Eric Ashcraft and Brian Hubble

Poseur, September 2012

This September, Grizzly Grizzly proudly presents ‘Poseur,’ a two-person exhibition featuring Eric Ashcraft and Brian Hubble.  Using different means, both artists explore ideas of malleability in expression: employing verbal cues, false veneers, and shifting materiality.  A faux butter sculpture, an ode to an electric chair… there is an uneasy alchemy in this collection of work.

Eric Ashcraft’s disarming work is informed by ideas of impermanence and transformation; it reflects his personal history within the paradoxical landscape of Ashcraft’s native Montana. He describes a process in which there is “a slippage of intent when you honestly attempt to convey a feeling in the most poetic and metaphorical sense, and then the work laughs back at you.”

Brooklyn-based, Brian Hubble is also interested in conceptual slippage, playfully negotiating concepts of authenticity and artifice.  Referencing (and self-referencing) pre-existing materials, contemporary art practice and theatrical discourse, Hubble’s outwardly straightforward work leads (and misleads) the viewer through a complex maze of authorship and intent.

This exhibition does not invite you to look beneath the surface; it asks you to examine what is reflected there.  As Brian Hubble states: “Poseur is a description no one wants, but I think on some level everyone embodies.”  The show– which features drawing, painting and sculpture ­– will include a collaborative work, created in reaction to the Grizzly Grizzly curated exhibition.