Jonas Sebura and Alex Gartelmann

Sebura & Gartelmann is the collaborative team of Jonas Sebura (OH) and Alex Gartelmann (PA). The pair has been working together since 2010. Both received their MFA’s from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sebura received his BFA from Alfred University in New York and Gartelmann from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia.

Sebura and Gartelmann have done projects for Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; UICA, Grand Rapids, MI; Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, MO; Clough-Hanson Gallery, Memphis, TN; and The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA among others. They were Joan Mitchell Fellows at the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency in the fall of 2013, and HATCH residents with the Chicago Artists Coalition in 2014.

“When we are in the studio we are always asking, ‘How do we make the wrong move, the right move?’ We want to constantly push towards subverting not just our viewer’s expectations of material and process, but our own as well. We pay close attention to the role of intimacy in both our working relationship and our friendship, and how that can become formalized in art work. We work from common experiences in both growing up and in the now. We find power in objects. We are in a continual search for lines of crossover between contemporary practice with that of the vernacular and visionary. Allowing ourselves permission to work in whatever manner we feel is best suited to that moment, we work collaboratively to constantly check and edit ourselves, our ideas, and our work. The studio practice is built on trust, most importantly centered around honesty in the editing process. If it’s not right, it gets cut, and one of us can call it out. We allow our interests to evolve and morph, always pushing away from comfort in the studio. When we make, we are always looking to ask more questions about what we are making or have made, than to receive answers. If we know what we are doing, then we are doing it wrong, and not wrong in the right way. Life is a messy place, and we are fielding constant inquiry into that mess, trying to find the compelling places of meaning, the sweet spots of uncertainty, and the powerful places of connectivity that exist in it.”