art space 616 trace elements catalog

William Earl Kofmehl III and Stephanie ArmbrusterTrace Elements

Friends, The pairing of our two featured artists, Stephanie Armbruster and William Earl Kofmehl III, both Carnegie Mellon alums, is a fascinating juxtaposition of media, method and content.

William Earl Kofmehl IIII consider myself fortunate to have taught Bill Kofmehl during my time teaching in the School of Art at CMU, when he was an under-graduate student. Even before he left for graduate school at Yale, Bill had quite a reputation with his performance pieces and ‘interventions.’ For example, I can’t forget the day I arrived at the CMU College of Fine Arts to discover Bill duct taped to the ceiling above the entrance to the Fine Arts office, stretched out face down and impassive, where he re-mained for the entire day without explanation.

Fast-forward a decade and his work has been featured in art fairs, museums and exhibitions from Hong Kong to Germany, as well as extensively in New York.

Kofmehl’s practice remains as diverse as ever, but is now more rooted in the physical world. It expresses his obsession with process, which is manifested in this exhibition. It shows through such examples as his casting of aluminum sculptures in the Nicaraguan jungle, or com-missioned embroideries from seamstresses in Costa Rica. The work is not only infused with the results of his process. It is about that process-as well as the dignity of manual labor, humor, and the beauty of coincidence.

Although Bill’s work remains raw and edgy, this show demonstrates a new more (literally) polished delivery, and a sense that he has found a medium. His cast sculptures-that can speak to all of these obsessions and which takes center stage for the first time.

Kofmehl’s content ranges from suits of armor, to polo sticks, to horses heads and pig skulls. His range amazes with its breadth, craft and bravado, but behind it all there is always a puzzle of meaning that he challenges the viewer to grasp. Stephanie ArmbrusterStephanie Armbruster’s stunning drawings and paintings on panel are a perfect foil to Kofmehl’s

three-dimensional work. Their finely wrought surfaces are painted through a process of addition and subtraction. The surfaces are worked and reworked to produce paintings that are often delicate skeins and veils of color, tough metallic-like surfaces that resemble a forged and beaten alloy, or many variations in between.

Typically, Armbruster uses the century’s old encaustic method in her paintings, in which hot wax holds, permeates and seals the layers of pigment. The process sometimes includes metal filings, yielding a translucent surface that both absorbs, as well as reflects light. This process produces infinitely subtle shifts of emphasis and nuances of depth and color, which seduce the viewer with their muted hues and glowing surfaces, provoking a sense of wonder and discovery.

Pushing through these layers reveals signs, language even, of the artist’s personal narrative. Sparked by memory, dreams or events, they play with us like a map of the unconscious that lingers suspended in the surface for us to find.

With her deceptively simple, open compositions, Armbruster keeps formal structural distractions at bay, preferring that her subject is about the process of conjuring her narrative from the substance of shifting light, color and texture. Her timeless materials are brushed, scraped, or chased across the surface by hot wax to hold the eye in thrall.

The Origin of Trace ElementsTogether Armbruster and Kofmehl are at the rough hewn edge of contemporary art, while both use centuries old materials and techniques with work fashioned from paint, metals, flux and flame. Working with these elemental materials art-ists have used for centuries, they emphasize their process like futuristic alchemists, creating new forms and surfaces that challenge us to question their meaning, or whether the meaning is indeed in the process itself. As they shock us with the new beauty of their art, they leave clues-traces-which help us decode the heart of their practice. Enjoy the exhibition! Tim Tim Hadfield Exhibition Director

William Earl Kofmehl III and Stephanie ArmbrusterTrace ElementsWilliam Earl Kofmehl III The work is composed of reclaimed cast bronze and aluminum alloys harvested from both Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and rural Nicaragua’s historical past. Former bronze and aluminum residential and commercial plumbing fittings, car parts, industrially machined scrap and the occasional marine propeller shaft once navigating the Three Rivers, have all been melted down to create the sculptures found within this exhibition. The casting process I utilize is commonly referred to as “investment casting” or Lost-wax casting, a technique estimated to have been used over 5700 years ago with some of the oldest examples found in the Middle East. As a multidisciplinary artist consumed by sculpture, performance, drawing and film, my aim is to generate reciprocity between the viewer and the work. I look at the intersections between factual information, historical events and fictitious stories while commenting on Social Roles and Divisions of Labor. Stephanie Armbruster I approach my work as a series of edits to an ongoing monologue in which the boundaries between memory, fiction and dreams are permeable. Some paintings suggest tone, while others create structure, depict maps and plans, or introduce characters. Each artwork represents an individual element of a larger construct, made more or less apparent through varying degrees of abstraction. The edits tell more of the story than the initial draft can alone.The titles of these works are personally significant and lend context to the otherwise abstract compositions. Some recount specific events and locations, while others reference songs or elements of dreams. Handwritten texts and stenciled characters recur frequently in these paintings, referencing signs and behaving as footnotes. Often oblique or partially obscured, I layer elements of text as a way to explore the representation of language, hinting at structure and playing with the texture and resonance of words.Presented together as a collection, these paintings recall pivotal moments of transition through the abstraction of symbols and layered references to time and place.

William Earl Kofmehl III

The artist at work.

Beached Wood

2015

6.5" x 6" x 17.75"

Cast bronze, steel

$2,500

The First Trump

2015

8" x 8" x 29"

Cast aluminum, steel

$3,500

Taming Piglet

2006

19.5" x 1.5" x 16.25"

Steel, hand-embroidery with rayon thread

$2,200

A Sweep and Two Pigs

2006

20.75" x 1.5" x 16.5"

Steel, hand-embroidery with rayon thread

$2,200

Shoe Compendium

2012

8" x 10" each

Hand-embroidery with rayon thread

Multiples of 4: $2,400

Poor Whitey

2015

13" x 11" x 11"


$2,500

Poor Browny

2015

13" x 11" x 11"


$2,500

Dear Blacky

2015

13" x 11" x 11"


$2,500

Column

2015

19" x 14" x 41"


$12,000

Pillar

2015

14" x 14" x 37"


$9,500

Stacking

2015

14" x 14" x 29.5"


$7,000

Quetzal

2006

36" x 25"


$3,800

New York Compendium Series

2010

8" x 10" each


Multiples of 4: $2,400

Top

Pick Up Sticks

2015

64" x 3" x 60"

Cast aluminum

$3,500

Bottom

Nested Teros

2015

23.5" x 24.5" x 49.5"

Cast Bronze and Aluminum

$7,000

Cover of Darkness

2015

13" x 11" x 12.75"

Cast bronze, steel

$3,500

SOLD

Night-Side of Nature

2015

81.5" x 8" x 22"

Cast bronze, steel

$8,000

The Horse I Never Rode

2015

19" x 13" x 25.5"


$9,500

Fallen Warrior

2007

54" x 57" x 39"

Cast bronze, steel

$23,500

Photograph above: Mainline Photography, Ramon Cordero

Descent (diptych - left and right panels)

2014

16" x 12" (each panel)

Encaustic and metal patina on panel

$1,600

SOLD

Stephanie Armbruster

Denver Dark (diptych - left and right panels)

2014



$1,800

When She Looked Again, The Hospital Was Gone

2014

60" x 48"

Mixed-medium on paper

$2,200

SOLD

The Chandeliers Remembered

2014

68" x 48"


$2,200

SOLD

He Played the Piano the Night the Ceiling Fell

2014

68" x 48"


$2,200

Signs and Premonitions

2013

54" x 48"

Encaustic on panel

$5,700

Verdigris

2014

40" x 30"


$2,600

Beyond the Pale

2013

54" x 48"

Encaustic on panel

$5,700

Cowboy Breakfast

2015

36" x 36"

Encaustic and mixed-medium on panel

$2,700

Invader

2015

36" x 36"


$2,700

Last Night in Montreal

2015

36" x 36"


$2,700

Theater of the Birds

2015

36" x 36"


$2,700

Element

2014

12" x 12"


$800

Above and Below

2014

48" x 24"


$3,200

Rising Tide I, II (diptych - top and bottom panels)

2013


Encaustic on panel

$2,200

Mission District (diptych - left and right panels)

2014



$1,800

Strings of Life

2015

36" x 36"


$2,700

Recursive Narrative

2015

36" x 36"


$2,700

Chaos in Blue

2014

24" x 18"

Encaustic on panel

$1,800

This publication accompanies Trace Elements, William Earl Kofmehl III and Stephanie Armbruster exhibition at Art Space 616 on view from June 20 through July 18, 2015.

Catalog Design: Spencer NormanDirector of Publications: Jessie Britton

© 2015 by Art Space 616, 616 Beaver Street, Sewickley PA 15143.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without permission. All images are © the artists, reproduced with the kind permission of the artists and/or their representatives.

Photo credits: Courtesy of artists, Chris Urhen, center page installation shot, Mainline Photography, Ramon Cordero. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders and to ensure that all the information presented is correct. Some of the facts in this volume may be subject to debate or dispute. If proper copyright acknowledgment has not been made, or for clarifications and corrections, please contact the publishers and we will correct the information in future reprintings, if any.

Art Space 616616 Beaver StreetSewickley, PA 15143412 259 8214

[email protected]

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