Saul Gray-Hildenbrand
February 15th – May 2nd
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Saul was born and raised in Michigan, has lived in Colorado, California, and currently resides in Murfreesboro Tennessee.
Saul has worked as head preparator, curator, picture framer, factory worker, video clerk, racetrack utility man, and as disaster mitigation tech. All of these vocations have informed his work.
Saul works in a variety of media from oil painting to installation. His work is influenced by folk, modern artand contemporary art. Saul's paintings, drawings, and sculptures are a reaction to the world around him - sometimes mundane sometimes ironic sometimes absurd with a sprinkling of dark humor and joyful misanthropy. His current body of work deals with mapping and then obscuring visual information.
The Long Shrug
By Saul Gray-Hildenbrand
Art can deliver information and also obscure it. I am interested in the push and pull. I have transitioned from overt representation of figures and ideas to mysterious narratives, to fields of light and shadow being cast on familiar objects. My paintings and sculptures in a way no are sealed packages to be forever shaken but never fully unwrapped. I am letting myself be guided by emotional decisions more than higher conceptual planes. The work I feel is a reaction to an increasingly noisy and hyper-stimulating world of blips and beeps. Quietude and mystery are the meadows and oceans that allow for reflection, settling and breath.
I like to use material with a history or a prior utility. Nostalgic charm presented self-aware of its uselessness: matches covered in a layer of polymer unthreatening and stripped of their ephemeral smoke and flame; Books glued and painted shut render their stories memories of memories; Wood used to support other art is cut into hundreds of pieces and tied back together with plastic cable ties. The strength now sags like a blanket but lacks the tactile comfort.
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