Surfacing: Adriane Colburn and Nichola Kinch

Runs / November 19, 2022 – January 22, 2023

Reception / First Friday, December 2, 6-9 PM
Gallery Hours / Sat-Sun from 2-6 PM

This winter Grizzly Grizzly presents Surfacing, a two-person exhibition featuring new work by Adriane Colburn and Nichola Kinch. The paired installations call attention to the surface impact of human activities on our surroundings. From the seemingly smaller gestures of caressing and covering to the larger, and more invasive actions of drilling and extracting, their work makes visible complex human systems that can only be seen, as a whole, from space or by looking carefully at changing geological processes. Surfacing emphasizes the tensions between detrimental and beneficial human intervention, between functional systems and systems of abstraction, and between revealing and concealing the processes of labor. 

Through digging into archives, working alongside scientists, and gaining embodied knowledge in the field, Adriane Colburn has anchored her career in broader crucial issues that often lie outside of an artist’s studio practice. Her research has taken her to cross-pollinate with experts in disparate fields from sewage treatment plant managers, to genealogists, to marine biologists. Much of Colburn’s research is conducted in working landscapes, such as oil fields and industrial zones and on scientific expeditions from the Arctic to South America. For this exhibit, Colburn is installing new work resulting from her visit to the Permian Basin, the largest and most productive oil basin in the US. Her installation includes interconnected wooden sculptures, rocks and earth gathered from the site, video footage of emissions using an optical gas camera, and representative layers of looking from above.

Nichola Kinch’s recent series of objects are derived from a material investigation of mold-making and casting processes. Using rocks pulled from the landscape around her studio as a starting point, Kinch plays with ideas of mothering, protecting, and the metamorphosis of natural forms. Fascinated with how the transformation of human-made materials reflects geological morphology, Kinch ensconces the rocks she selects with layers of material that she builds up over time and then exposes through the cutting and carving away of sections. Her exploratory process draws attention to the artist’s labor by using various colors of silicone and plaster to repeatedly trace the shape of the rock, creating a fabricated strata that visualizes the time the artist took to cover and prepare the work. In this way, Kinch subverts the purpose of the replicative process of casting by making one-of-a-kind sedimentary sculptures. 

Artist Bios

Based in New Jersey and Vermont, Adriane Colburn is a visual artist who researches the complex relationship between human infrastructure, earth systems, technology, and the natural world. Research is at the core of her artistic practice which includes drawing, sculpture, video, and multimedia installations. Colburn’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Smack Mellon, and Parsons/New School in New York; The Luggage Store Gallery, Gallery 16, and The Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco; Ballroom Marfa, Artsterium in the Republic of Georgia, and at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Her artworks are in public and private collections including the San Francisco Arts Commission. She has been an artist in residence at MASS MOCA, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Kala Institute, SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Blue Mountain Center, and with the Cape Farewell Project. Additionally, she has participated in numerous scientific research expeditions in regions ranging from the Arctic to South America. Awards include the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Franklin Research Fellowship/ American Philosophical Institute, The Fleishhacker Foundation, and Artadia Award.  She is currently on the faculty at Bard College.

Philadelphia-based artist Nichola Kinch works with various media including sculpture, installation, painting, and video to create poetic and fantastical objects that explore manufacturing and the act of making. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, SPACES Gallery in Cleveland; Vox Populi, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and The Print Center in Philadelphia; The Median Art Center in Beijing, and The Center for Modern Art in Shanghai, China. In 2015 she was the recipient of the Fleisher Wind Challenge. Kinch holds a BFA in Ceramics from the Myers School of Art and MFA in sculpture from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. Kinch is currently the Chair of Foundations and Associate Professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in the Foundations and Visual Studies Programs.