STATEMENT
My work responds to human interactions with a uniquely modern material - plastic.
Using collected single-use plastic and found objects from the waste stream as art medium, I attempt to blur the lines between appetizing consumables, biological dissection and everyday "waste", to explore layers of meaning in an age where toxic materials of our own creation have saturated our environment and penetrated our species—both biologically and culturally—to the cellular level.
I react to modern consumer-saturated society, and process my own environmental/climate despair by drawing attention to the role plastic production and dependence plays in the global climate crisis. My sculpture and wall relief works depict abstracted glimpses of microscopic cell interactions, molecular-level contamination, a cross-section of interconnectedness, in an attempt to imagine how this human-made material interacts with living systems at the deepest level.
With organic forms and textures that allude to perishables, I explore the dichotomy of decay and timelessness with a material that will never decompose yet is completely integrated into the food web. I am recording a material fingerprint, a time capsule, that implicates contemporary social values and attitudes surrounding environmental conservation, consumption, waste and how these affect our own bodies.
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ARTIST BIO
Bryan Northup, he/him, is a queer, Chicago-based environmental artist and writer with a multidisciplinary background in 3D visual arts and poetry. He received his B.A. (Fine Art Photography) at California College of the Arts. Bryan has worked in various media including stained glass, photography and painting.
Since 2015 he has worked exclusively with found single-use plastics and foam to create wall reliefs, sculptural works and installations.
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In 2019 Bryan was one of 12 artists chosen for the South Bend Museum of Art's Biennial 30 and was awarded Juror's Choice for his installation 'You Can't Put It Back In the Box'. His solo exhibition 'Sea Inside' debuted months later at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, closing weeks before the pandemic began. He has since exhibited in several two-person exhibitions at Evanston Art Center, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and was among two dozen designers invited to make fashion out of plastic for Trashion Revolution 2024.
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Bryan’s artwork has been exhibited both nationally and abroad in galleries including Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA), South Korea, Gallery 524, Bortolami, TAG Gallery, Gallery MC, South Bend Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, Beloit College Wright Museum of Art.
Bryan has worked as gallery director, content creator, marketing manager, curator and exhibition preparator for art organizations as well as private collectors. In addition to his studio practice, Bryan is the Executive Director of the Oak Park Art League, historic gallery and studio, since 1921.
He was born in Los Angeles and currently works and resides in Oak Park, IL.
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