Evan Feldman
Director
efeldman@gpgallery.com
Opening reception with the artist: Friday, March 15, 5-7pm
Gerald Peters Contemporary is pleased to announce Earth and Sky, an exhibition of wood carvings by Randall Wilson. Featuring over a dozen new works, the exhibition will mark Wilson’s third presentation with the gallery and his largest to date.
Upon returning to New Mexico ten years ago, sculptor Randall Wilson refocused his practice. Imbued with a new sense of affection and reverence for his heritage and Southwestern roots, Wilson’s wood carvings are anchored in the folk-art tradition of the region. Honoring these origins, Wilson derives sculpting method and style from an historical model of carving wood, and introduces embossing, once associated with traditional leather and tinwork of the southwest into a distinctly personal and contemporary iconography.
Beyond the compositional elements of abstracted form and surface patterning, Wilson seeks to engage time. Electing to use green wood, sourced from local cottonwoods, Wilson often leaves his chosen material outside for weeks and months at a time, creating surfaces that reflect nature’s temporal processes. The resulting carvings are permeated with place and time, carved in a material that is culturally significant in the regional history of the southwest.
The primal nature of New Mexico’s material palette, its rock, soil and trees, gives rise to a kind of romance of materiality. As I experiment with form and content, the simple yet complex quest, to reflect on prior experience and to be receptive to new adventures, is here and now in the state of New Mexico.
After completing his BFA in painting at Colorado State University and moving to Los Angeles, Randall spent over thirty years teaching at renowned design schools SCI-Arc, ArtCenter, and Otis. He earned an MFA in sculpture from the latter. He has received numerous awards for both teaching and design. His work has been celebrated in national and international media, including “Around the World” on CNN. A decade ago, Randall moved to Corrales to accept a faculty position at the University of New Mexico, teaching sculpture in UNM’s innovative College of Fine Arts. He challenges his students to consider material, technique, technology, content and context as they develop as artists in dialogue with their own traditions and transformations.
Randall Wilson
Untitled Carving VI 2024
cottonwood finished with natural dye
17 1/2 x 21 x 4 inches
Randall Wilson
Untitled Carving VII 2023
cottonwood finished with shellac
18 1/4 x 18 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches
Randall Wilson
Untitled Carving XIV 2023
cottonwood finished with paint
17 1/2 x 35 1/2 x 6 inches
Randall Wilson
Untitled Carving IX 2023
cottonwood finished with natural dye
19 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 3 1/2
Randall Wilson
Untitled Carving XI 2024
cottonwood finished with natural dye
18 x 17 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches
Randall Wilson
Untitled Carving XV 2023
cottonwood finished with shellac
22 x 37 1/2 x 7 inches
Randall Wilson
Untitled Carving XII 2024
cottonwood finished with natural dye
22 1/2 x 18 x 4 inches
