Olivia Petrides

Erosion, the continual reconfiguration of the Earth’s surface materials, mirrors the subtle erosion and transformation of words’ meanings over time. Both natural processes have accelerated into urgent crises as human activity remains unchecked. Olivia Petrides addresses these dual conditions — environmental neglect and the manipulation of media discourse — and the ways they intertwine.

Her large-scale abstractions begin by chance: ink spilled across wet paper, fragments of newspapers pressed into the surface, texts and images half-absorbed, half-erased. From this process emerges an aesthetic of rupture and accumulation, recalling the layered posters on city walls — torn, superimposed, eroded. The resulting compositions are atmospheric and volatile, simultaneously evoking the raw power of natural forces and the dissonance of public discourse. They recall the sublime of Caspar David Friedrich's landscapes, reconstructed for our abstract and unromantic contemporary moment.

Donald Trump’s tweet, “Be There, Will Be Wild!” preceding the January 6th Capitol riot, takes center stage in Petrides’s largest triptych, where gestural strokes roar. This expressive representation of a political turning point appears with no order, yet maintains a loosely directed composition, alluding to greater systemic ripple effects; Trump’s methods are chaotic but nevertheless purposeful, catalyzing hatred that grows like Yeaworth’s the blob. Petrides constructs an overwhelming immersion reflecting her ongoing engagement with the churn of news cycles and her effort to make sense of the twisted language of contemporary media’s “post-truth” manic episode.

In her Floodings series, dynamic markings and invasive acid yellows evoke oil spill landscapes. They send alarming signals of toxic fluids infiltrating our waters. Oil and water don’t mix; their polarity becomes a metaphor for the divisive effects of today’s media landscape.

Navigating contemporary media requires constant piecing together of the truth. In The Persistence of Chaos, Petrides attempts to contain this pulsing disorder with geometric “nets” of logic stretched over a field of fluid havoc. As this blob continues to grow and overwhelm reason, the nets are tested as an effective container.

Despite distractions from ecological collapse and media misinformation, Petrides meets these crises head-on. Her work resists easy resolution, instead embodying the complexity, unease, and urgency of living in a world reshaped by human forces.

— Alicja Seledec, Curator

Petrides did a fabulous job with “Erosion.” She gave the audience only two choices: scruff through the gallery and escape as quickly as you can, or stare straight into the abyss. You will be disturbed — nauseous, even. It’s a heavy show to walkthrough: more the heavier to review, to feel the inability of coming up with any softer descriptions other than articulating these pieces for what they are — unpleasantries. So intentionally crude. So purposefully cruel. And so brilliantly timely, poignant and necessary.

Read Xiao Faria Dacunha’s full review.

In this two-person exhibit, Petrides’ work addresses the extreme language of U.S. partisan politics, in which competing “truths” have become the galvanizing issue of our time. Her current works are investigations into contemporary discourse — a war of words and world views — an uneasy representation of the contemporary American landscape.

Petrides’ exhibit is partially funded by a 2021 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and a 2023 Illinois Arts Council Special Projects Grant.

Explosive energy dominates the work of Sarah Krepp and Olivia Petrides. Krepp locates a powerful gesture in found materials, in blown-out shredded tires which are gathered from highway debris. Blow-outs force the wires, embedded in the rubber, into writhing gesticulations of accumulated stress. Petrides utilizes simple tools and the basic element of drawing – the line – to enact roiling abstractions of overwhelming natural and social forces into baroque masses. Both artists see the aggressive mark as emblematic carrier of immense forces within urban and natural environments. Petrides and Krepp achieve a linear complexity, referencing turbulent atmospheres and tangled social workings, thus posing questions about the relationship between human actions and nature’s limitations.

Petrides’ work in these exhibits is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

Petrides’ Space Laser Burn series is based on U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s antisemitic allegations about the origins of the catastrophic 2020–21 California wildfires. According to Greene, PG&E, the California electric company, in conjunction with the Rothschilds and George Soros, plotted to clear land for their high-speed rail project by firing laser lightning bolts from solar generators in outer space. She further speculated that “...oddly, there are all these people who said they saw lasers or colored beams of light causing the fires...”

This exhibit is partially supported by a 2021 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and a 2020 Illinois Arts Council Special Projects Grant.

Petrides’ drawings are immersive, large-scale abstractions based on her direct observation of the aurora borealis, or northern lights. She uses simple tools – ink, gouache and paper – and the basic element of drawing – the line – to reenact the forcefulness and sublime effect of the ever-shifting aurora. With a background in scientific illustration, Petrides is interested in the dynamic relationship between the micro and the macro, and how the generation of a linear field can create an epic and lyrical space.

This project is partially funded by a Community Arts Assistance grant from the City Of Chicago Department Of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, and by an artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation.

On Big Drawings seeks to expand classic notions of drawing into a nuanced discussion of how contemporary drawing can operate on a large scale in planar, constructed, and projected space. Each featured artist has made an outstanding contribution to an expanded notion of drawing, creating work that engenders a dialogue about drawing across media boundaries, while engaging with large-scale works created for specific spaces. Catalog available.

This work was funded by an Illinois Arts Council Special Projects Grant and supported by an artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation.