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Eli Ridgway Gallery

June 19 - July 15, 2010

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172 Minna Street San Francisco, CA 94105
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Bless This Mess Monument to Masses 22"x30" (left image) and Wall Puncture 1 22"x30" (right image)
Bookstore Project Space Opening Reception: Saturday, June 19, 4-7pm "In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable." -Ernst Fischer Baer Ridgway presents Bless This Mess, an exhibition by artist/ curator David Kasprzak. The exhibition of drawings, photo-assemblages, sculpture, and collected ephemera illustrates the destruction and decay of materials and ideologies. Bless This Mess examines the role and importance of destruction in art and contemporary society as more of a mode of transformation than a memento mori. Drawing inspiration from the destructive art of Gustav Metzger, Jean Tinguely, and other artists of the 50's and 60's, Kasprzak's work shares the philosophy that destruction is a necessary part of existence in a contemporary society. In Metzger's words, "Auto-destructive art is primarily a form of public art for industrial societies. Self-destructive painting, sculpture and construction is a total unity of idea, site, form, colour, method and timing of the disintegrative process". Rather than taking a fatalistic stance on the future, Bless This Mess proposes that we view the decay and entropy around us as a cleansing, a simultaneous creative and destructive force. It asks us to find a Nietzschesque "joyful destruction" or a cathartic outlet in which to generate a hopeful future from the rubble. David Kasprzak was raised in Eastern Tennessee. He received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio, and later went on to study ancient art history and Italian cinema in Florence, Italy. Kasprzak is currently working on his MA at the California College of Art in Curatorial Practice.