Larson Gallery: Trace

Immerse yourself in landscape with Minnesota artist Kelsie Ward’s Trace, a solo exhibition at the Larson Gallery in the St Paul Student Center. Ward’s installation practice invites audiences to consider what, if anything, differentiates “natural” forms from those made by our own hands. As a sculptor, Ward creates large-scale, immersive environments resembling abstract rock and glacier formations. Her process-intensive studio practice converges the memory of natural places and artificial materials to create constructed environments that promote a conceptual dialogue between the natural and the artificial. Ward chooses materials based on the synthetic “nature” of their color, texture, acoustics or odor. Her structures are created by carefully piecing together triangular fragments of synthetic materials, thereby establishing the means to solve a puzzle with endless possible outcomes. Her resulting installations simultaneously engage and reference natural forms and the ever-increasing artificiality of nature in everyday life. By displacing and presenting artificially constructed organic forms indoors, Ward encourages viewers to grapple with what nature is and its importance on an individual level.