Presentation: Grounded by Anne-Katrin Spiess

Strata Gallery presents its first Established Member solo exhibition, Grounded, by New York-based artist Anne-Katrin Spiess. The exhibition opens March 11th. Spiess will give a special presentation on Saturday, March 15th, from 3-4 pm, offering deeper insight into her artistic practice and environmental engagement.

This exhibition draws inspiration from the landscapes of Southern Utah, a region that Anne-Katrin Spiess discovered early in her artistic career and returns to repeatedly to produce work inspired by nature. These landscapes are characterized by vast horizons, a shifting perception of time, and the seemingly endless possibilities of the desert palette. The material focus of this exhibition and much of Spiess’s work is soil and the ground itself.

Over time, Spiess’s broader artistic endeavor has expanded to address pressing environmental issues through direct action, inevitably though all her work begins with the body in the landscape. Her projects are ephemeral, captured through photography and video, and presented with descriptive text. The examples in this exhibition illustrate the artist’s dedication to site-specificity, engaging with her immediate surroundings before any audience, and a desire to safeguard these precious landscapes while inspiring others to do the same.

Spiess’s desire to retreat into nature is made possible by her Airstream trailer, outfitted as a traveling studio, which has become one of the artist’s greatest teachers in learning to live sustainably. Her training in geomancy, shamanism, and wilderness survival have also greatly informed her artistic vision and methodologies.

Strata Gallery is open from 11 am to 5 pm Tuesday – Saturday. For more information about Strata Gallery, the current exhibit, and the future schedule of events, please visit the Strata Gallery website and Instagram.