Monopines    •    Everest Pipkin and Alex Lukas     •    May 11th - June 23rd, 2018

   
​  Trees have historically acted as a broadcast medium, becoming signposts for names, messages, dates, phone numbers, and other fragmentary forms of local information. When this information is carved into the bark of a tree, it becomes semi- permanent; a repository that transmits personal signals within a hyper-local network over time.  Commercial cell phone towers have become an exercise in camouflage. In an effort by municipalities to “keep _______ beautiful” while simultaneously expanding network connectivity, today’s towers often masquerade as various natural forms: palm trees, saguaro cactus, large rocks. The most ubiquitous form is the monopine - an unnaturally large pine tree replica. They are not, despite best efforts, inconspicuous.
  For Monopines at Not Gallery, Everest Pipkin and Alex Lukas show new prints, drawings, generative animation, and small sculpture where these faked and altered natural objects have escaped corporate and personal usage and become wild. By making visible the fog of omnipresent information exchange, Monopines complicates contemporary understandings of con- nectivity, network and signal broadcast across the American landscape.
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  Alex Lukas was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1981 and raised in nearby Cambridge. Examining the present through investigations of the recorded past and imagined future, Lukas’ practice exists at the intersection of documentary and fic- tion. Referencing speculative fantasy alongside quotidian roadside Americana, his drawings, prints, books, sculptures and audio collages interrogate multiple forms of the souvenir. Lukas has been exhibited internationally and his work is included in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art Library (New York), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Spencer Museum of Art, the MIT List Visual Arts Center Student Loan Art Collection and the Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has lectured at The Rhode Island School of Design, The Maryland Institute Col- lege of Art, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Alfred University and The University of Kansas. He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Masters of Fine Art degree at Carnegie Mellon University.      
                           http://alexlukas.com/

  Everest Pipkin is a drawing and software artist from Bee Cave, Texas, whose work follows landscape as complicated by the advent of digital space. Through examination of social spaces online, the physical infrastructure that supports digital technology, and the overlap of public and corporatized space, Pipkin questions the ease at which the commons- physical, social, and digital- are commodified. They produce printed material as books and zines, as well as digital work in software, bots, and games. They also make drawings on paper. Pipkin holds a BFA from University of Texas at Austin, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and have shown nationally and internationally at The Design Museum of London, The Texas Biennial, XXI Triennale of Milan, The Victoria & Albert Museum, and others. 
                           http://everest-pipkin.com/