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Living Arts of Tulsa is excited to announce our exhibitions for May 2024 presented by Tyler Griese & Justin Ortiz.Ruminations & Otto will be on view in the gallery from May 3 - 18, 2024. The gallery is open from Tuesday - Saturday from 12:00 - 4:00 PM. Please note that Living Arts of Tulsa does not charge admission to view exhibitions.
About Tyler Griese
Tyler Griese received a Master of Fine Arts from The Herberger Institute at Arizona State
University in 2018 and a Bachelor of Fine Art from Northern Kentucky University in 2015. His work is shown nationally. He has exhibited in solo, juried, and group shows including exhibitions at The Irving Arts Center, Manifest Gallery, Ahha Tulsa, St. Louis Artist Guild, 21c Museum of Cincinnati, the Zhou B Arts Center, and Robert F. DeCaprio Gallery in Chicago. His work has also been shown internationally at the Mas Arte Gallery in Quito, Ecuador. He is a recipient of grants and awards including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, a Cincinnati Summerfair Aid to Individual Artist Grant and Best of Show at the Tulsa Artist Coalition Exhibition in 2020. Tyler’s work was selected to be included in Manifest Creative and Research Gallery’s International Painting Annual in 2021. In 2022 he was awarded Miami University Young Painters William and Dorothy Yeck Award. Currently Tyler is an Assistant Professor of Art at Tulsa Community College in Tulsa, Oklahoma where he teaches painting and drawing.
Ruminations Exhibition statement:
This work showcases the fleeting pause right on the brink of a monumental
moment. I explore tensions between internal and external factors. Color and light play against each other to tell a story of interpersonal relationships, relationships with the environment, and ultimately the collective of human experience. These paintings have elements of voyeurism and confrontation as the viewer ruminates through moments of their own lives. I hope the viewer finds connection through shared emotions and experiences.
About Justin Ortiz:
Justin Damien Ortiz is a 24-year-old designer/multimedia artist working with photography,
printmaking, and sculpture in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His work is largely centered around the human figure through the lens of self-analysis, trauma, and sexuality. He documents the human body and surroundings through photographs and translates them into narrative vignettes to open up a space between perception and reality. These works question how materials, like earth and plastic, become embodied through their proximity to the human form, and subsequently how the body can become material. Explored through place, organic matter, decay, and abstraction, his work questions feelings of self-betrayal and submission to one’s own body after trauma in a way that is both playful with color and sincere in approach. His solo show, Otto, is a semi-autobiographical, photographic telling of one’s journey through the increasingly surreal landscapes of mid-America in pursuit of a new beginning.
Otto Exhibition statement:
Decay is a process that outlines the passage of time by revealing different stages of organic
matter, bit by bit. It is a grotesque process that is often looked away from and hidden deep in the ground. In his photography series, Otto, Justin Damien Ortiz documents the breakdown of the human mind through a long, glaring journey through the landscapes of mid-America.
Ortiz takes close proximity, outdoor photographs of dead animals, bones, and their passerby with bright lighting and high clarity. His figures are often concealed through framing and positioning, forcing the viewer to focus on the circumstances they’re in. By contrasting the corporeal human figure, decaying animal corpses, and quieter landscape shots, Ortiz opens up a space to investigate how the body can become a site of experimentation in one’s journey from home in search of a new beginning. The parks and forests shown serve as a backdrop for play and self-exploration to become something darker and more twisted as nature and life take their course. These large scale photographs confront how one’s self-rediscovery after a traumatic experience is a process like decay – breaking down and redepositing in perpetuity.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
307 E. Reconciliation Way, Tulsa, OK, United States, Oklahoma 74120