Two solo shows
dal 10/7/2009 al 14/8/2009
Segnalato da
10/7/2009
Two solo shows
Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica
On display "City and Country", an exhibition of new paintings by Todd Hebert, and "Weep and Wonder", a concurrent solo show (in the project room) featuring 8 new "cameo" paintings by Jennifer Nehrbass.
Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to announce "City and Country," an exhibition of nine new paintings by acclaimed artist Todd Hebert, and "Weep and Wonder," a concurrent solo exhibition featuring eight new "cameo" paintings by Jennifer Nehrbass.
In his new series of works, Todd Hebert shifts his focus from the large-scale close-up to long perspectives on smaller canvases. This playing with expected scale produces intimate and captivating works that entrance the viewer with the deft precision of their small details. Hebert embraces the label of "photorealistic surrealism" that his past work has earned, yet produces something that is altogether subtler and quieter, these new ovals and extended landscapes depicting snowmen, steam trains and dilapidated signs all shrouded in darkness. Still his work retains the same anthropomorphic quality, these inanimate objects encompassing the universal loneliness of night, speaking of isolation, decay and desolation. The iconography Hebert employs suggesting inevitable impermanence, his canvases capturing a fleeting moment just before a firework, a holiday or a season passes and is forgotten.
Lovely to see and just a little demented, Hebert's images inhabit a world where innocent whimsy and inexplicable weirdness spiral around one another in a dizzying swirl of uncanny fascination. - David Pagel
In the Project Room, Jennifer Nehrbass' new works act as "anti-vignettes," the subjects' faces contrasting sharply to the simple backgrounds, each portrait an unadulterated expression of grief, fear or lust. Far removed from her earlier portraits - where the narratives of her tableaux were so apparent, each canvas capturing a performance rather than a pose – these cameos remove the subject completely, isolating them in pure emotion. Yet rather than presenting the voyeuristic viewer with a contained objectified subject, by embracing the distasteful or challenging - an unflattering tilt of the head, un unfaltering gaze, bloodshot eyes or a running nose - Nehrbass transfers ownership of the image from the admiring audience to the subject herself. Each canvas provides the female protagonist with a space in which to embrace a singular selfish moment, free from preconceived notions of stylized beauty.
These images are sharply psychological, none of them providing a safe or comfortable arena. They take the myths of femininity and turn them inside out. The imaginative construct in which her work exists goes beyond realism. The point of these carefully contrived painting is to demonstrate the forces and situations that define women. - Suzanne Sbarge
The opening reception for both artists will be Saturday, July 11, 2009 from 5-7pm.
Mark Moore Gallery
2525 Michigan Avenue - Santa Monica
Free admission