Leslie Mutchler and Jason Urban
Post-HEX, January 2016
In the second of a two-part exhibition series, Grizzly Grizzly presents “Post-HEX”, a project by Austin-based artists Jason Urban and Leslie Mutchler. In “Post-HEX”, a follow-up to December’s “HEX Outpost,” the artists will repurpose the materials from their retail outpost into an archive. The new piece will be less a living entity than a marker of what once was. It will serve as an academic epilogue for a functional commercial exploration of hex symbology, signage and letterforms of Pennsylvania Dutch culture and history.
Utilizing the Pennsylvania Dutch Gift Haus as a jumping off point, the original stand featured hand-published zines, magazines, books, broadsides and posters along with decorative objects and tools, all exploring the graphic intensities of hex symbology, fraktur and Pennsylvania Dutch aesthetics filtered through a modern lens. As a defacto roadside stand, the work was for sale at roadside prices.
An homage to the ephemeral outpost, “Post-HEX” will contain digital prints, relief prints, and sculptural objects that speak to the origins of the original installation as well as its remains. Stacks of archived materials will serve as plinths to new, overly-processed and intellectualized fragments of research based on Pennsylvania Dutch culture, fraktur, magic and ritual.
Artist Bios
Jason Urban lives and works in Austin, TX. Urban earned his BFA from Kutztown University in Kutztown, PA and then his MA and MFA from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA. His prints, drawings, and installations have been featured in numerous venues both nationally and internationally. Urban is co-founder of printeresting. In 2011, Printeresting was awarded a Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Leslie Mutchler received her BFA from Kent State University and MFA from the Tyler School of Art. Mutchler’s recent projects, TrendFACTORY and WorkLAB Satellites, are experiential and examine the functionality of the printed form through multi-participatory installati
