Formidable Flat makes a case for 2D

Formidable Flat

WHERE: First Amendment Gallery, 1101 Stinson Blvd. N.E.

WHEN: Until Tues., June 23

“Formidable Flat,” an exhibit created by printmakers Kristina Paabus and Drew Peterson, takes on a tricky subject: the illusion of space. While that may seem hard to represent visually, the two artists use their skills at layering complex patterns and color arrangements to explore the relationship between 2-D and 3-D to find out just how complex the idea of “flat” can be.

Paabus and Peterson met two years ago when working on a mural for the Nomad World Pub.

“We just met and went to town on the wall,” Peterson explains.

They agreed on the title and focus of the exhibit because their printmaking was so grounded in the second dimension.

“We were thinking about developing form and space in an ambiguous sense,” Peterson explains. “Taking a flatness that wasn’t big or wasn’t a bullying flatness wasn’t aggressive or mean, as in, that definition of formidable. It wasn’t negative, but awesome.”

Set in the twice-removed basement site of the First Amendment Gallery, the exhibit is like walking through a maroon, industrial door into a vaguely Dr. Seuss -inspired world of color.

The first thing a visitor will see is “Roaming Fact,” Paabus’ ambitious piece of installation art that wraps itself behind the door like an explosion of yellow clouds and green slices of light. It looks like the end of Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax,” where the magic fabric extracted from the truffula trees exposes the darker side of human nature.

Paabus’ favorite aspect of the piece is that it seems to crawl behind the door, as if it is going to continue in the bathroom, but instead it simply ends.

“No possibility exists there,” she explains.

Paabus’ 2-D pieces share similar imagery that pits natural images against the abstract, sitting closely enough on the vertex to let associations drift into both realms.

She explains that her interest in printmaking began in her childhood home, where she was surrounded by print-heavy Estonian art. A first-generation American, Paabus used art to get back to her roots, studying in Estonia before settling down at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

Growing up bilingual, Paabus also uses printmaking to explore the idea of syntax and combinatorial play in language. Her print pieces for “Formidable Flat” were all made with the same set of 50 hand-drawn stencils.

Like letters in the alphabet, she explains, “On their own they don’t mean anything, but when put together they create hierarchies. Language is a concrete thing we understand, but it’s constantly changing and growing.”

For Drew Peterson, layering stencils is also a way to explore the passage of time. Many of his prints share a motif of technological doo-dads, many of them combined to create super fan-bike-computer hybrids.

Peterson explains that he is interested in ’20s advertisements that feature isolated objects that represent “new inventions that were making people feel better when they were sitting in their own houses.”

Many of the pieces look similar, but what separates one from the other is the particular blend of bold colors, making them, as a set, fairly abstract.

Peterson agrees that his use of color resembles that of abstract artists, explaining that he consciously thinks about “initiating an emotional response using color.” Lined up against one wall of the gallery, a set of prints resembles a rainbow spectrum that starts in the cool-toned middle and carries on into warmer colors.

Paabus’ and Peterson’s styles are just similar enough to complement one another. While Peterson’s prints have fine, painstaking detail and Paabus’ remain abstract, they both represent a bold, super-saturated exit from the minimalism that dominates today’s current Apple -driven design aesthetic.