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"I make paintings, drawings, and installations that abstract the landscape, investigating the precarious relationship between nature and technology. These works wrestle with the beauty and complexity of the environment and how we as humans engage with the world, both directly and indirectly mediated through digital tools."

JERED SPRECHER - Artists - FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY

Biography

J E R E D  S P R E C H E R   | | |   biography

[lives & works – Knoxville, TN]

 

JERED SPRECHER is an artist who makes paintings, drawings, and installations that abstract the landscape to explore the precarious relationship between nature and technology. His work wrestles with the beauty and complexity of the environment and how we as humans interact with the world around us both directly and mediated through technology. He received his BA from Concordia University and his MFA from The University of Iowa. Sprecher has exhibited at The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Des Moines Art Center, Hunter Museum, Asheville Art Museum, and Espai d'art Contemporani de Castelló. He has had solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Stephen Zevitas Gallery, Boston; Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles; Whitespace, Atlanta; and the Knoxville Museum of Art. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bailey Opportunity Grant, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. Sprecher has been awarded residencies at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, the Chinati Foundation, The American Academy in Rome, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He is a Professor at the School of Art at the University of Tennessee. He lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Artist Statement

I make paintings, drawings, and installations that abstract the landscape, investigating the precarious relationship between nature and technology. These works wrestle with the beauty and complexity of the environment and how we as humans engage with the world, both directly and indirectly mediated through digital tools. I hunt and gather images of flowers, thick forests, sun-dappled foliage, seeking images that evoke wonder, depicting natural beauty and the immensity of the world. As I paint, I interpret these images through visual filters that emerge out of our technology. In the paintings, I weave together multiple images creating a technologically abstract tapestry of natural forms, evoking both beauty and trepidation. The underlying grid in the paintings pushes and pulls at the imagery, as flowers and forms emerge and are pulled back into the flickering tangle. Here the painting’s highly touched surface evokes glowing digital screens while remembering sunlight’s gentle caress.