Submergence

Bone Black Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Submergence by Skylar Gerken. The artist couples her masterful rendering skills with expressionist mark-making to create a world where merpeople and mollusks inhabit the murky depths of very human like emotion.  Gerken creates a narrative full of whimsical moments that collectively reveal something much deeper, reaching towards the chthonic. The characters, surrounded by oozing washes and thickly layered lines of charcoal, at turns cower, recreate, desire and fight.  The accumulation of marks which delineates their world is often made on nontraditional substrates, with her larger scale works on bedsheets or tablecloths. This body of black and white drawings and lithographs is in part inspired by the young artist’s post collegiate relocation from small town Ohio to New York City, where she works as an apprentice at Haven Press.

Submergence will be on display from October 1st until October 29th. A reception will be held for the artist on Saturday, October 1st from 7-9 pm.