Liminal Cognition

MINNEAPOLIS–May 18 through June 13, 2013, Gamut Gallery will show emerging artists, Jacob Charles Eidem and Ben Wuest. After four years of intense collaboration and wild spontaneity with their six-person collective ‘MISC’, two artists switch focus to the vast, subtle space at the edge of perception. Eidem’s cosmic acrylics allow room for the viewer to discover personal meaning in figurative painted or collaged focal points. Wuest’s handmade-paper origami art installations are evidence of a meticulous “paper performance,” choreographed to the same spiritual-scientific principles as his large geometric bamboo installations.

These two personal, inner journeys are joined together by collaborative residue and thematic echos evolved over years working together in Multiple Intelligence Single Cognition, or ‘MISC.’ Also known as ‘Cognition Kids,’ the collective was brought together at live painting gigs for electronic music events. The experience of instantaneous art, influenced by music, audience and the environment at large, led the individual artists to join together on collaborative live paintings, murals and live body painting. As Eidem and Wuest turn to work that requires painstaking hours of singular focus, they both also venture into a space of “vagueness” at the border of thought. Here, their broader concepts are brought down for closer inspection, what remains of the themes are perceivable to only the most minimal degree.

 Ben Wuest is an installation artist and painter known as ‘Condensed Cloud’. He performs live visual and acrobatic art, and is a trained yoga and meditation instructor. He began formal education in 2007 at UW Stout, where he focused on painting, created a student organization: Zen Living, and became fascinated by chaos theory. In 2009 he attended Ryokoku University in Kyoto, Japan, studying Zen Sumi-E ink painting and the Shingon school. While in Japan he expanded his knowledge of Zen spiritualism and began to experiment with viewing scientific principles through the lens of spirituality. He graduated last year with a degree in Paper, Print and Book Arts from MCAD and plans to write and illustrate children’s yoga books. The themes that currently drive his art are a unification of science and spirituality. He has applied Heisenburgs uncertainty principle to his studies on chaos theory and brings Zen techniques to an exploration of the golden mean and hyperbolic paraboloids, finding infinite forms in finite structures.

 Jacob Charles Eidem is a painter and administrator for MISC. He spent a year at MCAD and studied at MCTC, before turning his energies to his own work and the work of the MISC artist collective. He fell into the role of administrator, finding new opportunities, managing operations as the main contact person and often overseeing collaborations. He began to share the artistic lead increasingly with Ben Wuest and recently partnered with him on a studio for gallery and mural work. Eidem often uses found imagery in collage elements of his paintings. He also experiments with using paint, glaze and mixed media in three-dimensional amendments to canvas. Eidem is currently working with themes of life, death and spirit. While he has his own interpretations of his work, he enjoys the unique interpretations each new viewer brings to his pieces and considers these incarnations of meaning as valid as his own.