“Substrate” brings together the work of artists Douglas Shaw Elder, Jim Nelson, and Justin Walker/Annie Mohaupt in an exploration of what wall-based artwork can become when it refuses to stay flat. Working with plywood and laminated panels, each artist transforms the idea of an image into something dimensional and assertive - objects that don’t just hang on the wall, but actively inhabit it.

While they share a common material language, their approaches diverge in ways that sharpen the conversation between digital precision and the handmade. CNC processes and measured cuts meet the immediacy of chisels, carving knives, and grinders. In some works, the evidence of making is laid bare; in others, it’s intentionally concealed. Across the exhibition, surfaces hold memory - tool marks, layered structures, and subtle irregularities that reveal a tension between control and intuition.

By elevating non-traditional materials into the realm of fine art, “Substrate” presses on key questions like: How do tools author visual language? And what shifts when utilitarian materials are recontextualized as aesthetic objects? 

Here, plywood is not merely a support - it is image, object, and structures that carry a palpable sense of process all at once.