INQUIRY: AT THE INTERSECTION OF CURIOSITY
Lisa Marie Patzer and Steve Wanna

June 10 - August 21, 2022

OPENING EVENT: Friday, June 10 | 5 - 9 PM

The creation of artwork necessitates a certain element of curiosity. Artists wield the tools of their trade to serve their inherent curiosities, enabling them to examine aspects of the world and construct creative filters of varying perspectives. The potential for artists working within a playful practice can provoke our everyday inquisitive sensibilities. Inquiry through art forms result in stimulation, whether physical or mental, which can feel playful to both the creator and the viewer. Inquiry: At The Intersection of Curiosity presents two artists, Lisa Marie Patzer and Steve Wanna, who create work that initiates curiosity and encourages the element of play in art as not merely a leisure activity, but rather revealing it to be an avenue for discovery. 

Lisa Marie Patzer employs a variety of technological formats, revealing layers of information from a sensorial perspective. Her initial inspirations are in both analog and new media technologies, which she then unpacks through other mediums such as printmaking and collage. In uncovering the functionality of the technology, Patzer reveals how the nuances of those systems can be correlated to the capabilities of our senses. Patzer parses out these relationships to explore the ways in which information is filtered, as well as the boundaries of those filters. The resulting works reflect Patzer’s complex understanding, and curiosity, in the multisensory systems that are essential to both technology and humans alike. 

Informed by sound, light, and space, multimedia artist Steve Wanna creates artwork with defined frameworks that orchestrate and lead to unanticipated results. Wanna’s approach to his work is based on the theory of emergence, or “contained chaos”, which incorporates fixed elements, or rules, that then give agency to chance, or unforeseen outcomes. Wanna utilizes this approach through sculpture, mixed media, and multisensory installations, blurring the boundaries of material through layering and incorporation. This removal of delineation additionally extends to himself as the creator and the participating viewer. By creating a measure of control, Wanna then releases authority of the work to the viewer, enabling chance and chaos to create something new and visually engaging.

This exhibition is a moment in which two experimental artists converge their practices to create a dynamic analysis of sensory engagement. Both Patzer and Wanna facilitate sensory considerations of the world through largely three-dimensional encounters, usually incorporating sound, light, and visual effects.

DuPont II Gallery

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Photo Credit: Dan Jackson