February 13-23, 2020

Opening reception: Saturday February 15, 6-9pm

Keystone Art Space is pleased to present Survival Kit, a two-person exhibition featuring works by California artists Gregory King and Luke Aleckson. In this collection, the artists respond to the global issue of climate change, and its increasing impact on human activity and psychology. Being fathers to young children, both King and Aleckson recognize that a ‘business as usual’ approach to contemporary life is no longer tenable. In the face of changes to the physical environment, every facet of culture–including the work of artists–contributes to a collective ‘imprint’ that is now being questioned, and such pressures have become impossible to ignore as the artists reckon with their studio practice. Rather than succumb to the despair that climate change can elicit, each are exploring new methodologies, materials, and conceptual points of view as an overarching expression of hope in the human capacity to survive.

Through sculpture, video, drawing and photography, King and Aleckson poetically explore what it means to live on a planet of 7.7 billion human beings, and the myriad implications that poses to one’s psyche as it intersects with the natural world. In particular, and in a 21st century update, the supremacy of material and its recontextualization proposed by Minimalism is now one of interrogation for its ‘carbon’ contribution. No medium is innocent and free from the connotations of its manufacture, if one has learned of the mathematics of extraction, distribution, consumption, and waste that defines the conversation of sustainability and the natural world. As such, the material(s) for the works in the exhibition will be conspicuous, and/or accompanied by descriptions as to their properties and origin. In addition, the exhibit asks: in the face of the monumental challenges the climate poses, how does one define respite, and the spiritual practices that maintain our sense of self, and community?

Gregory King has made visual art, films, and music since the late 20th century, using a highly arcane methodology that cycles through concepts of time, physics, spiritual practice and identity, the urban environment as a proxy for human psychology, and making ‘familiar things unfamiliar in order to experience them anew’ (Viktor Shklovsky). He has shown his work at galleries, museums, and film festivals across the US and Europe, and holds an MFA from Hunter College.

Luke Aleckson’s work centers around conceptual and material tensions between freedom and authority. Using a range of materials and production methods, he has delved into the worlds of utopian idealism–rural, urban, digital–and the roles of violence and capital as both agents and corruptors of these idyllic visions. Solo exhibitions include The Liberator II at Adjunct Positions, LA, Defendefendefender at Julius Caesar, Chicago, and UNPAC (Uniform Non-coding Autostereogrammic Cyclopti-cryptograms) at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.