Two solo shows
dal 11/5/2005 al 11/6/2005
Segnalato da
11/5/2005
Two solo shows
Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
Jessica Snow blends amorphous shapes in cool colors with more geometric areas suggesting aerial views or maps. Oliver Boberg's photographs and film stills represent conclusions to a complex process. His typical image will begin as collection of details describing an area or edifice from which he will cull items to be in included in elaborate scale models that he will construct.
Jessica Snow, Stratagems for Living
Oliver Boberg, Recent Works
Opening in the second week of May, Rena Bransten Gallery will feature two solo shows: San Francisco artist Jessica Snow and German artist Oliver Boberg.
In her second solo show at the gallery, Jessica Snow continues to blend amorphous shapes in cool colors with more geometric areas suggesting aerial views or maps. Her use and application of carefully selected contrasting pigments help determine the boundaries within each composition. Thinly applied washes of acrylic paint make up the bulk of the irregular areas while the “urban†areas are described by heavily textured spurts, dabs, and strokes of oil paint.
While the larger paintings reference aerial views and Platt maps, that include water- ways, streets and interstates, open space, and urban clusters, Snow’s exhibit will also include small works on paper and ink-jet prints that have a tighter focus on the details found in the larger pieces. In all the works, however, one is aware of Snow’s successful attempts to merge abstract and “real†elements into a harmonious blend that expands the meanings and possibilities of both.
Snow received her Masters of Fine Art at Mills College in Oakland and was the recipient of a San Francisco Art Council Award Grant. Since her last solo show at Rena Bransten Gallery, Snow has had a solo exhibition at the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California; she was also recently included in Neo Mod: Recent Northern California Abstraction at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, and Observations at the Carl Berg Gallery in Los Angeles.
German artist Oliver Boberg’s photographs and film stills represent deceptively simple conclusions to a complex process. A typical Boberg image will begin as collection of details describing an area or edifice from which he will cull items to be in included in elaborate scale models that he will construct. He then hires a photographer to shoot the models from predetermined vantage points to achieve the finished photograph. The cardboard models may perfectly represent a concrete overpass, a rural warehouse, building site detritus, a truncated view of an unidentified monument – all architecturally correct and familiar - but their believability is eerie and disturbing - their exact sense of place is a sham. Through his careful manipulation of visual information and mental expectation, Boberg achieves a strangely compelling “reality†that is both recognizable and unknowable; banal and universal.
Oliver Boberg lives and works in Fürth, Germany. His work in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the M.Z. Margulies Collection, Miami, and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. Boberg’s work was first shown at Rena Bransten Gallery in a group exhibition entitled Artitecture last summer. In conjunction with our solo show, he has an exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts up now through July 3rd that includes his videos as well as a survey of photographs.
Opening reception: Thursday, May 12, 5:30-7:30pm
Rena Bransten Gallery
77 Geary Street
San Francisco
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10:30am to 5:30pm and Saturdays 11am to 5pm.