Eva Sturm-Gross |  Beasts of Eden | E.N. Wennberg Gallery | Artist talk: Thurs. 2/12, 5:30-6:30 | Workshop: wood carving: Fri. 2/13 (register online)

Exhibition Statement | What does it mean to inherit a broken tradition? Eva Sturm-Gross’s premier solo exhibition Beasts of Eden, represents an invitation into a fragmented symbolic world. The mystics of the Middle Ages teach us that the reality of creation is a shattered one, like the shards of a broken vessel. Her work thus balances the central tension of Jewish diaspora, communicating both a longing for messianic redemption on the one hand and a rootedness in exile on the other. This rootedness is expressed principally by Sturm-Gross through the animals of the Upper Valley, her homeland. The creatures that populate Beasts of Eden are drawn from her encounters with the natural landscape surrounding her childhood home in Hartland, Vermont. Biblical narratives here are portrayed by the fauna of the Upper Valley. Figures with the head of a mourning dove are cast as the protagonists of Genesis. The memory of a fox informs her representation of a vignette from the Song of Songs. A sacrificial red heifer, finally, is imagined in the form of a Vermont dairy cow. These scenes exist at the intersection of an immediate corporeal reality and the timelessness of myth. Sturm-Gross’s balance of traditionalism and experimentation makes her a unique contemporary voice. Her use of the canon is exemplified by the ubiquity of her animal-headed figures, a common motif in medieval Jewish aesthetic culture. The layered meaning of her practice mirrors the principle of manifold interpretation, wherein multiple and contradictory meanings can coexist in a singular form. Like the stained-glass windows of a medieval cathedral, the experience of this exhibition aims to communicate a feeling of proximity to the sacred that transcends its theological scaffolding. The beauty of nature and the beauty of divinity coincide to imbue this place, this landscape, with the taste of paradise. The Upper Valley in Sturm-Gross’s mythos reveals itself as a kind of Eden.

Biography | Eva Sturm-Gross is a Brooklyn-based artist and woodworker. Drawing from theology, mysticism, and narrative traditions, her practice explores the intersection of traditional craft and visual exegesis. She holds a BA in Studio Art and Religious Studies from Oberlin College and has exhibited nationally at the Wharton Esherick Museum, Ohio Craft Museum, the Kent Museum, and Art Basel Miami Beach among others. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center and Penland School of Craft and currently teaches woodworking and carving in New York. Eva is the Art Director of Gashmius Magazine, an online publication putting out politically progressive Jewish content drawing from Hasidic and mystical sources. Her work engages themes of exile, redemption, and the sacred through embodied and narrative forms.

Artist Statement | Eva Sturm-Gross’s work operates as a form of visual exegesis. Using symbols and characters borrowed from philosophy, theology, and literature, she reconstitutes them into images and sculptures that tease out mythic narratives resonating both personally and collectively. Narrative plays a central role in her work, yet is fragmented from a linear sense of past, present, and future. Biblical archetypes have been central to this project. She is interested in creating a cross-section where history collapses in on itself, and the material and transcendent become singular. The conceptual and academic exploration within her practice is equally met by a ceaseless commitment to material process. Much of her work is carved in wood, whether as sculpture or matrix. Its potency rests in the physical manifestation of beauty, disclosed through her unfolding relationship with material and her deep commitment to the pursuit of revelation.