HACKETT-FREEDMAN GALLERY
MARK WOLFE CONTEMPORARY ART
MARX & ZAVATTERO
San Francisco, 11.6.08
Hackett-Freedman Gallery:
Roland Petersen - A Natural Order
Artists: Roland Petersen
Hackett-Freedman Gallery brought together a series of early works by Roland Petersen from the 1960s, many of which are being shown for the first time. The works are representative of a tenet of Bay Area figurative painting, with which Petersen and his contemporaries such as David Park are associated. His bright canvases demonstrate his masterly command of working with the figure in an abstracted landscape of color contrasts and varying textures. What perhaps distinguishes his style in these pieces is the way in which the figure vibrates in a dynamic relationship with the background, working to carve out its own space, as happens in "August Afternoon."
Roland Petersen
Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art:
New Works
Artist: Danielle Giudici Wallis and Diem Chau
The Mark Wolfe gallery brought together the works of Danielle Giudici Wallis and Diem Chau, who both have styles that call forth the crafted quality of their works and who both use materials that emphasize the tactile nature of their surfaces. Wallis' works play with the ideas of private and public through domestic objects such as umbrellas, dressers, and chairs that are covered or constructed with rugged materials such as roof shingles and brick, materials commonly reserved for external construction. (An example is "Portable Shelter"). The fabrication of these items with construction "ingredients" complements the delicate pieces presented by Diem Chau. Chau goes in the opposite direction by draping porcelain cups that frame silk transparent sheets and their detailed embroidery of "drawn" hands, feet, and figures. The fragility and endearing nature of the works is also reflected in Chau's crayons and No. 2 pencils, potentially domestic items of childhood innocence carefully carved into mini-figurine "netsuke."
Some Highlights: Danielle Giudici Wallis
Some Highlights: Diem Chau
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Marx & Zavattero:
The Impact Curve
Artist: William Swanson
Swanson's works are explorations in post-apocalyptic landscapes and cityscapes, horizons that also defy gravity and spread amorphically like collages as in "Collapse Cycle." Despite the imaginings of a future of run-down machinery and garbage often suspended in weightless silhouettes, Swanson's pieces are bright, colorful, and even cheerful. They adhere to a strong sense of both architectural and graphic design and convey a beauty from the images of humanless wastelands. If he does not do so already, I hope that Swanson would not take offense at the suggestion that he create T-shirts in the same style. I can imagine a following.
Some Highlights: William Swanson
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(Visual Culture Visits, http://viscultvis.blogspot.com/)
2008. All rights reserved.
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