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7/7/2006

Doug Kerr

Sherry Frumkin Gallery, Santa Monica

Edge City

Sherry Frumkin Gallery is pleased to present “Edge City", a solo exhibition of new work by San Francisco artist Doug Kerr. In sculptures made of translucent polycarbonate from his “Buildings and Blocks" and “Racetracks" series, Kerr reference freeway architecture as well as minimalist sculpture, particularly that of Donald Judd, John McCracken and Anne Truitt.

In these restrained and beautiful works Kerr reflects on the isolation of the American commuter culture, distilling the experience of a contemporary visual culture saturated with passing images of buildings and freeways. Just as freeway architecture gives the passing motorist a continuous, uninterrupted view of a seamless facade, these works have no ‘front’ either and the curves of the pieces force the viewer to move about in order to see the work in its entirety.

After making the first few pieces, Kerr began to travel the freeways with his camera, searching out prime examples of this architectural idiom. It was while cruising the freeways that he began to think about this other type of architecture - of interchanges, overpasses and ramps. It occurred to him that these two idioms have a symbiotic relationship. He saw how the Edge Cities of America were created first by the massive buildup of highways and roads through the rural and pastoral outlying areas and that once in place they were followed by large office buildings and office parks built in close proximity to draw a tax base. Then the area is flooded with housing, strip malls and services, and the cycle moves on to the next location, which led to the “Racetracks" series, a reflection of the continuous loop of modern life: go to work, run errands, and return home, and repeat it ad nausea.

ArtWeek reviewer Kristin Palm recently observed that Kerr’s work is “largely devoid of he irony with which suburbia is treated in so much of the art world today..." and noted the homage to the “clean lines and crisp edges that make modernist architecture so counterintuitively alluring."

Opening Reception Saturday, July 8th from 7 - 9 pm

Sherry Frumkin Gallery
3026 Airport Ave., Studio 21 - Santa Monica

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