At its surface, this pairing juxtaposes high contrast black-and-white drawings and overly saturated wax panels, but together these works delve into human perception of nature and the interplay between entropy and order. In this exhibition, each artist has dedicated himself to a single medium—carbon on paper for Chris Oatey and highly-pigmented paraffin wax for Dylan Gebbia-Richards—and their respective explorations of each medium’s unique properties. Equally laborious in their unique manifestations, the works of Oatey and Gebbia- Richards revel in their repetition, initially implying chaos, but over time exhibiting an underlying order. The carbon remnants imply memories on the page and the wax layers, the subtleties of intuition.

 

For Oatey nature is subject—snow and ocean depicted behind a manmade linear structure. The carbon paper itself from natural origins made into a tool by placing the pigment-coated paper between two blank sheets. These subjects and images offer a reference to the sublime and man’s interaction with nature creating scenes for reflection. The carbon paper is reused to produce this series, leaving memories of the previous drawings thus creating a record and narrative of their making.

 

Gebbia-Richards applies layers upon layers of wax to large panels reminiscent of accumulated snow or coral reefs. Creating ‘micro-climates’ of controlled temperature and pressure to produce these works, these paintings are natural results of his devised artistic weather system. Each panel is its own microcosm; an exploration of the connection between chaos and logic, the subconscious and the intuition. Seeming entropy organizes into fractal structures revealing a logic from the chaos inherent in this particular act of mark making.