Erik Oost - Pine Barrens
April 4 - May 9, 2009
Opening reception Saturday, April 4, 6-9pm.
Erik Oost's newest body of work reflects his unique obsession with encountering, imagining, and interpreting natural phenomena. In these lush and layered abstract paintings, Oost takes cues from naturalists Tom Brown, Jr. and Dick Proenneke, who have both relied on their natural surroundings to survive. Brown, whose controversial story is undocumented, claims to have wandered years at a time in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, subsisting on foraging and hunting. Proenneke spent thirty years alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Brown credits his survival to a patient, peripheral awareness, through which he observes subtle, often useful events and casual connections. Oost links this mode of observation to his own practice of abstract image making.
Oost's imagery gradually accumulates through a cycle of intuitive leaps and calculated interruptions. His starting point may be as simple as a shred of fabric or an experience wandering outdoors. From here, he responds to clues already present in the work until it communicates something both unintended and regenerative. These dense and dark "inhabitable abstractions" result from a desire to transform the intimate into something with a capacity for discovery.
Erik Oost received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2008. His work has been exhibited at Kathleen Cullen Fine Art and Björn Ressle Gallery (New York), Art Detour (Seattle), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, Forum Gallery (Bloomfield Hills, MI) and Shantou University in Guangdong, China. This is his first solo exhibition.
