March 2018 - Jason Sobottka

Jason Sobottka: Adventures Through the Anthropocene

February 8 – March 15
Reception and Artist Talk: Thursday, March 15 from noon - 1 p.m.

Jason Sobottka’s current work, Adventures Through the Anthropocene depicts multiple organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship. Symbiotic mutualism rather than parasitism. Flora and fauna work so closely in tandem that they nourish or protect each other.

The Nobel Prize winning meteorologist, Paul Crutzen, first mentioned the Anthropocene in 2000. This proposed geological period marks the conclusion of the Holocene epoch and begins when humankind dramatically shapes the natural systems of the planet.

Sobottka’s work asks how could nature evolve in that environment? What if the flora and fauna flourished? What could that look like?

This illustrative and ornamental work focuses detailed figural renderings, often shifting in between different dimensions. Often the drawings gradate from detailed naturalism towards abstraction. While there is great whimsy there is also dark humor.

Sobottka draws from the pictorial history within the medieval Christian Bestiary: Beasts from nature were depicted in grandiose style to showcase early zoological knowledge, often in conjunction with biblical allegory. The beasts in this body of work are created from a similar passion and while their forms may not be as naïve, the element of fantasy remains.