February Gallery Night with Weston Czerkies

“Hard Copy” : Past and current collage and design work

Opening Reception: Friday February 6th 5-8pm

“Weston Czerkies is a collage artist and visual designer working in the medium of xerox art. Informed by hardcore punk and industrial noise visual aesthetics, Czerkies collects and uses source material from 1950s -1970s photography, advertisements, informational diagrams, letterpress block imagery and public domain illustration. These visual components are photocopied and re-worked using simple cut and paste methods as well as xerox scanner manipulation. While text is often generated and aligned in a digital document format, it is then printed, scanner-distorted and physically manipulated on the scanner bed to match its image companions. All visual material is otherwise entirely hand-altered through continued re-copying.

The pieces presented here date from the earlier days of Czerkies’ avant-garde/punk cassette label Prime Ruin (circa 2013 onward) to his more recent flyer designs and work with his current label Gracious Host. The imagery for these works is largely chosen and contorted to complement the music and artistic intent of the musicians it is supporting. Visions of the surreal and dream-like are binding themes in many of these collages as the sound work they are made for is often composed as a form of escapism or mental processing.

Aside from making art to support his own musical endeavors, Czerkies also works on commission designing flyers for live events, album artwork and merchandise for artists such as Fed Ash, STCLVR, Mountain of Woe, Hunted Down, Kjostad, and more. Currently he is assisting with faceplate designs for local pedal company Whisker House Electronics as well as designing covers for several new albums with his main sound project, Magnetic Coroner. He can be reached at primeruined@gmail.com”

This show will be available for viewing throughout February during office hours. Please call first for our winter office hours.

This program is made possible in part with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant program from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the office of the Governor and NYS Legislature, administered by the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.