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Three Related
Exhibitions curated by Lawrence Rinder
"Form +"
group show of Bay Area abstraction including Todd Bura, Léonie
Guyer, Prajakti Jayavant, Phil McGaughy, Evelyn Reyes, and Dean Smith
"Dhyana"
contemporary anonymous Tantric drawings from Rajasthan
"Franck
André Jamme: New Exercises"
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March 13 - May 3,
2008
Opening reception:
Thursday March 13, 6-9 PM
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| These three related exhibitions explore form
as vehicle for imaginative experience. The artists here use form as a provocation
to attention and as an armature for understanding. Abstract as they are,
these works are not simply self-referential but rather allude to conditions
and capacities of the mind.
The Tantric drawings shown here-which are from the collection of poet
Franck André Jamme-were made anonymously as an aid to meditative
practice. The forms and colors in these works are not unique but rather
highly conventional signs that have evolved for over a thousand years
both to signify and to stimulate specific mental and spiritual experiences.
Dhyana is a Sanskrit word for deep meditation and as such
could be used to describe not only this exhibition but the two concurrent
shows as well.
Franck André Jamme: New Exercises comprises a selection
of small mirrors inscribed with short texts by one of France's leading
contemporary poets. The idiosyncratically unbroken texts as well as the
disorienting interaction of text and mirror in these works stimulate the
reader/viewer's mind, fostering a condition of unusual concentration.
Each text is a kind of philosophical instruction or "exercise";
like modern koans they exude qualities of impossibility, ephemeralness,
and paradox.
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Anonymous: tantric painting; Sanganer,
1989, unspecified paint on found paper; Courtesy of Franck André
Jamme, Paris, France and Feature Inc., New York
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| Form + presents works
by six San Francisco area artists whose work resonates with Jamme's mirror
poems and with his collection of Tantric drawings. Form, in these works,
is only deceptively the center of attention. Todd Bura's small paintings
are inordinately stimulating for works that provide so little in the way
of imagery, color, or texture. It is this very superabundance of sensation
that is the real subject of Bura's apparently minimal, formalistic works.
Similarly, Léonie Guyer's reductive drawings attend to shape
as a kind of powerful reverse explosion. Her quizzical forms gather the
energy around them into a super-potent visual moment. Dean Smith's
drawings, although rigorously dependent on pre-ordained rules of execution,
overflow with visual and visceral sensation. There is a compelling balance
in his work between expansion and condensation. A related dichotomy is evident
in Phil McGaughy's sculptures which integrate geometrical construction
with organic wood forms. In contrast to his expansive constructed elements,
McGaughy's found driftwood and manzanita sticks accrue a powerful internalizing
gravity. Evelyn Reyes' series of abstracted carrots employs repetition
and a certain intensity of execution to suggest a Platonic vision of a common
garden vegetable. Within the similarity of her forms one finds engaging
differences. Prajakti Jayavant's painted paper constructions similarly
pose provocative questions about the limits of difference and our capacity
to frame experience meaningfully. On the verge of sheer materiality, her
works betray the barest echoes of formal intent, and thereby attune our
awareness to the wonder of artistic possibility. |
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| Lawrence R. Rinder is the Dean of
the College at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Previously,
he was the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney
Museum of American Art. Prior to the Whitney, Rinder was founding director
of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, in San Francisco, and
served as Assistant Director and Curator for Twentieth-Century Art at the
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Among the many exhibitions
he organized at these institutions are "Searchlight: Consciousness
at the Millennium" (1999), "Knowledge of Higher Worlds: Rudolf
Steiner's Blackboard Drawings" (1997), "Louise Bourgeois: Drawings"
(1996), "In a Different Light" (1995) ""Felix Gonzalez-Torres"
(1994), and "Where There Is Where There: The Prints of John Cage"
(1989). |
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| Related
Events:
Concert: Friday April 11th,
7:00 PM
OF + OM + OR :
an evening of sound with Aero-Mic'd, Joshua Churchill (with light by Paul
Clipson), and Gregg Kowalsky. Organized by Dean Smith.
Talk: Friday April 18th, 7:00 PM
Sublime Colors, Subtle Forms: Contemporary Tantric Drawing from Rajasthan
Claire Daigle will trace a web of references in relation to Dhyana: Contemporary
anonymous Tantric Drawings from Rajasthan contextualizing the work both
in relation to Indian philosophical and art historical traditions and
in resonance with contemporary drawing practices.
Claire Daigle is Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Contemporary
Art in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at the San Francisco Art
Institute
Poetry Reading: Thursday
April 24th, 7:30 PM
Bill Berkson reading from
New & Selected Poems & New Exercises by Franck André Jamme
Poet and critic Bill Berkson will read from his own work and that of French
poet Franck André Jamme. André Jamme has an installation
of 60 mirrors with text inscribed on them on display in the gallery. The
Tantric drawings from Rajasthan exhibited in the 2nd floor Drawing Gallery
are pulled from his private collection.
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