David Klein Gallery is pleased to present Jack Craig, Anteroom, an exhibition of furniture and fixtures by the Detroit based artist. This is Craig’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The opening reception will take place on Saturday, September 7th, 5 - 8 PM at David Klein Gallery, 1520 Washington Boulevard, Detroit.

The show's title, Anteroom, references an older archetype - the room before the room - a place of transition, limbo, and waiting. Its ambiguity and beforeness leave undefined a proto space - a place for before or ‘ante‘ objects spawned from a primordial mud of proto processes.

(Jack Craig, 2024)

For Anteroom, Craig has produced a group of furniture and objects made with his favored unconventional materials including “molded carpet”, PVC, dripped bronze, glass, and steel. Transforming these chosen materials into new forms and finishes, Craig continues to create fanciful, other-worldly chairs, tables, and fixtures. Two of the outstanding pieces in the exhibition are a wildly colorful molded carpet chandelier and an equally vibrant large scale molded carpet étagère with mirror.

Craig’s works take on the quality of evolutionary missteps, in his words “nature’s first adventurous tests of the world for new solutions”. Borrowing from unlikely corners of the industrial landscape, Craig deals in what he refers to as “raw, low to the ground methodologies intended to test, reset, and reinvent”. Craig originally worked in electro physics; now he acts in full technological reversal in a “back to the future” approach to object making.

My studio practice operates through intentional staging of unconventional materials to force improvised situations and impromptu structure. I work to engage elements of the surrounding environment through a gauntlet of material abuses. Each is a measure of its possibilities – a way of parsing foreign physicalities into ordered function and purpose.

(Jack Craig, 2024)

Jack Craig trained as an engineer and worked on stealth technology for the United States Navy prior to pursuing his career in design. His practice combines his understanding of the scientific method with an intuitive process. Experimenting with bronzed stone, PVC, molded carpet and broken wood, Craig treats precious and non-precious materials, both natural and man-made, with equal importance creating furniture, vessels, and fixtures that elude conventional aesthetics.

Craig holds a BFA in Design from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Champaign, IL and an MFA in 3D Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art., Bloomfield Hills, MI. His work has been widely exhibited in the U.S, Europe and Asia, including Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI; the Biennale Internationale Design, St Étienne, France; Volume Gallery, Chicago, IL; Salon 94, New York, NY; Collective Design Fair, New York, NY; and Design Miami, Miami, FL. He lives and works in Detroit.