Opening reception: July 19th, 4-7 PM
Open Hours: July 20th, 1-4 PM
July 21st, 1-4 PM
5821 NY-9G
Hudson, NY 12534
Collar Works x Baba Yaga present Absolute Viscosity, an exhibition exploring how the artifacts we accumulate mold our identity. In the featured drawings and sculptures, artists Alicia Barton and Christian Henry Wechgelaer create reliquaries of their nostalgia, exploring and probing the plasticity of selfhood.
Influenced by Baudrillard’s ideas of the hyperreal, Wechgelaer’s graphite and colored pencil drawings are steeped in personal symbology, drawing on a reverent sentimentality for images and memories of the artist’s past. Barton’s Mini Monsters appear as a candy-coated vision: irregularly formed creatures adorned with the remnants of a MySpace-era adolescence.
Through these works, the artists develop their own semiotic systems, begging the question: how much does who we are shape the things we collect, and how much do the things we collect shape who we are?
THE ARTISTS
Alicia Barton is a multidisciplinary visual artist from Albany, NY. Her amorphous sculptures contrast the alluring and attractive with the repulsive and grotesque and are self referential. She received her M.F.A. in Studio Art in Sculpture from the University at Albany in 2022. She completed her B.F.A. in Studio Art with dual concentrations in Sculpture and Painting & Drawing from The College of Saint Rose in 2020, which she began at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In 2022, Alicia co-founded The Box Party artist collective with 5 of her peers, which is committed to creating and bringing accessible art to the community. In 2023, Alicia graduated her apprenticeship and now works as a tattoo artist in Troy, NY.
Christian Wechgelaer (b. 1998, in Saratoga Springs, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Upstate, NY. Christian received his BFA in Studio Art, concentrating in Printmaking and Photography, from the College of Saint Rose, in Albany, NY. Spurred by longing, Christian engages in a generative studio practice with drawing at the core, but blending into printmaking, collage, book arts and installation. In 2023, he was included in several group exhibitions including Assemblages at Albany Center Gallery, Mirrored Enchantments at a Flush Gallery pop-up at Ed Varie Gallery in the Lower East Side, and had a public art installation in ArtStream at ArtPort Kingston. In his free time, you may find Christian at his local public library, playing the piano, or re-reading the Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Currently Chirstian is an MFA candidate at the University at Albany, pending graduation in 2025.