OVERGROWTH

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UPPER MARKET GALLERY is pleased to present OVERGROWTH, an exhibition of works on paper by Sarah Chess and works in metal by Natalie Klapper. The two San Francisco-based artists collaborated over an 8-month period, exchanging studio visits and ideas, resulting in a dialogue about humankind’s tendency to mimic the natural world, and how repetition can elevate the humblest materials through luxurious labor.

Chess’ graphite drawings are intensive labors of time and attention, minuscule patterns building layers of transparency until they suddenly transform. Klapper began collecting the discarded metal scraps from the industrial process of machining, intuitively forming them into sculptures and paintings. In their own ways, their affinity for iteration led them from man-made grids and industrial mesh to repeating, organically evolving patterns. This conversation between the artists highlights that ultimate form, the naturally occurring lattices of nature — spider webs, moss, and ultimately the molecular structures and restrictive order that sneakily underlies the visible chaos of the natural world. The drawings, paintings, and sculptures are an extension of that impulse in nature, to recreate, to reproduce, to mimic, to fill the space, to fill the time.

There’s an inherent duality in a show with two artists, but their conversation maps out dualities within their practices as well: soft and hard, excess and humility, fragile and durable. Overgrowth began as a meditation on nature overtaking the excessive manufactures of humankind, and became a reminder that we aren’t separate from nature, just a part of it.

Closing Reception: April 19, 6-9pm

Photos by Aditi Shah