GearBox Gallery Exhibition – Open Source: Harry Clewans & Maria Porges

GearBox Gallery presents artwork by Harry Clewans and Maria Porges. The term ‘open source’ refers to something that users can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible. Although this description originated in the context of software development, it also suggests the practices of artists Harry Clewans and Maria Porges. Each draws on a personal set of images and objects found in the world or in history to make something new and different.

Clewans makes woodcuts based on his own drawings of a wide variety of idiosyncratic found objects. He then excerpts fragments from prints taken from the blocks, using these to create larger, more complex images: landscapes, interiors, imaginary worlds. The mosaic-like surface of each image is only visible on close examination.

Porges borrows elements from throughout ceramic history, combining them into vessel-based sculpture that alludes to its multiple origins and uses while denying the possibility of any functionality. She describes these pieces, often grouped together in families, as “neither old nor new; practical nor magical, but vessels for the imagination.”