Thad Kellstadt

Escape Routes To Joy: The structures I make are made primarily out of discarded wood. There is a lot of accumulation and editing in my process. I visit thrift stores, dumpsters, friends scrap wood piles and take apart broken furniture to fit into these structures. Collecting and reformation are vital parts of my work, and allow me create problems and solutions. Constructing the forms is a cross between playing with building blocks and fitting together a puzzle. The process is a negotiation between my aspirations and the nature of the forms. Each step of the construction informs the next, with color being the ultimate instrument and negotiator. The paintings act architecturally, figuratively or topographically, all at once or independently. They are houses, they are friends and they are road maps. In dark times, the works offer escape routes to joy.

Places/Spaces: Space 1026, Philadelphia, PA; Secret Project Robot, NYC; Heaven Gallery, Chicago, IL; High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, CA; DEMO Projects, Springfield, IL; Alice Gallery, Brussels, BE; Cell Project Space, London, UK; SPACE, Pittsburgh, PA; Contemporary Art Museum & Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC; The Ski Club, Milwaukee, WI. and screened work at the MCA, Chicago, IL ; PDX Film Festival, Portland, OR; CPHDOX, Copenhagen, DK and The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA.