

The series of relief prints entitled The Marriage of Reason, by Gregg Blasdel and Jennifer Koch, began with an invitation to participate in a collaborative print exhibition. The collaboration was so successful that the artists continue to produce prints together. The resulting images have an ingenuous, Hepburn/Tracy, Nick and Nora electricity that is unsually fresh in the often cynical realm of male/female politics. Choosing to restrict their palette and their imagery, Blasdel and Koch build an underlying structure that unififes the series. In Slip Up (bottom right), the curve of a minimal dark red shape presses into the driftwood-like, assymetry of a black one to initiate a give and take between the two autonomous figures. This sense of connection continues throughout the series, so that each print seems to offer another glimpse into the multi-faceted relationship of two unique and sometimes disparate characters.