Final Friday Reception  |  October 27  |  5-9pm

The figure has been a potent symbol and charged subject since antiquity, and continues to be an appropriate vehicle to ask some of life’s most challenging questions. Bartel believes creating images of or depictions about ourselves can be attributed to a primal need to ensure survival or to simply tell important stories about what it means to be human.  His work takes cues from a “shotgun blast” of influences ranging from antiquity to popular culture and is constructed to refer to both the body and also charged, stylized, surrogates for the body such as dolls, toys, and figurines. The questions that arise from this cultural mishmash fuel his creative practice.