Aftermodern is pleased to present Ethereal Realities, an exhibition of new work by San Francisco painter Molly McCracken Kumar. Following the artist’s opening reception on Friday, April 11th from 6 to 8pm, the show will be on view at the gallery through May 14th.
Stemming from her inquiry into the unending processes of birth, death and rebirth, Molly McCracken Kumar specifically portrays moments of emergence and regeneration in this new body of work. Fluid atmospheres surround the abstract forms of plants and cells, much like the primordial waters from which the cultivation of new life becomes possible. The large format images depict constant states of flux and equilibrium through the presence of biomorphic clusters, both emergent and dormant.
In an exploration of transient experiences, the paintings embrace the permanence of beauty as they metaphorically suggest the renewal of idealized possibilities and the energy of seasonal change. Through the painting process, the artist provides a conduit to a celebrated sensuality resonant with the role of nature’s growth cycle. As a corollary to this overarching cycle, the meticulous layering of paint is ultimately both a celebration of an opening to the present as well as a meditation upon desire.
Aftermodern is pleased to present Resemblances, an exhibition of work by New York photographer Caroline Shepard. Following the artist’s opening reception on Friday, March 7th, from 6 to 8pm, the show extends through April 9th.
In this exhibit Shepard references not only the many separate pieces from which each photograph is digitally assembled, but also the mimetic nature of the final image as a representation. Resemblances come to exist between the individual parts and the constructed whole, a relationship of empirical reality and transcendent ideality as shown within personal living spaces, urban interiors and their inhabitants. The images engage complex dialogues of the real and the possible, the actual and the supposed, suggesting the ambivalences of perception within a visual fabric of the imaginary. From Shepard’s immediate circle, it is ultimately the human subject that psychologically anchors the photographs as they elude expectation through interpreted light and perspective.
Shepard’s work was recently chosen by American Photography 23 to be included in the Best Images of 2006 presentation on their website, and also was included in Oprah’s 2007 “Best Of” anthology. Her work regularly appears in New York Magazine as well as other publications. A native of New York, she is one of the regeneration 50 photographers of tomorrow.
Reception: Friday, January 25th, 6 - 9pm
Aftermodern is pleased to present Grandma, a group exhibition of original works by Libby Black, Chris Bogia, Matt Borruso, Hein Koh, Deb Sokolow and Ann Toebbe. An exploration of metaphoric forms steeped in the intricacies of personal narrative, the exhibition opens on January 25th, 2008 and runs through February 23rd. An artists’ opening reception will be held on January 25th from 6 to 9pm.
What stereotypes and personal associations do we attach to the word “Grandma”? Who can recall Grandma without considering old age, loneliness, fulfillment and death? This exhibition invites six artists to contemplate their own experience of family, memory and the cultural divide separating youth and old age.
Libby Black constructs paper replicas of her grandmother’s toiletries, jewelry, and Chanel perfume. Chris Bogia uses string, glue and yarn in an homage to the 60’s craft movement, homemakers, and his miniature pinscher Olympia (named after his grandmother). Matt Borruso offers a grotesque school portrait of a young-old person with a huge red nose and oversized ears. Hein Koh remembers her grandmother’s native country and the endless chili peppers she dried on bamboo mats in the living room. Deb Sokolow maps the paranoid delusions of questionable tenants in a Chicago apartment building and its gossipy eighty-year old superintendent, Abby (a.k.a. “Grandma”). Ann Toebbe channels Grandma Moses in faux-folksy paintings of her childhood memories of her grandmother’s farm in Southern Indiana.
This project is supported by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
Drawings and Paintings
Reception: Friday, November 9th, 6 - 9pm
San Francisco artist Antonio Sindorf explores a complex symbiosis between painting and drawing through a dynamic palette of visual elements that can be experienced as both narrative and provocation. He derives inspiration for his art from many sources including Greek mythology, biblical and modern apocalyptic themes, sexuality, humor, parody and social commentary. Many of his drawings stand as studies for his oil paintings, while others project as autonomous explorations in their own right. His paintings often contain different voices and patterns that echo each other while also reversing thematic material.
The photographs of Charles Anselmo depict a compelling archaeology of loss and discreetly suggest a visual compression of time, memory and the past as they insistently address issues of history and transition. Anselmo depicts Havana and New Orleans in the exhibit from a platform of social documentary counterpoint, and at the same time deconstructs the city as a place of permanence. While pointing out the parallels in visual elements existing between these two very different cities in structural decline, the images ultimately demonstrate the social context of Havana’s vitality and promise in contradistinction to the disillusionment of New Orleans today.
Download Review by DeWitt Cheng
Humphries’ paintings explore the home as a site of memory, nostalgia, and anxiety. Incorporating the jarring and explicit nature of photographic composition, multiple views of the space combine to create a tension between what we know to be real and what is simply familiar. The shift from the familiar to the strange, the real to the surreal, suggests the alienation that can arise from the comforts of the home.
Our midsummer exhibit in the main gallery features emerging international photographers who explore social, political and sexual themes permeating contemporary urban society. For the first time, we will display selected photos from Charles Anselmo’s stunning exploration of Castro’s Cuba. Photographers Anoush Abrar, Walead Beshty, Tim Davis, Desiree Holman, Lucy Levene, Yoshua Okon and Ted Partin are also featured. This show introduces an eclectic global perspective via artists hailing from California, New York, London, Switzerland and Mexico. Our upstairs gallery provides a sampling of young California painters including Molly McCracken, Cathy Liu, Katie Humphries and Aaron White.
The Secretariat offers a visual exploration of the various social, political, sexual and cultural ambiguities that characterize today’s world. What better way to paint such a varied portrait than through the eyes of artists from all over the globe?
The Secretariat is the curatorial brainchild of Geof Oppenheimer, artist, instructor - lecturer, and graduate advisor at the University of California, Berkeley. Ranging in style and media, the works of his carefully selected artists are eclectic, raw, flavorful, multifaceted--much like the trends, attitudes and perceptions percolating through our airwaves, neighborhoods, workplaces. Oppenheimer presents a sagacious editorial questioning the submerged constructs of our contemporary existence.
A photograph, when considered beyond face value, reveals an intriguing relationship that exists between the one holding the camera, the subject and the person viewing the finished product. This triad is explored in The Delicate Triangle, Aftermodern’s collection of works from three awarding-winning contemporary photographers: Anoush Abrar, Lucy Levene and Ted Partin.
The images of all three photographers, who hail from Lausanne, Switzerland, London and Brooklyn, respectively, explore assimilation, dissociation and distinctiveness in our postmodern world. These themes are intricately woven through the disparate choices in subject matter: Anoush Abrar’s take on our fame-obsessed culture through the example of aspiring actresses, models and performers of modern Hollywood; Lucy Levene’s visual exploration of the struggles of marriage in a multi-cultural society; Ted Partin’s seductively provoking portfolio of urban socio-sexual culture.
The photographer/subject relationships born from this collection not only evoke the uncommon beauty of our modern world, but also force us to confront the prevalent issues that inform our current state of existence.
Aftermodern’s Press Release for The Delicate Triangle
Pink Worlds and White Icing, a collection of poems written by a twelve-year-old girl in late sixties, stands as the point of initiation for this collection of recent work by artists Carlson and Gehweiler. Awash in preteen nostalgia, strangely baroque as well as alternately naive, precocious, and deeply introspective, these tiny poems are about “color, the Beatles, bubblegum, nature and the universe”. They lend both a perfect title and a rich backdrop to this exhibition of candy-colored dreamscapes and imaginary narratives within the realm of head-in-the-clouds teenage psychedelia. The paintings engender a nuanced sensibility of the pastoral, pretty and pop while simultaneously embracing subtexts of dark comedy.
Widely considered a major influence in the recent explosion of young feminine art in the United States, Fawn Gehweiler’s aesthetic hinges on a delicate balance of past and present, building obsessive narratives through personal artifacts that reflect the imaginary worlds of little girls, treading the fine line between wide eyed innocence and dark fairy tales.
Dana Carlson enhances traditional painting techniques with embroidery, beadwork, and appliqué to create hybrid, handiworked dream worlds. Her intricate paintings conjure up a pretty, Romantic absurdity that is part down-home psychedelia, part angst-infused gesture painting, and part earnest teenager.