As art galleries in the Short North prepare for their own Gallery Hop festivities this upcoming weekend, roommates Amanda Loch and Gus Dieker are preparing for an exhibit all their own.
They’ve been clearing out their apartment on Highland Ave., making art pieces, making pedestals for said pieces and making labels with a brand new label maker.
The theme for the show, taking place Saturday night in their apartment, is “gecko.”
In a collection of printed out talking points, the duo described gecko as aiming “to capture the quintessence of its subject” and something that “can’t be googled yet.”
While sitting at a table in Starbucks, Loch, a fifth-year in English and Theater, described gecko more casually, saying it’s very simple and minimalistic.
“It’s kind of like hitting the pause button and setting a super trooper light over everything that we’re experiencing that’s new to us in our culture right now, but is extremely prevalent,” Loch said.
Loch compared the pieces and the elements that comprise them to a poem and the words that make them up.
“All the little gestures and decisions that we make have a lot of gravity and significance to it,” Loch said.
The pieces in the gallery are completed by Loch, Dieker and their friends Chris Summers and Blake Turner.
“I just wanted to have a show to show work on my own terms,” Dieker said, “show some new stuff and some other people’s work that I thought was kind of cool.”
Dieker graduated from Ohio State in May with a BFA in art and technology. One of his pieces in the gecko art gallery, “Pen on Post-in in Frame on Wall,” was also included in the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition in Hopkins Hall Gallery this past spring.
“I like office supplies. They’re simple,” said Dieker. “They all have their really simple function and they’re also common.”
Gus Dieker’s “Primitives” is one of the pieces on display in the gecko art show he and his roommate are putting on in their apartment this Saturday.
Credit: Courtesy of Gus Dieker
Dieker said they will have an old iPod playing slowed down, reverbed versions of cheery pop songs as people enter the apartment.
“It’ll kind of slow you down as you walk in and bring you to where culture is at and where it’s been,” he said.
Dieker is also using the windows in the apartment and custom cut mirrors to create “a vortex of space.”
Loch said the duo intend to create a space where “you can focus really intently and purposely on these individual pieces of work.”
The gecko art show is set to take place Saturday from 8 p.m. to midnight. For a specific address, Loch and Dieker said to email [email protected] and an invitation will be automatically sent back.
