PRESS RELEASE

Stalke Gallery presents a joint exhibition with

Ian Schjals and Dove Bradshaw

In his new works from the past three years, during which he received a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation, Ian Schjals carefully constructs surfaces with a relief-like character and a color palette of tertiary earth tones. His images evoke thoughts of dried-up rivers, desert landscapes, geological strata, or ancient masonry, steadfastly marked by the ravages of time. We delve deep into the foundational matter, the essence of life's origins or what remains after its conclusion. His works also gesture toward an electron-microscopic universe, where stars are born and explode. A meditative space is opened, rooted in the quiet infinity of the universe, reminding us that humanity is not the center of the world but part of a greater whole. Schjals’ artwork speaks to the need for focus, concentration, and stillness.

Though Dove Bradshaw's works bear the title Self-Interest, like Ian Schjals, she explores material significances and processes that transcend the individual and address universal human existence deeply anchored in spiritual self-understanding. Self-Interest consists of a glass table holding Pyrex flasks, each containing elements of the human body. The size of the flasks corresponds to the percentage of each element found in the body. As a stark and revealing image of humanity as a biochemical organism, the work is simultaneously beautiful in its minimalist simplicity and profoundly thought-provoking.

Bradshaw also presents new photographs, revisiting her interest in the egg as a symbol of origin, protection, and fragility, as well as several stones from her ongoing series Indeterminacy.