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Curated by Jessica Porter.

Press Release:

Equity Gallery is pleased to present Light/Weight, a solo exhibition by Steve Pauley. The exhibition will be on view from January 26th through February 24th, 2018 with a public opening reception on Friday, January 26th, 6-8pm.

With 11 years of experience making tombstones, Steve Pauley employs innovative and inventive applications of stone-carving and engraving to create a body of work which combines elements of sculpture, photography, and printmaking. Pauley pushes the boundaries of stonework utilizing the natural reflectivity of polished stone to project his engravings as light and shadow onto photosensitive paper, capturing the image almost photographically. Defying the expectation that art made with stone is permanent, static, and unyielding Pauley creates a more dynamic, fluid territory by intertwining the solidness of stone with the ephemeral nature of light and shadow. The carved image becomes untethered, freed from its dense, rigid trappings while the pictograms it produces are ever changing in scale, color, and depth of field.

Using the visual language of engraving intrinsically tied to honor and venerate, Pauley employs this association and unexpectedly combines it with visual lexicons of the mundane, the fleeting, and even the defiled, such as vandalism and graffiti. Pauley depicts vulgarities and doodles etched onto a public restroom stall or the spray painted swoops found in back alleys with the same type of finely, lovingly detailed carvings found on a memorial. Through explorations like these, Pauley finds the fine line between the temporal and the eternal, as well as the uncomfortable similarities found in the primal desire for instant gratification and the need to idealize and commemorate the unattainable past.

For more about Steve Pauley, click here.