Jered Sprecher
“I hunt and gather images of flowers, thick forests, sun-dappled foliage, and birds; seeking images that evoke wonder and depict natural beauty, complexity, and immensity. These images are the origin of my paintings, acting as an evolving matrix. Digital lenses, scanners, glowing screens, glossy plastics, degraded photographs, and gridded weaving patterns provide a reservoir of visual artifacts that I use to transform images of nature. In the paintings these images are filtered and re-formatted, echoing our daily experience mediated through technology. The underlying irregular grid creates a push and pull, as flowers and leaves emerge yet are pulled back into the flickering tangle, creating a discordant reality, a place of wonder and dread.”
Images by Mike Jensen
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jered Sprecher is an artist who makes paintings, drawings, and installations that abstract the landscape to explore the precarious relationship between nature and technology. His work wrestles with the beauty and complexity of the environment and how we as humans interact with the world around us both directly and mediated through technology. He received his BA from Concordia University and his MFA from The University of Iowa. Sprecher has exhibited at The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Des Moines Art Center, Hunter Museum, Asheville Art Museum, and Espai d’art Contemporani de Castelló. He has had solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Stephen Zevitas Gallery, Boston; Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles; and the Knoxville Museum of Art. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bailey Opportunity Grant, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. Sprecher has been awarded residencies at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, the Chinati Foundation, The American Academy in Rome, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He is a Professor in the School of Art at the University of Tennessee. He lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee.