Eggshell walls and concrete floors are all that adorn the Korn Gallery when it is caught in between exhibitions. Gabriela Salazar, its most recent resident, decided to not just bring pieces to Drew primed for an audience to fill the space. Instead, she brought along her entire studio.
“Most of the time, exhibitions always evolve as I install—in conversation with a space and the elements in the show as they become set,” Salazar said. “It’s a rare opportunity to be able to develop the work itself within the space it will be shown, as I was able to do at Drew…the process felt much more reciprocal.”
Invited to campus by Professor Jason Karolak, Salazar’s previous experiments with initiating artist-space conversation flourished underneath the Drew heat lamp. For an artist known for pushing material boundaries and producing installations that stagger with both their physical magnitude and political implication, a generative exhibition space is essential.
For the months-long development of her current exhibition—entitled “Whether Break or Shape”—the Korn Gallery proudly demonstrated its unique multilingualism of inspirational source.
“In ‘Whether Break or Shape’—although it is indoors—there are nods and overtures to the windows that dominate the space, their framing of the outdoors and the exterior grounds, the trees and wall, that I looked out onto while in residence,” said Salazar. “The works in the “Leaves” series are in part a bringing inside of the outdoors or outside, or about that exchange between plants, agriculture, ‘natural’ things and the domestic, human needs, food, beauty. The way that temporality connects what’s living, within harder or ‘invisible’ human infrastructures that move and evolve on their own timeframes.”
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a kaleidoscopic sphere that swims amidst the audience in constant motion. It is comprised of recycled paper that was transformed from pulp by Salazar herself. Salazar and art student Isabella Franco (‘24) created Crayola rubbings on the surface using everything from leaves to plastic rulers, Salazar’s daughter’s toys and Salazar’s architect parents’ tools.
The parts hang apart from one another in permanent stasis. If viewed from the windows, they coalesce in a sphere that warmly overwhelms. Its subtle, colorful landscape beckons the audience with the same breathless familiarity as the sun.
Salazar’s more traditionally sculptural pieces, ceramic handrails that line a majority of the exhibition space known as “Supports,” are equally delicate. Below, some fragments lie after having broken in transit, remaining as an artistic tribute—and evidence of, as Salazar affirms, what she believes to be an essential part of art.
“My art explores a sense of fragility in the built environment. I like that tension—that you might have an assumption, an idea…then question what you’ve taken for granted,” Salazar explained at Tuesday night’s Artist Talk, a public discussion on the exhibition hosted by Karolak. “I like having to let go; it’s good for me to practice that. In reality, there’s a lot less we can control.”
“Whether Break or Shape” expands on a central idea Salazar often finds herself returning to: humanity’s relationship with the environment, whether that be constructed or naturalistic. For a space as rife with environmental diversity as Drew, and as contrasting as the Korn Gallery often proves to be, the exhibition is supremely personal to the campus.
The intentionality of Salazar’s work, and the inherent fluidity that comes from using biodegradable materials, make for a show centered on perspective. As Drew continues to develop as a campus, and its students as wholly organic people, a drastic shattering of a presumed life course is inevitable. Salazar’s work seeks to not necessarily comfort but to reassure and familiarize an audience with the ways reality evolves without permission or regard to expectation.
“Let it be complicated,” Salazar said. “Complication takes time.”
“Whether Break or Shape” is on display at the Korn Gallery until April 19. The Korn Gallery itself is open from Wednesday to Saturday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Contact korngallery@drew.edu with any questions. See Salazar’s website for more information on her work.
Annabelle Smith is a sophomore double-majoring in studio art and media and communications.
Featured image courtesy of the Drew art department Instagram.
