ERIC OGLANDER

To Ward

July 22nd - September 3rd 2022

Swivel Saugerties’ is pleased to present “To Ward”, the second exhibition in its vault space The Safe Room Project featuring sixteen new works by the self taught sculptor, thinker, and astute craftsperson Eric Oglander. The suite of works included are wielded in the artist’s characteristic modest scale, driving home a notion of intimacy and fastidiousness that delivers to the viewer in entirety a feeling of air in a world of clutter.

Oglander’s concoctions derive from his background, growing up in rural Tennessee, fishing, adventuring, tinkering, and delving into the microcosms of nature and a deep reverence to the capabilities of natural materials. This studious effort proves forth in the way that the artist utilizes these said materials subtle properties in an archaic nature, that looks to push forth an agenda that nothing is wasted, everything has beauty, and the world is precious.

Oglander’s practice is not one that is limited by possibilities, but on the contrary explores them. Each subtle arrangement, typically titled with a witty idiom or reference to the works gesture; such as in “Me In Bed”, “A Talent Show”, and “Soft Landing”, are not just a culminated object but lend a reference to our actual lives where these minute moments of comfort, movement, jubilation, and clarity are often overlooked.

Oglander wills the found object allowing it to take on new life and a new narrative, at times the sculptures rely on themselves hanging in the balance while others are manipulated with multiple materials that live in harmony. They are a noiseless jazz in parallel with the works of the late Robert Ryman who sought for his works to “exist in a dialogue with their surroundings”.

Eric Oglander (b. 1987) was raised in the rural outskirts of Nashville, TN by a family of artists. After leaving high school early to focus on art making, he worked as an apprentice in the sculpture studio at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, moving next to Mexico and later to California, where he continued to make objects and take photos. He runs the online curatorial project “Craigslist Mirrors”, a compilation of photos of mirrors from Craigslist and is also the founder of a found object goods store “Tihngs”. He lives and works in Ridgewood, NY.