"The Desert Sea" Grüüp
The Desert Sea was a four-day exhibition at ASAP in Las Vegas, where visitors embarked on their own journey through an installation of mountainous seas and deserted islands. Paintings, collage and sculptural works are accompanied by a soundscape created for the space.
The exhibition will culminated with a mask-making event, mini-parade and performance by psyche-noir band The Renderers.
“…The ocean is very similar to the desert, it’s just that the ocean is wet and the desert is dried-up ocean…” -Captain Beefheart. Since moving to the Mojave desert from Aotearoa / New Zealand, all four Grüüp artists have been affected by this radical shift in environment and for the past decade, made works responding to the connections and differences between their country of origin and their new-found home.
Known individually for their surreal visions and haunting soundscapes, Maryrose and Brian Crook, Matthew Couper and JK Russ are now channeling their creative energies in a collective direction. Their work has been experienced in a variety of venues ranging from international art fairs, lowbrow galleries, high-end Strip hotels and underground Tokyo nightclubs.
Presented in publications from Juxtapoz and Hey! Magazine to the The Washington Post, their creative projects have been described as “unconventional”, “surreal” and “unalloyed, indescribable weirdness”.
The name Grüüp was developed as a faux-mojibake, where the umlauts work as a typogram to represent the four members of Grüüp. The forming of Grüüp and its inaugural exhibition in February 2022 is a nod to the formation.
There are a few people that we would like to acknowledge:
Indigenous Educators Empowerment (https://ieenevada.org)
Ben-Alex Dupris
Curtis Joe Walker Photography
