Eric Beltz

Eric Beltz: New Skies

Exhibition Dates: July 5 – 28, 2018
Opening Reception: First Thursday, July 5, 2018, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
New Summer Gallery Hours: Tuesday- Saturday: 11:00 am - 5:30 pm

Koplin Del Rio is pleased to announce its third solo exhibition of drawings by Santa Barbara-based artist Eric Beltz and the artist's debut exhibition in Seattle.

Eric Beltz (b.1975)
New Skies is a collection of recent graphite on Bristol drawings by Santa Barbara-based Eric Beltz that further develops his obsession with the moon as it waxes and wanes across the ever-changing sky. 

Rendered with a rich pattern of triangles, diamonds, hexagons, and circles these drawings offer a visually dynamic field that captures the wonder of gazing into the unknowable vastness of space. Beltz explores cosmic weightlessness, mind-bending reflections, and pattern as a way to conjure up the magnetic forces between planets, moons, and stars. For the first time in this ongoing series, the artist renders the starry night sky both as dawn breaks and the forests horizon line enters into the picture plane. Even the intensity of the summer sun can’t hide a daylight moon from Beltz’s keen eye and tightly focused pencil.

In Beltz’s pattern-based work, there is an equal wealth of embedded knowledge and symbolism. These drawings are meticulously constructed of tonal grids referencing Colonial American cross-stitch samples and quilting. Under close observation, the black and white drawings vibrate and create phantom colors that play with optical perception. “I have not used color in my work for 10 years but have stumbled across a method to make my grayscale palette bleed chromatic hallucinations,” says Beltz.

Bio

Beltz received his MFA from UC Santa Barbara where he currently teaches drawing in the Department of Art. His work has been featured in Art in America, Juxtapoz, Flaunt Magazine, and others. His work has been shown in galleries and museums across the United States and is held in the permanent collections of the Minneapolis Museum of Art (MN), Nerman Museum (KS), the Progressive Collection (OH), and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (CA). Eric Beltz has been exhibiting with KDR since 2012.

For further information or photos, please contact Kimberly Clark at info@koplindelrio.com.