Jan 10th 2025

Aaron Spangler: Ramble Tamble

@ ENGAGE Projects

864 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL 60622

Opening Friday, January 10th, from 5:30PM - 7:30PM

On view through Saturday, February 15th

ENGAGE Projects is excited to announce Aaron Spangler’s debut exhibition in Chicago, Ramble Tamble. Dreamy and foreboding all at once, the gallery will be filled with his hand-carved reliefs that pull from roots in rural life and culture in northern Minnesota. The shiny black surfaces intertwine scenes of the quotidian with the chimeric: cabins tucked away in the deep woods, a face protruding from a tree trunk, a man working in his garage, an abandoned car. Spangler’s landscapes are intimate and anti-pastoral; no sky in sight underneath the dense tree canopy gives the landscapes a hushed quality. A crucifix cuts its impression in the earth like a shadow underneath a cluster of three trees, a stark allusion to Protestant Christianity which shapes much of the rural Midwest United States. Relying on traditional hand tools and natural light to define his surfaces, Spangler uses iconographic relief to tell the untold stories of rural life.

Aaron Spangler, 
In the Canyons of Your Kiss, 2024
carved basswood, black gesso and graphite
73 x 56¼ x 5½ in.

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