Tarra Lyons, Morula (detail), 2009, oil on beechwood panel
Tarra Lyons Transmutation: paintings
Tarra Lyons paints organic abstractions that vibrate with deeply-felt symbol, color, texture and surface to create a resonant visual poetry. Her imagery includes morulas, embryonic divisions, botanical forms, sprouting seeds, tubers, and plant life that emulate structures in animal and human life. Lyons is fascinated with the coexistence of repetitions and parallel patterns in such phenomena as microscopic cells and plant forms, arteries of traffic and insect trails. Even a paint drip flowing from one end of a canvas to the other creates distinctive patterning that reappears in the veins in the ears of a rabbit or in a marble slab. This interconnectedness of things man-made and natural gives the artist confidence in an overarching plan without human blueprint, and an outside purpose for life’s processes.
Joan Weiss, Garden Redux, 2009, oil on canvas
Joan Weiss Reckless Blooms: painting
“Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.” –Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke
Joan Weiss’s recent paintings continue to explore the processes of growth and decay in the natural world. Her large, richly colored works exploit the possibilities of oil on canvas with layers of underpainting and transparent glazes. Densely packed, teeming with plant and flower-derived forms, there is a sense of ripeness teetering on the edge of dissolution. Here nature beckons, and threatens. Beauty struggles with excess, in an overgrowth of reckless blooms.
Eric Bohr, Margaret Chavigny, Maya Kabat, Laura van Duren: Two by Two: new work
Paintings by Eric Bohr evidence a progression in his work with found objects. Starting with the gentle placement of a single piece of wood, the series moves to a more direct use of wooden planks and finally arrives at a piece made almost totally of found objects with minimal painting. The artist employs new ways of breaking the plane of a two-dimensional canvas, representing three dimensions physically instead of with the traditional manipulation of perspective.
Painter Margaret Chavigny works with collage, beeswax, oils and alkyd on panels. Attentive to shifting boundaries between order and chaos, knowing and not knowing, the artist creates complex surfaces with multi-layered patterns. Interconnections – nerves, pathways, growth and fragility – are part of her primary vocabulary, woven together with waves of nuanced color.
Maya Kabat’s drawings evolve from an interest in language and numbers as systems of symbolic abstraction. Relating to nature and natural laws as well as to the human need to structure and order the universe, these graph-like images play with a fantasy of space-time that is derived from a simple system of mapping words and sayings that express the artist’s search for simplicity, joy, beauty and order.
Sculptor Laura van Duren works in metal, clay, wood, resin and sugar. Her current work is inspired by Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play, Happy Days, in which a woman questions the futility of her existence. In van Duren’s installation, a lone ceramic figure emerges from a sea of loose rock salt as ladders made of sugar suspend in the surrounding space. Juxtaposing sugar, salt and the human figure, van Duren presents images that imply mortality in the context of a harsh, but also “sweet” world.
Exhibition Dates: October 2 – 31, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, October 2 from 6 – 9pm (in conjunction with Oakland Art Murmur)
Reception and Artists’ Talk: Saturday, October 3 from 12-3pm, artists’ talk at 1pm
Mercury 20 Gallery
25 Grand @ Broadway
Oakland, CA 94612
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Mercury 20 is an artist-established and operated gallery located in Oakland, CA. A collective comprised of 20 members, Mercury 20 exhibits high quality, innovative work from emerging and mid-career artists, and promotes art in the community. Gallery hours are Friday 4-7pm and Saturday, 12-3pm, and by appointment.
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Tags: art, contemporary art, exhibitions, oakland
