Russell Floersch - Two things together

About

Many of the works in Russell Floersch’s “Two things together” are made from discarded packaging that once presented and housed everyday retail objects, as well as used plastic cups and foam supermarket food trays. Other material components include un-stretched canvas and felt, remnants from the studio, or found pieces discarded by other artists. Some works are paired in an effort to create a kind of station, installed to investigate the interactions of two discrete works, seen as one. Some of the combinations are produced by the overcrowding of materials in the artist’s studio, and some are the result of comments made by colleagues during studio visits or by the positive reactions to Instagram postings that capture the studio view of a group of works in-progress. For the past 25 years Floersch has engaged in an ongoing investigation honoring loss in found photographs. These photos occasionally appear in this group of work, and have been instrumental in the artist’s thematic use of materials typically ignored or thrown away.

Russell Floersch received his BFA from Buffalo State College and his MFA in painting from the University of Buffalo, SUNY. He has been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1983 he travelled to West Germany on a Fullbright Fellowship. Floersch’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery at Presbyterian College, Kathryn Markel Gallery, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Galerie oqbo (Berlin) and Pavilhao Branco – Museu da Cidade (Lisbon). Solo exhibitions include “Field Painting” and “New Work” at Stux Gallery; “Hella” and “from Denim” at Rooster Gallery; and “Unseen”, Floersch’s first one-person exhibition with 57W57Arts back in 2015.