Heidi Schwegler (b. 1967 in San Antonio, TX) explores a wide range of materials in the service of her subject matter. She is drawn to the peripheral ruin, modifying discarded objects to give them a new sense of purpose. There is an equilibrium inherent in such things – they float between endurance and decay, a living death. In this exclusive ARTSY online exhibition, we survey the recent work of this fascinating artist.

According to Schwegler:

I reverse industrial production by abstracting and transforming durable, mass produced “stuff” into fragile, unique works of glass, porcelain, rubber, felt, and gold. Recognizable forms are cast in materials completely antithetical to intrinsic functions. When carefully reconstructed with valuable and worthless materials alike, then placed within the exhibition space, the forms both retain the aura of their original context and implicitly evoke the actions of the careless hands that discard them. By transfiguring these relics of consumption, I seek to create new relationships – at once seductive and alienating – between myself, my viewers, and that which has been discarded. My gambit allows a viewer to experience an object again for the first time. Objects with once-specific intentionality are reframed through the alchemical process of casting with and infused with new allegorical and poetic associations. Glass, in particular, is both limitless and idiosyncratic. Its casting process triangulates failure, the unexpected, the sublime. Within contemporary discourse, the “glitch” is invoked when speaking about accidents in technology, especially in the digital domain: figments, corruptions, and fugitive bits. For me, another kind of glitch occurs in the physical encounter with the discarded. Once collected, stuff becomes fodder for formal and theoretical investigations into mortality and consumption, beauty and waste, desire and humor.

In 2002, at the Metropolitan Museum, a five-hundred year old marble sculpture of Adam fell from its unstable pedestal to the floor, shattering into hundreds of fragments. The museum was faced with a choice: either leave it broken or commit to a restoration, as if the event had never occurred. In the former case, suspending the shattered parts with an elaborate scaffolding system would render the accident as its defining moment. Instead, the museum’s conservationists and forensic specialists spent the next ten years painstakingly repairing the artwork, returning it to its near-original state. I create new ways of thinking about ordinary objects and their inexorable fragmentation. Things break. They no longer do what they were designed to do. Surface damage and wear and tear are visual cues of a thing’s history, their former life of use and purpose. My work amends broken things by recasting and embellishing their materiality. I am reproducing their original ordinariness and reorienting their presence in terms of aesthetic value.

Heidi Schwegler (b. 1967 in San Antonio, TX) explores a wide range of materials in the service of her subject matter. She is drawn to the peripheral ruin, modifying discarded objects to give them a new sense of purpose. There is an equilibrium inherent in such things – they float between endurance and decay, a living death. In this exclusive ARTSY online exhibition, we survey the recent work of this fascinating artist.

According to Schwegler:

I reverse industrial production by abstracting and transforming durable, mass produced “stuff” into fragile, unique works of glass, porcelain, rubber, felt, and gold. Recognizable forms are cast in materials completely antithetical to intrinsic functions. When carefully reconstructed with valuable and worthless materials alike, then placed within the exhibition space, the forms both retain the aura of their original context and implicitly evoke the actions of the careless hands that discard them. By transfiguring these relics of consumption, I seek to create new relationships – at once seductive and alienating – between myself, my viewers, and that which has been discarded. My gambit allows a viewer to experience an object again for the first time. Objects with once-specific intentionality are reframed through the alchemical process of casting with and infused with new allegorical and poetic associations. Glass, in particular, is both limitless and idiosyncratic. Its casting process triangulates failure, the unexpected, the sublime. Within contemporary discourse, the “glitch” is invoked when speaking about accidents in technology, especially in the digital domain: figments, corruptions, and fugitive bits. For me, another kind of glitch occurs in the physical encounter with the discarded. Once collected, stuff becomes fodder for formal and theoretical investigations into mortality and consumption, beauty and waste, desire and humor.

In 2002, at the Metropolitan Museum, a five-hundred year old marble sculpture of Adam fell from its unstable pedestal to the floor, shattering into hundreds of fragments. The museum was faced with a choice: either leave it broken or commit to a restoration, as if the event had never occurred. In the former case, suspending the shattered parts with an elaborate scaffolding system would render the accident as its defining moment. Instead, the museum’s conservationists and forensic specialists spent the next ten years painstakingly repairing the artwork, returning it to its near-original state. I create new ways of thinking about ordinary objects and their inexorable fragmentation. Things break. They no longer do what they were designed to do. Surface damage and wear and tear are visual cues of a thing’s history, their former life of use and purpose. My work amends broken things by recasting and embellishing their materiality. I am reproducing their original ordinariness and reorienting their presence in terms of aesthetic value.

Heidi Schwegler (b. 1967 in San Antonio, TX) explores a wide range of materials in the service of her subject matter. She is drawn to the peripheral ruin, modifying discarded objects to give them a new sense of purpose. There is an equilibrium inherent in such things – they float between endurance and decay, a living death. In this exclusive ARTSY online exhibition, we survey the recent work of this fascinating artist.

According to Schwegler:

I reverse industrial production by abstracting and transforming durable, mass produced “stuff” into fragile, unique works of glass, porcelain, rubber, felt, and gold. Recognizable forms are cast in materials completely antithetical to intrinsic functions. When carefully reconstructed with valuable and worthless materials alike, then placed within the exhibition space, the forms both retain the aura of their original context and implicitly evoke the actions of the careless hands that discard them. By transfiguring these relics of consumption, I seek to create new relationships – at once seductive and alienating – between myself, my viewers, and that which has been discarded. My gambit allows a viewer to experience an object again for the first time. Objects with once-specific intentionality are reframed through the alchemical process of casting with and infused with new allegorical and poetic associations. Glass, in particular, is both limitless and idiosyncratic. Its casting process triangulates failure, the unexpected, the sublime. Within contemporary discourse, the “glitch” is invoked when speaking about accidents in technology, especially in the digital domain: figments, corruptions, and fugitive bits. For me, another kind of glitch occurs in the physical encounter with the discarded. Once collected, stuff becomes fodder for formal and theoretical investigations into mortality and consumption, beauty and waste, desire and humor.

In 2002, at the Metropolitan Museum, a five-hundred year old marble sculpture of Adam fell from its unstable pedestal to the floor, shattering into hundreds of fragments. The museum was faced with a choice: either leave it broken or commit to a restoration, as if the event had never occurred. In the former case, suspending the shattered parts with an elaborate scaffolding system would render the accident as its defining moment. Instead, the museum’s conservationists and forensic specialists spent the next ten years painstakingly repairing the artwork, returning it to its near-original state. I create new ways of thinking about ordinary objects and their inexorable fragmentation. Things break. They no longer do what they were designed to do. Surface damage and wear and tear are visual cues of a thing’s history, their former life of use and purpose. My work amends broken things by recasting and embellishing their materiality. I am reproducing their original ordinariness and reorienting their presence in terms of aesthetic value.

Schwegler’s numerous shows include exhibitions at the Co/Lab Art Fari (CA), Raid Projects, (CA), Platform China (Beijing), Scope Art 2004 (NY), and the Hallie Ford Museum (OR). Schwegler is a recent Ford Family Fellow, received a 2010 MacDowell Colony Fellowship and several RACC Individual Project Grants. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews and the Huffington Post. She earned her MFA from the University of Oregon and is Chair of the MFA in Applied Craft + Design, a joint program of Oregon College of Art and Craft, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Heralded for his critical analysis of masculine iconography, artist DAVID RATHMAN (b. 1958) has gravitated towards maverick characters such as athletes, rock stars, race car drivers, and ranchers. After numerous years of exploring the concept of the American cowboy, Rathman's subject matter is slated to evolve after this last look into the mysterious, testosterone-driven psyche of the American West.
In a monochromatic sepia-toned palette, Rathman's work depicts ghostly silhouettes of ambiguous gunslingers in Stetsons riding their trusty steeds across a barren landscape. Reminiscent of old shoddy film stills, the loose qualities of his painting technique evoke a shadowy nostalgia culled from pooling whiskey on an aging oak tabletop. Lonely as they seem, these romanticized figures of the past seem at home within the environments that echo their existence; hazy and ephemeral through the eyes of the viewer. Oftentimes these human mirages fuse into their backgrounds, as if struggling for sovereignty from their dusty tension-filled environments. The effect is one of haunting wistfulness for the historical narratives associated with “manifest destiny,” or for the fictionalized storytelling of Hollywood cinema as remembered by a young child. Rendered in the contrasting depth and frailty of watercolor, Rathman’s cowboy vignettes grapple with notions of sexuality, faith, mortality and melancholy.
Rathman (b. 1958) received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MN). He has exhibited as such institutions as Larissa Goldston Gallery (NY), Contemporary Arts Museum (TX), Walker Art Center (MN), Arts Center of St. Petersburg (FL) and Mary Goldman Gallery (CA). His work is featured in fifteen public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), J. Paul Getty Museum (CA) and the Art Institute of Chicago (IL), to name a few. Rathman will be the subject of a career survey at the Rochester Art Center (MN) opening September 21, 2013. Rathman is also represented by Larissa Goldston Gallery (NY). He lives and works in Minneapolis.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.

Heidi Schwegler works in the interstitial ruins of Beijing, Los Angeles, New York City and suburban America. She rescues haphazardly disused scraps from the bowels of the megalopolis: chicken bones, Big Gulps, broken signs, lost shoes, crumpled pylons, take out containers. Plastic, fiber, and bone: these materials decay but never decompose. A peerless craftsperson, she resynthesizes her sources into facsimiles with cast glass, gold, silver, wax, resulting in artwork that persists in a “living death.” Recent exhibition venues include WBG London Projects (London), Asphodel (New York), Sheldon Museum (Lincoln, NE), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). Schwegler is a Ford Family Fellow, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Yaddo Artist-in- Resident. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews, Modern Painters, and the Huffington Post. Schwegler is the founder of the Yucca Valley Material Lab, a platform for making and thinking.