News
Double/ Force: Olivia Petrides & Sarah Krepp
- Epiphany Center for the Arts
- March 10 – April 22, 2023
- Catacombs Gallery
- 201 S. Ashland
- Chicago, Illinois
In this two-person exhibit, Petrides’ work addresses the extreme language of U.S. partisan politics, in which competing “truths” have become the galvanizing issue of our time. Her current works are investigations into contemporary discourse — a war of words and world views — an uneasy representation of the contemporary American landscape.
Petrides’ exhibit is partially funded by a 2021 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and a 2023 Illinois Arts Council Special Projects Grant.
Olivia Petrides and Sarah Krepp: Line/ Force/ Burn Rubber
- Western Illinois University
- February 23 – March 26, 2021
- Macomb, Illinois
- Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
- April 2 – May 29, 2021
- Kansas City, Missouri
Explosive energy dominates the work of Sarah Krepp and Olivia Petrides. Krepp locates a powerful gesture in found materials, in blown-out shredded tires which are gathered from highway debris. Blow-outs force the wires, embedded in the rubber, into writhing gesticulations of accumulated stress. Petrides utilizes simple tools and the basic element of drawing – the line – to enact roiling abstractions of overwhelming natural and social forces into baroque masses. Both artists see the aggressive mark as emblematic carrier of immense forces within urban and natural environments. Petrides and Krepp achieve a linear complexity, referencing turbulent atmospheres and tangled social workings, thus posing questions about the relationship between human actions and nature’s limitations.
Petrides’ work in these exhibits is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
Olivia Petrides: Space Laser Burn
- Governors State University
- October 8 – November 30, 2021
- Visual Arts Gallery
- 1 University Parkway
- University Park, Illinois
Petrides’ Space Laser Burn series is based on U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s antisemitic allegations about the origins of the catastrophic 2020–21 California wildfires. According to Greene, PG&E, the California electric company, in conjunction with the Rothschilds and George Soros, plotted to clear land for their high-speed rail project by firing laser lightning bolts from solar generators in outer space. She further speculated that “...oddly, there are all these people who said they saw lasers or colored beams of light causing the fires...”
This exhibit is partially supported by a 2021 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and a 2020 Illinois Arts Council Special Projects Grant.
Olivia Petrides: Flux
- OS Projects
- February 7 – April 11, 2020
- 601 6th Street
- Racine, Wisconsin
Olivia Petrides creates baroque abstractions on paper based on her many travels to the North Atlantic subarctic. Petrides is especially interested in how evocations of the sublime resonate today when so many of nature’s mechanisms are being disrupted. She translates the flux of natural phenomena into a language of discrete marks and fluid gestures. Through sustained physical engagement with her materials, Petrides searches for new ways to profile and embody ambivalent feelings about the world and our place within it.
Olivia Petrides and Sarah Krepp, Line/ Force/ Burn Rubber
- Brauer Museum of Art
- January 8 – March 31, 2019
- 1709 Chapel Drive
- Valparaiso, Indiana
- Phipps Center for the Arts
- October 26 – December 2, 2018
- 109 Locust Street
- Hudson, Wisconsin
Olivia Petrides: The Astral Plane
- Gallery for Contemporary Art
- August 20 – September 14, 2018
- Indiana University Northwest
- 3400 Broadway
- Gary, Indiana
These large-scale works on paper, inspired by trips to fragile Arctic environments, embody fragmentation and dissolution, containing gestural elements that are in suspension or on the cusp of both breakup and cohesion. There is no unifying perspective or steadying horizon line upon which to focus, reflecting our uncertain engagement with the natural world.
Polar Nights, a solo exhibition of large-scale drawings
- Curated by Suellen Rocca
- Kieft Accelerator ArtSpace at Elmhurst College
- March 8 – April 16, 2016
- 190 Prospect Avenue, Elmhurst, Illinois
Petrides’ drawings are immersive, large-scale abstractions based on her direct observation of the aurora borealis, or northern lights. She uses simple tools – ink, gouache and paper – and the basic element of drawing – the line – to reenact the forcefulness and sublime effect of the ever-shifting aurora. With a background in scientific illustration, Petrides is interested in the dynamic relationship between the micro and the macro, and how the generation of a linear field can create an epic and lyrical space.
This project is partially funded by a Community Arts Assistance grant from the City Of Chicago Department Of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, and by an artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation.
On Big Drawings
- Curated by Friedhard Kiekebe
- Columbia College A + D Gallery, 619 South Wabash, Chicago
- October 2 – November 1, 2014
- 619 South Wabash, Chicago, Illinois
On Big Drawings seeks to expand classic notions of drawing into a nuanced discussion of how contemporary drawing can operate on a large scale in planar, constructed, and projected space. Each featured artist has made an outstanding contribution to an expanded notion of drawing, creating work that engenders a dialogue about drawing across media boundaries, while engaging with large-scale works created for specific spaces. Catalog available.
This work was funded by an Illinois Arts Council Special Projects Grant and supported by an artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation.
Courses Offered
- Landscape Narratives
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Offered Fall and Spring Semesters
A multi-level painting and drawing course that provides an opportunity to explore individual perceptions of the natural world in light of current landscape painting issues. All media on paper.
- Natural History Illustration
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Offered Fall and Spring Semesters
A multi-level studio course which travels to the Field Museum of Natural History, the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Garfield Park Conservatory to observe, understand and paint structure in the light of growth, behavior and physical action. Pencil and watercolor.