Ivester Contemporary is pleased to present Crosshairs, a solo exhibition of prints and sculptures by Alex Boeschenstein. Created primarily through intaglio aquatint and stone lithography techniques, the new series of prints on view depicts shaped-charge implosion tests, explosive lenses, WWII geoglyphic bomb targets, space program insignias, and other relics of the Cold War nuclear complex. Extending lines throughout the gallery and between the prints are a series of new sculptural works made from cast Himalayan sea salt and sulfur, materials whose pastel hues belie their contemporary and prehistoric apocalyptic origins. These sulfur and salt forms are modeled after stadia rods, instruments used by surveyors to measure distances and changes in elevation. 

Crosshairs takes its name from the fine lines or markings built into optical devices to provide measurement references. From theodolites used for topographic mapping to wartime instruments such as bombsights, crosshairs are composed of either engraved lines or embedded materials. Appropriately, techniques of engraving and embedding recur throughout Boeschenstein’s prints and sculptures, as do forms of doubling, splitting, mirroring, and radial symmetry. X-ray images of implosion tests produced during the Manhattan Project’s Radioactive Lanthanum Experiments become decorative repeat patterns inset with intaglio portals and fissures. Shaped-charge explosive lenses transform into floral blooms obscured by clouds of aquatint rosin. Stadia rods become unreliable mapping instruments when turned sideways and constructed from brittle sulfur and salt, materials that crack under pressure and absorb moisture from the atmosphere. 

Rather than moving toward pinpoint precision and scientific coherence, Boeschenstein takes moments of scientific and historical specificity and explores how they reverberate outward, diffuse, mutate, and become suffused with fantasy and paranoia. Often, the more attentively one looks, the less certain one becomes of what it is they are looking at.