Agate 5, 2025

Junk Mail, Used Paper

61h x 42w inches

Agate 6, 2025

Junk Mail, Used Paper

59h x 42w inches

Flow 1, 2025

Junk Mail, Used Paper

72h x 56w inches

Flow 2, 2025

Acrylic on Canvas

62h x 40w inches

My work is an inquiry into materiality: what makes up the objects that surround us as well as the composition of the natural world. I am interested in how parts combine to create a whole and the intricacies of shape and texture found in the world on every scale. In treating everyday objects as raw material to sculpt, I practice a form of conceptual alchemy: through physically manipulating these objects their meanings become transmuted. Each piece is a direct response to material—a subversion of the meanings associated with it, and a reference to the life cycle of objects through time.

For each of my previous six shows with Galleri Urbane I have presented variety: work from several different series and made from a variety of materials. Elemental Form focuses on the depth I have found within a single series: Aggregate. Made of used paper glued together in layers, the Aggregate pieces evoke striated rocks and geologic formations created over millions of years - a time scale in direct contrast to our momentary relationship with junk mail. I have been working in this medium since 2020 but in the past year these works have gained a sense of movement: some feel folded and crushed, while others seem frozen in the act of liquid movement. The title Elemental Force captures the underlying energy of these works and the forces of layering, compression, and erosion which I emulate in my own material transformations.

Jessica Drenk’s work can be found in private collections throughout the world and galleries across the United States. Her work is a part of several corporate collections, such as that of Fidelity Investments, Frost Bank, and The Macallan distillery inScotland, as well as university collections, including that of the Yale University Art Gallery. Drenk has been the recipient of several awards, including International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, and her work has been pictured in Sculpture and Interior Design magazines, as well as The Workshop Guide to Ceramics. Drenk received an MFA in 3D Art from the University of Arizona in 2007 and a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in 2002. She lives and works in the countryside outside of Rochester, New York.

Slap, 2023

Glazed Ceramic

7.09h x 7.28w x 7.48d inches

Elephant Man, 2023

Glazed Ceramic

6.50h x 4.53w x 8.07d inches

Transformer, 2022

Glazed Ceramic

4.72h x 5.51w x 4.33d inches

Tony on Marlon, 2023

Glazed Ceramic

5.12h x 3.15w x 9.06d inches

Yogi, 2022

Glazed Ceramic

5.12h x 3.54w x 4.72d inches

Ingo, 2023

Glazed Ceramic

5.51h x 3.15w x 2.56d inches

Pose, 2016

Glazed Ceramic

7.87h x 5.91w x 7.87d inches

Streit, 2025

Oil on Canvas

35.5h x 39.25w inches

Lichtung, 2025

Oil on Canvas

19.75h x 15.75w inches

Explorer, 2025

Oil on Canvas

19.75h x 15.75w inches

With their bright colors and featureless faces, Marlon Wobst's pictures until this point cultivated a charged tension between boisterous activity, and a slightly eery absence of intention. In other words, no object or expectation. Just play. Play is here also a metonym for the act of painting itself. Whereas child’s play is undertaken solely in pursuit of the natural right of pleasure, these paintings undertake the adult variation on this theme; pursuing free play via the unplanned — or barely planned — image, they also take part in a constantly unfolding reminder of play’s human necessity. As the child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott put it: “It is creative apperception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living.”

Marlon Wobst (B. 1980 in Wiesbaden) graduated as a painter and master student at Universität der Künste Berlin in 2011 with Professor Robert Lucander. In his body of work, which includes oil paintings, felt tapestries, ceramics, and works on paper; he mainly addresses the human existence. He researches typical everyday moments in life, such as getting dressed, exercising, eating, resting or mating; his large scale paintings, the colorful felt works and rather small, intimate ceramics are all glimpses in his, but also human, experiences, rituals and habits. His works are shown internationally in galleries, museums and institutions such as Kunstverein Siegen (Siegen), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Kunsthalle Hangelar (Sankt Augustin), Galerie Maria Lund (Paris), Galerie Zeller van Almsick (Vienna), and Galleri Urbane (Dallas). Since 2021, Marlon Wobst has a lectureship for painting at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Karen Navarro, currently based in Houston, is an Argentinian artist of Mapuche, Guaraní and European descent who works across the mediums of photography, collage, and sculpture. Her work investigates the intersections of identity, representation, race, and belonging in reference to her migrant experience, her Indigenous identity and the history of colonization and its influence. Navarro is interested in the nuances of identity, the constant hybridization of cultures, communication technologies and the concept of beauty aiming to create, through her work, space for acceptance and existence.

Navarro has won the Artadia Fellowship, the Top Ten Lensculture Critics' Choice Award, and the Houston Center for Photography Beth Block Honoraria, among others. And, in 2024 she was an artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL. Her work has been exhibited in the US and abroad. Selected shows include Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH); Artpace, San Antonio; Galerija Upuluh, Zagreb, Croatia; George Washington Carver Museum, Austin, TX; FAR Center for Contemporary Arts, Bloomington, IN; Holocaust Museum Houston; and Melkweg Expo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Additionally, Navarro’s work has been featured in numerous publications, including ARTnews, The Guardian, Observer, and Rolling Stone Italia.