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BRILLIANT PAINTINGS & AMAZING CERAMICS Mar 10 - Apr 3, 2010 |
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Guest curator Betty Ann Brown presents an eclectic selection of “Brilliant Paintings & Amazing Ceramics” created by a diverse group of Southern California artists: Craig Antrim, Holly Boruck, Jenny Calaba, Patsy Cox, Madden Harkness, Steve Horn, Linda King, Erika Lizee, Jim Morphesis, Michele Ogilvie, Milo Reice, Sandra Rowe, and Blandine Saint-Oyant. The artworks range from meditative abstractions to erotic flowers, from surreal clay and glass creatures to poetic reinterpretations of historically resonant subjects. The paintings and ceramics are connected by a shared sensual engagement with the materials and processes of art, whether paint or pencil or porcelain; pouring with abandon or drawing with precision. They direct us beyond this quotidian existence to the imaginative realms of spirit and fantasy.
CRAIG ANTRIM creates quietly powerful paintings that are either poetic abstractions or meditative, focused icons. His works are characterized by a sophisticated use of encaustic and subtle deployment of veiled color and iridescence. HOLLY BORUCK uses resin clay to create surreal plants that grow on walls and pedestals. She covers their arm-like branches with smooth white gesso, then adorns them with lacy graphite drawings. The biomorphic drawings sometimes spill onto walls and interact gracefully with the curvilinear forms of the plants’ shadows. JENNY CALABA combines ceramic and glass to create fantastical entities that have been described as “strange, odd, and enchanting.” Alien and otherworldly, they are precious like jewels, bizarre like anatomical aberrations. PATSY COX makes thousands of small, rounded nodules and assembles them into ceramic sculptures that stand on pedestals or sweep over floors or climb up gallery walls. Like rebutia succulents, her elegant accretions multiply geometrically into fascinating visual populations. MADDEN HARKNESS has done a series of color field paintings that resemble early Mark Rothkos robbed of their brilliant pigment. Limiting her palette to deepest brown—almost black—and subtle golden tones, she forms shimmering dark bars that hover over pale, ethereal zones. STEVE HORN’s eccentric ceramic sculptures allude to functional objects—vases, bowls, plates—but resist use value to emerge as insistent artworks. His complex surfaces are enhanced by lustrous metallic glazes and often obsessive ornamentation. LINDA KING and BLANDINE SAINT-OYANT create visually related paintings that nonetheless maintain adamant individuality. Both artists combine carefully controlled pours of richly hued oil paint with stenciled shapes and precise brushwork to produce fields of color and form that tantalize and intrigue. Viewers may imagine they see landscape allusions or references to known objects within these painterly concoctions, but in the end, the artworks remain abstract improvisations. ERIKA LIZEE’s paintings are biomorphic abstractions that allude to but resist describing plant and planetary forms. Sensual, layered, and beautifully crafted, Lizee’s pictorial world is marvelous yet mystifying. JIM MORPHESIS starts with an apparently simple premise: paint a flower, a rose to be precise. But as the floral forms emerge, petals become lips, then labia, then folds of delicate, liquid flesh. And all are beautifully crossed by unexpected color and exceptionally expressive line. MICHELE OGILVIE uses art to create meditative icons. Her centrally focused, mandala-like abstractions inspire meditative quiet and introspection. MILO REICE deploys three distinct visual languages--realism, expressionism and formalist abstraction—to reinterpret the grand themes of art and history. He has interrogated and painted about everything from Biblical narratives (Moses) to current events (9-11) to traditional representations of the female nude. SANDRA ROWE has worked in paint, sculpture, assemblage, and installation. Currently, she is doing a series of small prismacolor drawings that reference body parts in a heightened surreal fashion. Like the prized possessions assembled in a curiosity cabinet, Rowe offers feet and hands and veins and organs for our contemplation. Never one to be obvious, she obscures them amongst dense colorful designs, allowing the body parts to disappear into rich, undulating abstractions. Guest curator Betty Ann Brown is an art historian, critic, and curator. A professor of art history at California State University, Northridge, she has written books about women artists, Surrealism, and how artists are stereotyped in the mass media. Her last exhibition was at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. Brown is currently working on a retrospective exhibition of the work of performance artist and painter John White.
Please join us for a opening reception, 4-7 PM, Saturday, March 13
Sylvia White Gallery |
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