Formal Gardens. Wild Nature

S. Patricia Patterson & Izumi Yokoyama

2010-01-10T00:17:00.000-08:00

Saturday January 9, 7pm - February 10

Kit Rosenberg and Ruth Hodgins

2009-12-12T20:06:00.000-08:00

December 12, 7pm - January 6

Kit Rosenberg seeks to playfully combine a variety of disparate objects so that their original functions become part of a larger, absurd network. To this extent, the notions of dualism, instability, and entropy all play a vital role. By setting up precarious systems that mischievously activate and tease out the double-life of these objects, he enables them to speak to broader themes in an uncanny way. He received his MFA in 2009 from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has exhibited nationally, most recently in Wonderland, a collaborative installation project curated by Lance Fung. Kit lives and works in San Francisco.

Ruth Hodgins examines the semantic assumptions that govern our day-to-day lives. Words are tethered somewhat arbitrarily to what they signify (“a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”), but however well established the idea might be, we rarely see this premise of instability in action. In her practice, such bets are off. By challenging presumptions, she utilizes the norm in order to foster different connotations, creating a visual dialogue that is provocative, humorous and absurd. Ruth received her BA from the Glasgow School of Art and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including the Atrium Gallery in Glasgow and the Phyllis Wattis Theater at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francsisco. Her work will be on view in an upcoming exhibition at Platform 3 in Munich, Germany. She lives and works in San Francisco and Munich.

Claire Jackel & Robert Minervini

2009-11-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

CLAIRE JACKEL

November 14 – December 9 2009

Claire Jackel’s work, primarily in painting and sculpture, uses news media to remodel catastrophic events. Her practice meditates on issues of control and destructive potential, memory and the ephemeral in relation to social anxieties. She received her MFA in 2009 from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been shown internationally, including exhibitions at Gray Area Gallery, San Francisco; Root Division, San Francisco; San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Clara Street Projects, San Francisco; LoBot Gallery, Oakland; The Garage, San Francisco; Th’ink Tank, Denver; The University of Colorado, Boulder; Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas, Mexico City. She was a painter of the SanFrancisco State University Edward Said Memorial Mural and awarded the Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts in 2008. Her work has been reviewed on SFGate.com, yourhub.com, and the Boulder Daily Camera. She teaches through the Good for Kids Foundation. Claire lives and works in San Francisco.

ROBERT MINERVINI

November 14 – December 9 2009

Robert Minervini is an artist working in painting, drawing, sculpture, and public art. His work draws inspiration from art history and investigates the relationships between landscape, historical, and invented narrative painting. He received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2009, and his BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2005. His work has been exhibited internationally, including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the Luggage Store Gallery, Queens Nails Annex, the Pennsylvania State Museum, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. He has been awarded the Murphy/Cadogan Fellowship by the San Francisco Foundation, the Edwin Austin Abbey Mural Fellowship by the National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Carmela Corso Scholarship by Tyler School of Art. He been a Resident artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center , and is currently in residency at the Root Division Studio Program. His art has been reviewed in Art Matters, the Providence Phoenix Newspaper, SFGate, and by www.artblog.com. He currently lives and works in San Francisco.

Chris Hood October 10 7pm

2009-09-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

Chris Hood is a multi-media artist whose work addresses a space in which place is increasingly obsolete. Accelerated technology creates a media that renders distance irrelevant: everything that is far is equally near. Hood investigates the relationships between things and people, and the often misleading coding that emerges to account for the world we live in. Through the lens of art history (the modernist grid, early conceptualism, abstract expressionist painting), he creates work that challenges the boundaries between an established past and a fast-developing future. He is currently an MFA candidate at the San Francisco Art Institute. He received his BFA from Georgia State University in 2008, and studied at Deree College in Athens, Greece and Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. He has exhibited internationally, most recently at the Federal Art Project, Los Angeles, in Children of the Revolution, curated by Keith Boadwee. He has also shown at Blankspace Gallery in Oakland, the Diego Rivera Gallery in San Francisco, and MoCa GA, among others. Hood lives and works in San Francisco.

2009-09-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

Curated By: Vasanti Lackner

Pehrspace Los Angeles
October 2009 through March 2010

Chris Hood – October 10-November 11
Claire Jackel & Robert Minervini – November 14-December 9
Ruth Hodgins & Kit Rosenberg – December 12-January 6
S. Patricia Patterson & Izumi Yokoyama – January 9-February 10
Group Show of Participating Artists – February 13-March 10

OPENINGS: Every 2nd Saturday, 7-10 pm

HOURS: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday:12 pm-5 pm, or by appointment

Pehrspace Gallery is pleased to present Formal Gardens.Wild Nature, a series of solo and two-person shows curated by Vasanti Lackner. The exhibits address the disparate art worlds of San Francisco and Los Angeles, two cities that are surprisingly insulated from one another despite the fact that only a short distance separates them. The series showcases seven Bay Area artists whose work bridges the aesthetics typically seen in either city.

The title of the series, Formal Gardens. Wild Nature, originates from a quote by Walt Disney in which he states, “I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.” The irony is that Disney found his strength in the containment of his own imagination. His creations embody the perfect balance and convergence of work ethic and play, and the result is something that defies either extreme. Similarly, Formal Gardens.Wild Nature investigates the integration of opposites, and the sometimes-surprising results of this interaction.

The subtleties of each artist are revealed through juxtaposition, enhanced in relation to one another. Yet the opportunity to exhibit in a series of one and two-person shows, rather than as one large group, allows breathing room for both artist and viewer.

The series is intended to introduce work that might otherwise be confined to its place of origin. While it is not uncommon for bay area artists to participate in group shows in Los Angeles, the task of securing a solo exhibit can prove daunting when venturing out of one’s community. Although they share the experience of a San Francisco art education, Lackner chose the participating artists because “the essence of each individual’s work, the unique flavor, which transcends style, is not specific to any one place. The work presented holds its own regardless of location.”

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Chris Hood’s paintings and multi-media installations address a space in which place is increasingly obsolete. Accelerated technology creates a media that renders distance irrelevant: everything that is far is equally near. Hood examines the effect of this canceling-out, and what is lost in the process.

Claire Jackel’s re-creations of disasters from news media personalize events that, in a desensitized state, we relegate to the land of statistics. Her paper models evoke the familiar (airplanes, buses, trains, suburban neighborhoods and city blocks) seen through a lens of fragility. The airplane is almost entirely burned to cinders; the city is suspended upside-down, anchored in its own rubble. The process, Jackel states, “is a meditation on issues of control, destructive potential, memory, and social anxieties.”

Robert Minervini’s acrylic paintings challenge notions of beauty typically assigned to the natural world. His work examines the convergence of nature and industry while drawing on the language of 19th century landscape painting. Highly saturated depictions of wilderness sit in contrast to urban scenes executed in layered washes of color. Using a “highly plasticized approach to color and form,” Minervini wishes to question “aspects of beauty and aesthetics associated with the pictorial depiction of nature as well as the artifice of pictorial representation itself.”

Ruth M. Hodgins’ and Kit Rosenberg’s collaborations undermine the preconceived functions of everyday materials. The artists create unlikely relationships through the subversion of the ordinary, and the resulting interaction engenders systems that “mischievously tease out the double-life of these objects.” Through the juxtaposition of these pairings the work becomes greater than the sum of its initial components, speaking to “broader themes in an uncanny way.”

S. Patricia Patterson investigates memory and how it is dissolved, distorted and reassembled over time. Through the lens of her own childhood recollections, Patterson reinterprets her archive of family photographs. Her sources depict her own relatives as well as strangers, but her distorted, layered watercolor paintings appropriate the reality of these representations and relegate it to a space of personal experience. The result, like memory, is imagery that draws its strength not only from what is present, but from what is absent as well.

Izumi Yokoyama utilizes mundane objects to create installations which evoke nostalgia for a specific place and time. She manipulates these objects so that they are transformed yet still recognizable. Domestic furniture retains its standard connotations while simultaneously retelling and assimilating a past that is extremely personal. An abandoned car on a desert road is cocooned in string, protected from the elements yet claustrophobically contained. Yokoyama draws on these reinventions to convey “a powerful sense of time and communication that is not visible or tactile in everyday life.”

For more information, please contact Vasanti Lackner at 323 788 9187
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Pehrspace 325 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles CA 90026