Artist: Cross Lypka (Tyler Cross and Kyle Lypka)
Exhibition title: Tarantula
Venue: House of Seiko, San Francisco, US
Date: June 29 – August 11, 2024
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and House of Seiko, San Francisco
Cross Lypka is the moniker for Tyler Cross and Kyle Lypka, long-time partners and artistic collaborators. Their working process in ceramic follows a practical exchange of tasks. Tyler draws a lexicon of visual forms, Kyle interprets and hand-builds from this repertoire, they edit, Tyler glazes, and Kyle fires. Lastly, subtle surface treatments and sealants are applied. The works that emerge reflect this back-and-forth trade, in partnership with the material’s own desires and constraints.
What does it mean to take something porous, imperfect, shrinking, warping, issue-filled… and adapt it to the rigidity of an archi-tecture?
For this exhibition, the pair have pivoted to making works in response to the space’s structural conditions. Rather than enlarging existing forms in the practice, they created segmented sculptures with systems of repeated components. One can imagine these objects stretching or multiplying themselves across a room; expanding the intervals between ceramic elements to scale to a space. Thus, a kind of elasticity is achieved in glass and stone.
Forms referenced internally with language like “X, book, shovel, F” play new roles in the project. Building on classical interior architecture, the works perform as columns, moldings and spacial pro-trusions that adorn the gallery. Touching distinct corners and verticals of the space, the works narrate the walls in form-based phrases.
The fired sculptures bear fleeting compositions. Strategically glazed, their matte colors drain via-channels and spillways. The resulting surfaces are left stained in directions that toy with the room’s gravity. This depicted movement is contained at times by trims of sandy flashing where the works meet the walls.
