Opening on Friday, February 19 and on view until May 21, 2016 located in the Sen. Stan Adelstein & Lynda K. Clark Gallery at the Dahl Arts Center in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota, “Wood Shock” is an exhibit by Bryan Christiansen. The artist will give a brief talk during the reception between 5:00-7:00 pm.
The exhibition is a collection of freestanding sculptures and wall-mounted assemblages that pursue points of intersection between humans, their environments and proximity to nature. The term, Wood shock was used in the late 19th century to classify a person who is genuinely lost in the wilderness. Artist Christiansen has adopted the terminology to expand on themes of hunting and nature.
Using hunting as an ideological point of departure, Christiansen hunts and gathers materials found in and around the cities he has lived in order to create life and larger-than-life sized animals, skulls and reliquaries, all in homage to the secret lives we live. Through a ritualistic process of gathering, deconstructing and assembling, the works in “Wood Shock” transform discarded and abandoned objects in alleyways and dumpsters into prized mementos.
About
Bryan Christiansen is a South Dakota native who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nevada, Reno with a minor in Philosophy in 2009. He has exhibited throughout the western U.S. and is represented by the Stremmel Gallery in Reno, Nevada. For more on Bryan and his artworks, see: http://bryanchristiansen.org.