Winston Wächter Seattle is pleased to announce our sixth solo exhibition with Northwest sculptor Julie Speidel. Speidel’s bronze, glass and stone works are rooted in her life-long fascination with ancient megaliths and are heavily influenced by her numerous travels.

Speidel balances concave and convex shapes, soft curves and hard edges, while juxtaposing metal and stone, to compose large-scale, abstract sculptures. In this way, Speidel imbues each sculpture with a strong sense of space and magnetism. She creates works that suggest movement, balance, growth and even buoyancy – something that is seemingly impossible with such solid materials.

Inspired by ancient monuments of stone and wood, as well as the history and mythology from which they emerge, Speidel’s titles often reflect deities with unique stories from various parts of the world. Captivated by how the idea of these deities and spiritual beliefs inspire such extraordinary megaliths with commanding physical presence, Speidel in turn employs bronze and marble to create harmonious abstract sculptures that similarly exude a sense of majesty and stature to be experienced intuitively rather than narratively.

For more information, contact Megan Des Jardins at (206) 652 5855.



















Winston Wächter is pleased to present The Open Palm of Desire, our fourth solo exhibition with artist Kris Cox.

Kris Cox creates abstract works using a physically demanding and process-oriented approach. He utilizes various forms of media including wood, putty, lead, wax and pigment to build a heavily layered base. Cox then begins to work into the surface through an elaborate series of additive and reductive techniques. Through this process, the underlying layers of pigmented wood putty and other materials are exposed. As indentations are uncovered/revealed, Cox fills them with additional colors, then meticulously sands and works the materials until a smooth, yet weathered surface is achieved. By hand rubbing and varnishing each painting with various media, Cox creates a patina and richly textured final finish unique to his work.

The constructed paintings often begin with a sense of order and organization and evolve through a working method of controlled chaos. Cox meticulously and deliberately places visual information embedded within the initial layers of his materials. However, as he works the painting surface, there is an element of surprise as new colors and forms are unearthed. Cox then applies additional layers in response, resulting in an interconnected relationship between chance and intentional action. The result melds these opposite tendencies into a single, unified piece.

Cox considers how the layering of materials encapsulates a series of visual and material decisions throughout the duration of his process, which after working and re-working the painting’s surface, become evident in the final piece. These visible layers create a snapshot of his process, as well as capture the passage of time like the rings of a large tree stump. Cox describes his paintings as “wood panels with grids that have been chased into their surfaces…grids, which appear irregularly through the layers of putty [and] are a metaphor for memory, while the concentric, multi-chromatic rings are symbolic of time.” Indeed the work combines an earthy pallet and sculpted surface that feels both grounded and timeless, like an encrypted chart of the past, present and future.

For more information, please contact Megan Des Jardins at (206) 652-5855.