June 22 to July 29, 2024

Link to images from the exhibition

Eric Eley, Rachel Lowther, Christian Maychack, Melissa Pokorny, Jon Rajkovich

Platform Gallery's exhibition Unnatural Presence includes the sculptural work of artists who incorporate visions and interpretations of the natural world in unnatural ways, while confronting the unnatural world in natural ways. Some of these sculptures explicitly reference the nature of animals, while others the nature of materials; all navigate the terrain of the nature of space and its occupation.

Individually, these artists create work of significant presence through the brash insertion of created objects into a given space. Taken together the collection of these pieces seeks to shift our habits of looking at sculpture to an unstable field in order to question received ideas of materiality, space, narrative, and ultimately the nature of the unnatural; in other words the very essence of contemporary sculpture itself.

Eric Eley holds an MFA from the University of Washington and his work has been exhibited in Seattle, Spokane, and Pennsylvania. He will have a solo show at Gallery4Culture in 2007. 

Rachel Lowther was born in England and lives in Brooklyn, She has shown nationally and internationally including Berlin, Melbourne, London and New York She is represented by Schroeder Romero in New York.

Christian Maychack lives in San Francisco and his work is to be included in the upcoming California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. He will also have a solo show at Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York in September and is represented by Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco.

Melissa Pokorny's sculptures are in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Orange County Museum. She is currently represented by Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery in Chicago and Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Davis.

Jon Rajkovich is represented by Lisa Boyle Gallery in Chicago and his sculptures have been included in shows in New York, Florida, South Carolina and Ontario. He lives in Atlanta.