Kate Werble Gallery is thrilled to present the gallery’s first exhibition with Jeff Williams, Electro slag.

Williams’ installation of new sculptures merges the animal and mineral through hand cast elements, recycled slag, industrial extrusions, and human made fossils. Subjecting his materials to transformations in the studio, Williams uses a range of physical processes such as crushing, fusing, crumpling and chopping. They are man-made stalactites and stalagmites, extending down from the ceiling on mesh grips or stretching up from the floor on melted beams.

The works in Electro slag are based on Williams’ exploration of the material evidence left by ecological processes from geological and biological phenomena found in Central Texas. The impressions he captures are from two proximate sites: the destructive soil disturbances created by feral hogs, an invasive hybrid species who dig up along the riverbanks searching for food, and an exposed cave whose formations quietly record shifts in precipitation across millennia. The two sites operate on vastly different scales; functioning as parallel indices of time and place. One location is rapidly altered by the behavior of a recently developed species and the other is slowly inscribed through patient geological accumulation.

Williams plays with shifts in perception of materials and forms to question the nature of physical experience. He renders the organic inorganic, a material transformation that nods to the original intention of sculpture to capture the living.