Ephraim, Utah
Central Utah Art Center
Jared Steffensen’s solo exhibition, “Mom’s always afraid I am going to hurt myself…I usually do,” was at once blithe and sophisticated, sparking an unexpected (and even overlapping) dialogue between skateboarding and formalism. Using a once underground, now mainstream culture as his starting point, Steffensen consolidated tropes common to both skateboarding and art-making—riffing on existing environmental elements and recognizing the potential of objects. Referencing Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism, action art, geometric abstraction, and early video art, Steffensen marries two seemingly disparate realms. The physical endeavor of skateboarding and the evidence it leaves behind are two of his specific springboards. His works seem to fall into one of two inverse forms: abstracted constructions made for skating and abstractions of marks made by the action of skating. The first re-scales recognizable forms such as ramps and rails and recontextualizes them as sculptures; the second draws on the environment and architecture as form, implying movement and action (as in ABD, which placed brightly colored marks along ledges and handrails in the building). …see the entire review in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
