Surface Conditions

Uprise Art is pleased to present Surface Conditions, an exhibition featuring Blake Aaseby, J.C. Fontanive, Paola Rodriguez Arias and William Storms. Working across a range of materials that generate both illusory and sensorially tactile surfaces, each artist uses process as a way to investigate material and construct narrative.

Fontanive’s vitreous enamel works are created by fusing powdered glass to a copper and stainless steel plate in a high-temperature kiln. They appear to be held together in delicate, puzzle-like formations, suggesting a haptic reshuffling to reach equilibrium. How shapes move up or down, echoes moments in life where choices settle into patterns, forming systems that are both intentional and unresolved.

Rodriguez Arias’ intricately coiled yarn works create topographic surfaces, with tactile undulations that lend her compositions a sense of dimensionality and textural depth. Her works reflect on her environment and lived experiences, imbuing her work with personal symbology from the cityscape of her hometown of Bogotá, to a languid interpretation of a figure, reclining under the sun, taking time and space to pause and reflect in nature.

In 'Surface Conditions', material becomes a vehicle of translation where the accumulation of repetitive process generates narrative, where the artists position medium and process not as a means to an end, but as the very condition through which meaning is made.

Storms manipulates fiber and textile into geometric configurations that embrace both the materials’ innate qualities, as well as their inherent imperfections. Trained in traditional weaving, he expands upon this technical and historically rooted practice, bending it, both literally and conceptually, into dimensional forms that challenge the conventions of the medium. His work exists in a balance between precision and the naturally occurring irregularities that emerge throughout the process, treating material aberrations not as disruptions, but as integral parts of the work’s narrative.

Aaseby’s drawings explore the fluid nature of memory in layered compositions that resemble the warp and weft of textiles. Working with pastel on paper, he builds each piece through thousands of superimposed marks, allowing the accumulation of color to inform patterns that guide the eye around the work. This interplay mirrors the ways in which memories shift over time, how details sharpen or fade, how patterns emerge and break.

In Surface Conditions, material becomes a vehicle of translation where the accumulation of repetitive process generates narrative, where the artists position medium and process not as a means to an end, but as the very condition through which meaning is made.

Download statement