David Packer

Trainspotting
Reception: Thursday May 31st, 6-8p.m.
May 31 - June 30

Lyons Wier Ortt Contemporary is pleased to present Trainspotting, a one-person show of ceramic sculpture, and works on paper by New York-based artist David Packer. This will be Packer’s first one-person show with the gallery.

For more than ten years, Packer has been creating intricately realized ceramic versions of industrial machinery (helicopters, dump trucks, graders, NYC garbage trucks, trains, etc.). Along side the sculptures are works on paper that serve as both virtual and actual templates for the artist while producing the three-dimensional objects. The final sculptures are usually partially abstracted, monochromatic ghosts of the original object.

Several years ago on a trip to Marfa Texas, Packer was impressed by the enormous freight trains that seem to be omnipresent in that landscape. At any time, day or night, one would be aware of these extremely long trains whose contents are completely unknown to outsiders. Packer could not help but draw linear conclusions to American corporate culture, with its ethos of secrecy and greed. The presence of these trains in such a pristine landscape also created a connection between corporate activity and the abuse of the environment.

Trainspotting will consist of a series of locomotives and freight cars that represent the artist’s take on all of this commercial and corporate activity, as well as a series of mixed media drawings that correlate to the three dimensional work. Also on display will be a life size ceramic V-8 engine, another take of the activities of the corporations, this time from the perspective of the car culture.

Packer has shown extensively nationally, including Exit Art, New York and Navta Schulz Gallery, Chicago, as well as in London and Rome; he has also completed residencies at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Yaddo, and currently the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Art and Design in New York, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Since moving to the United Sates in 1983 from the United Kingdom, Packer has lived in Maryland, Washington DC, Miami, Tallahassee and, from 1994, New York City.