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12/7/2006

Furnishing Assumptions

Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco

Group show

During the month of July, Rena Bransten Gallery (77 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108) will present Furnishing Assumptions, a group show, and Los Perros, new works by Rupert Garcia.

Furnishing Assumptions aims to explore the use of furniture as subject in media ranging from painting and photography to sculpture. Focusing in particular on works which raise issues beyond mere representation, the show will look at artists who have used furniture as a conduit to air debates around art history, artistic interpretation, sociological documentation, psychological profiling, and form versus function. Featured artists are: Alex Clausen, Doug Hall, Candida Hofer, Julie Huette, Roy McMakin, Vik Muniz, Scott Oliver, Javier Pino'n, and Doris Salcedo. The works range from Alex Clausen's photographic enquiry into the sculptural possibilities of domestic furniture to Roy McMakin's exploration of the formal qualities of objects more usually dismissed as functional and Doris Salcedo's documentation of her Istanbul Biennial project for which 1,550 chairs were piled in a gap between two buildings, a poignant metaphor for the price of progress.

For his exhibition Los Perros (The Dogs), Rupert Garcia appropriated canine subjects from existing works by diverse artistic influences from Goya to Courbet and Rufino Tamayo to Diego Rivera. Rescuing the dogs from their supporting roles and granting them a central position in his paintings, Garcia's reinterpretation combines a highly personal index of references with broader socio-political concerns. Further recontextualizing the dogs by juxtaposing them with contemporary imagery, whether of the galaxy or Abu Ghraib, Garcia renders them a symbol for marginalization and allows them to guide us to the true meaning of the individual works.

Rupert Garcia was born in 1941 in French Camp, CA, and lives and works in Oakland. He received an MA in Art History at the University of California, Berkeley and currently is a tenured professor at San Jose State University. His work is included in many museum collections including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA; The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, CA; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA.

Reception: Thursday, July 13, 5:30-7:30pm

Rena Bransten Gallery
77 Geary Street - San Francisco
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10.30am to 5.30pm and Saturday 11am to 5pm

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