(MADISON, NJ) -- Drew University's Korn Gallery presents the exhibition, Nightcrawlers, by artist Andrew Brehm, from January 18th through February 23rd, 2023. The exhibition, curated by Nicholas des Cognets, consists of a series of new and existing sculptures spanning 10 years of production.
Nightcrawlers comprises several new works alongside objects created over the last decade. Many of the sculptures on display are interactive. To reveal each object’s function or method of fabrication, visitors to the exhibition must move from passive viewers to active participants. The sculptures act like tools of ambiguous function, familiar and meant to interact with the body, but also mysterious and unknown. The work feels both ordinary and mystical, like furniture in a cartoon wizard's dungeon. It looks like a chair but is it enchanted with some strange property?
Many of Brehm’s materials are salvaged and recycled, a way to address issues of reuse and recycling, and a generative refusal to allow trash to remain trash. One of Brehm's major sculptural materials is pulped residential waste paper, often mixed with hair and sculpted like clay. Other works incorporate a discarded rug, foam collected on the bank of the Hudson River, and metal parts salvaged from a local dump. The show shares its name with the first sculpture you encounter when entering the gallery. This piece of solid aluminum was cut with a waterjet into the shape of a worm considering its own tail. This curious Ouroboros hints at the loftier concepts of the exhibition and Brehm’s belief in the unity of all things both physical and spiritual, never disappearing but perpetually changing form.
There will be an artist reception for Andrew Brehm’s exhibition at Drew’s Dorothy Young Center for the Arts on Thursday January 25 from 4:00pm-6:00pm. Admission is free and open to the public.
Andrew Brehm is a sculptor whose work incorporates video, design objects, and performance, often using craft techniques to make objects that belong more to the world of domestic furniture than that of the art world. His exhibitions are eerily humorous and sometimes surreal while addressing themes such as family and childhood, manufacturing, and the mechanisms of body and magic.
Andrew Brehm received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Sculpture and Extended Media in 2011. He currently teaches a process and materials focused class called Ways Of Making at Columbia University. He has also taught at Rutgers University, Kutztown University, The Stone Carving Studio and Sculpture Center, and Socrates Sculpture Park, among other institutions. Andrew has exhibited at CPM Gallery (both in NY and Baltimore), Socrates Sculpture Park (LIC, NY), Practice Gallery (Philadelphia), the Belfry Arts Center (Hornell, NY), Legion Arts (Grand Rapids, IA), 1708 Gallery (Richmond, VA) and among others. He was awarded a Decentralization Grant by the Arts Council of the Finger Lakes (funded by the NYSCA)and was a Bemis Fellow (Omaha, NE.)
The Korn Gallery is located in the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts at Drew University and is open Tuesday through Friday 12:00pm-4:00pm, and by appointment. Drew University is located at 36 Madison Avenue in Madison, New Jersey.
