INTERSTATE PROJECTS is pleased to present a two person exhibition of Kevin Lips’ sculptures and Mason Saltarrelli’s works on paper. Both artist’s source their work from the found, either in materials, shapes, or forms. Through this process they both create narrative triggers that remain undetermined by the artist and the naturalistic abstract forms of both artist’s works.

Kevin Lips’ sculptures are amorphous shapes that interact with each other and build off themselves. Trained classically as a potter and ceramicist, he takes everyday materials and hardware store basics and combines them to form surfaces and textures that bind and condense into outer shells and surfaces. This ever evolving series of simple but universal forms are now focusing on textiles. By combining strips of various colors, textures and densities of basic materials, Lips sculptures become off the wall three dimensional paintings. These new works are not about painting though, or any emulation of but more about the idea of form, color, space and materiality.

Mason Saltarrelli’s work is an open-ended narrative that he creates by using a mixture of images that are found and imagined. Over time he has developed a cast of characters, some recognizable, some not, who invite the viewer to map for themselves new relationships and interactions. Identifiable borrowings, such as the Hopi figure of Kachina or specific Catholic saints with their attributes, are removed from their original context not to negate or deny their stories, but to add to them. Saltarrelli is inspired by the manners and functions of the fable or folk-tale and by jazz, whose improvisational template he applies in his own process. The intention is to invite anyone looking at the images to open a stream of consciousness that runs in parallel to his own.

Kevin Lips (b. 1978) New York, currently working in Brooklyn, New York. He studied art at the University of Iowa and received a BFA with honors in Ceramics. His work has been exhibited internationally in France at La Centre Ceramique Contemporain, L’Abbay de Artous, Atelier Bambagioni, and Place St. Sulpice for the Journee de la Ceramique, in Germany at Galerie Metzger and in the U.S. at PPOW gallery in New York.

Mason Saltarrelli (b. 1979) New Orleans, Louisiana, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a visual artist working in a variety of media, including painting, works on paper, and reliefs made with paint. His work has been exhibited at Riviera Gallery, the Brucennial, Old Stone House, DUB Art, The Invisible Dog, the juried Small Works Show at NYU’s 80 Washington Square East Gallery, IIeana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, Coup d’oeil Art Consortium.