November 14th, 2017

Gallery MAR is proud to announce we have fresh new sculpture by Bryon Draper, which will premier at Bridgette Meinhold’s “Forging Ahead” exhibition. For those who have not yet seen a body of work by Draper, now is your perfect opportunity. Draper is a professor of art at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

Draper combines found limestone from the mountains surrounding his home in Utah Valley with cast bronze in its natural patina coloring. This natural coloration occurs during the bronze pour. The rough bronze still shows traces of the mold material, which helps to unify the stone and bronze and a single piece. They are more perfectly married together as one figure, neither overshadowing or outshining the other. Each work feels like a relic, a sculpture from another time.

Draper references iconic poses from antiquity — but in a contemporary way. We have a perception of these traditional figures, yet we are confronted with a modern-day presentation of the figure attached to stone. The figure is fragmented, and some parts are missing, like parts of ideas that are not fully understood.

Just like these sculptures, our own reality is often fragmented out of ideas from our past coming together with our present day.

Draper asks, “Do we ever see the whole picture?”