Off Grid

This three-person exhibition brings together works by Elana Marte Adler (Portland, ME), Matt Kayhoe Brett (Richmond, VA), and Jesse Harrod (Philadelphia, PA/New York, NY). Each artist’s material, formal, and process-based exploration of grids, weaves, braids, and interlaced materials is grounded in unique conceptual investigations of the world around them and worlds not visible to us.

Harrod’s work explores embodiment, gender, and sexual identity; increasingly celebrated for their paracord works, a group of brasses cast in residence at the Kohler Art Center from paracords is presented here, courtesy of Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. Elana Adler is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses the grid as a “tactical mapping system”, and a variable visual vocabulary exploring architecture, chaos, and abstract concepts about space and time. Matt Brett’s work evokes themes including computational media, digital visualization, and networks in various sculptural works cast or created from found materials, as well as cyanotypes and other media.

Elana Marte Adler (she/her) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and grew up throughout New York, Western Massachusetts, and along the East Coast. She received a BFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 and a MFA in Fibers & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. In 2017, Adler co-founded the contemporary art space Adler & Floyd, located in Chicago, Illinois (2017-2020), and managed a collective studio in the Industrial Clocktower Building. She has exhibited work at Hyde Park Art Center, Buoy Gallery, G-CAD, Chicago Artist Coalition, and New Systems Exhibitions among others. Adler has received funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Illinois Art Council. She currently lives and works in Portland, Maine, where she teaches at Maine College of Art and Design and works as a studio assistant. Website

Matt Kayhoe Brett (he/him) is an artist based in Richmond, Virginia, where he teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University. He uses industrial materials and everyday artifacts to make his work which has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Richmond. Matt has attended residencies at ACRE and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been exhibited in Chicago at Gallery 400, Slow Gallery, and Heaven Gallery; in Philadelphia at High Tide, Little Berlin and Icebox; in New York at 136 w 22nd; in New Orleans at Parse; and in Richmond at Reference. He holds an MFA in studio arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. Website

Jesse Harrod (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York. Their visual art practice encompasses sculpture, painting, stop-motion animation, and other media to reimagine forms of gendered, sexual, and disabled embodiment. Harrod’s latest solo exhibition, Tough Nut, was presented by Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in 2023. In 2021, Harrod was commissioned by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center to create a work responding to the Eugene Von Bruenchenhein collection in the center’s Art Preserve. In 2020, they were awarded a Visual Arts Fellowship by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, as well as a Temple University Faculty Award for Creative Achievement. Harrod has exhibited at SculptureCenter, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Vox Populi Gallery, Antenna Gallery, Hangaram Art Museum in South Korea, and Socrates Sculpture Park, among others. In 2020, they received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and have been awarded residencies nationally including Haystack Mountain School of Craft here in Maine. Harrod was born in South Africa and raised in Canada, before moving to the United States to pursue their MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Harrod has an MFA from the Department of Fiber & Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. They are currently the Head of Fibers & Material Studies at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. Full Bio Website