Friday September 12th -  October 4th, 2014  

Cross Mackenzie Gallery is pleased to present a show of graphite wall drawings and pen and ink works on paper by Massachusetts based artist, Lyn Horton, together with elegant black and white porcelain work by Minnesota-resident, Maren Kloppmann. Horton and Kloppmann have each shown previously at our gallery, but this is the first time their work has been paired.  Both artists work chiefly in black and white, and the juxtaposition of the seemingly chaotic and energetic lines of Lyn Horton’s drawings with Kloppmann’s quiet, grounded forms creates a harmonious dialogue of form.

Horton’s work brings to visual life the layered, rhythmic, sensuous ease of music. Her works are composed of obsessive, painstaking, repetitious mark making. Each twist and turn, each loop, intertwining, overlapping, and at times just barely touching, evokes the controlled chaos of jazz and the elemental call and response pattern. Horton asks you to see the jazz music she loves.  A well regarded music critic in her own right, Horton is published in The New York Jazz Messenger and Jazz Times. A Cal Arts MFA, her experience executing wall drawings for Sol Lewitt informs her practice.

With Lyn Horton’s lyrical lines as a two-dimensional back-drop, Maren Kloppmann’s ceramics command a still strength and quiet elegance. She sculpts perfectly smooth white forms and uses contrasting black glaze to create shapes to echo the dark openings of her vessels. Her vocabulary is subtle, soft and sensuous, flawless and balanced ­– there are no sharp edges, no jagged lines in her compositions.  The work is soothing, the artist literally makes small pillow forms, underlining her gentle, comforting intent.

The German-born Maren Kloppmann says of her work, “Two premises inform my work; archetypes that exist as patterns and shapes in nature, and architecture, which identifies our spaces of existence and interaction. My aim is to balance a visual dialog between both aspects by combining traditional ceramic techniques with concepts found in Modernism and Minimalism”.

Horton begins with the pure white page, activating the blank field of space with dynamic lines and movement. Kloppmann tames the messy, unruly clay medium, by coaxing it into stable, contained shapes.  Their opposites attract and the viewer is rewarded.