Exhibitions —

april april is pleased to present 00, a solo exhibition by the Oakland-based, collaborative duo CrossLypka.

CrossLypka uses clay, glaze, sand, and fire to make sculptures that crash into repose. Beginning with simple contour drawings, the artists enact a dance of tasks that balance first shape, then dimension, and last, image. The process is a tectonic reverie, as material is passed between hands and surface spills its secrets; belly is made from line and skin from glass.

In the sense that topography knows no symmetry beyond the earth as its emanating core, sameness is an aspiration of its products. In the work, images are plotted and words, like lave, stisk-find, tar sweet, and d.e.w., perform representational utterances. This slurring duplication—zero zero—alights

“the oneness
of good and evil
…
the Mystic Law
in everything”1

On and off the wall, CrossLypka’s ceramics are a studied lexicon of forms: heraldic shields stripped of their charges, and Archaic bannerstones with a restrained Art Nouveau exuberance. Crossed T’s and slashed X’s, and I’s with no dots, evoke an ancient semantics. Gravity washes color in streaks and cracked pools. With a geologic acuity, the artists allow surface to dictate all; plateaus abut valleys, while edges subduct in encrustations of sand. A promiscuous indeterminacy falls within their allusive outlines: a shovel is not a spade, nor is a book a butterfly. Such slabs are the dream slags of genesis.

1. Yuki Jackson, “Mathematics,” Entropy, 2019, accessed March 27, 2019.

CrossLypka is a collaborative duo comprising Tyler Cross (b. 1992 in Lancaster, CA) and Kyle Lypka (b. 1987 in Philadelphia, PA); the artists live and work in Oakland, CA. Solo exhibitions include Tarantula, House of Seiko, San Francisco, CA (2024); Gravity Corner, BlunkSpace, Point Reyes, CA (2022); and I Surrender, pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, CA (2020). Group exhibitions include Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels, BE (2025); KADIST, San Francisco, CA (2024); Anthony Meier, Mill Valley, CA (2023); Marin MoCA, Novato, CA (2022); and Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA (2022). Work by CrossLypka can be found in the public collection of KADIST.