3 - Micaela Gallery + Projects - AMORPHOUS DREAMS

in collaboration with

BEKRIS

GALLERY

Micaela Gallery + Projects

Press Release

AMORPHOUS DREAMS

Prema Murthy. Merkaba II, 2011

Installation. Dimensions variable

San Francisco, CA - February 21, 2011 - Please join us for the opening reception for AMORPHOUS DREAMS: a sculpture exhibition featuring artists Prema Murthy, Susan Longini, Marvin Lipofsky, Jay Musler, Bella Feldman, Silvia Levenson, and Clifford Rainey.

Saturday, March 5 from 2 to 4.30 pm

Micaëla Gallery + Projects
at Bekris Gallery
49 Geary Street (2d Floor)
San Francisco, CA 94108

Contact: info@micaela.com http://micaela.com

Exhibition runs March 3 through March 29

Micaëla Gallery + Projects, in collaboration with Bekris Gallery, is pleased to present AMORPHOUS DREAMS (Project 2:2011) an exhibition of artwork by seven contemporary artists whose mediums of expression are glass and new media.

Invoking ideas of beauty and mythology, while commenting on contemporary culture, these artists simultaneously challenge our intellect as well as our sensual experience with their sculpture. Meticulously, and expertly, crafting artwork with color, material and, in some cases, sound, each artist presents vibrant compositions. The artworks address personal cultural references of contemporary community, life, metaphysics and politics by Prema Murthy, Susan Longini, Marvin Lipofsky, Jay Musler, Bella Feldman, Silvia Levenson, and Clifford Rainey.

PREMA MURTHY

With a resume that includes exhibitions at PS1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, among others, Prema Murthy introduces the Merkaba, known as the star tetrahedron, a portal into higher dimensions. Comprised of video, drawings and an installation, Murthy's work is an extension of the artist's ongoing exploration into the ever-shifting boundaries of embodiment, cognition and Mind. She references math and science to locate and map our interconnections to the universe on micro and macro, inner and outer, physical and spiritual planes.

SUSAN LONGINI

Susan Longini's work references the lost community of Caithness, Scotland, where windswept landscapes and crumbling buildings bear witness to abandoned homesteads. Using pâte-de-verre in a painterly manner to create variegated landscapes, Longini devised a unique and convincing way to unify realism with traditional landscape abstractions, and address her personal social commentary in so doing.

MARVIN LIPOFSKY

Marvin Lipofsky, collaborator, educator, inveterate traveler, multi-awarded artist, respected sculptor, and passionate supporter of the arts, is credited with bridging international communities of artists, overcoming ideological barriers and continents, to form an international glass community. His career as a working artist is a story of artistic depth and broad recognition over a five-decade journey. A master colorist, Lipofsky's work deliberately pays homage to the communities he works with, classically addressing sculptural concerns of light and space. He established respected glass programs at the University of California at Berkeley and the California College of Arts and Crafts.

JAY MUSLER

Jay Musler is a visual person. He states, "Wherever I go and whatever I do is reflected in my work." His inspiration begins with reverie-like assemblages of shapes, forms, and colors. Working with glass to reconstruct patterns he finds in nature, landscapes, and architecture, he cuts, shapes, and paints his glass sculpture until satisfied. An abstractionist, Musler's work incorporates humor with playful thoughtfulness.

BELLA FELDMAN

Since 1992, Bella Feldman has been occupied with two series of work involving movement and interaction. The first, inspired by the Gulf War and her own concerns, is "War Toys," a flock of comic, ferocious, fantastic machines with wheels and clumsy movement. Made small, ankle to knee high, they impart on the viewer an opportunity for Olympian detachment. Alternatively, they are pet-size, seductively interesting, and inviting to play with. A new series, "War Toys Redux," continues the concerns of the original "War Toys." These toys in glass and metal reference bio-terror. Feldman states, "As in the earlier series, these sculptures intend to please and provoke and to address war itself as an ongoing preoccupation."

SILVIA LEVENSON

Silvia Levenson addresses life and femininity with wry wit and beautiful work. Addressing concerns of daily life and the veiled ambience of home, her work offers viewers a darkly comic window of "bliss." Modern self medication, "happy-ness," the home, as cocoon and battlefield: a place of love, hate, and tension, are playfully displayed with dualities of fragility and imperviousness - effectively conveyed via her chosen mediums of glass and video. Much of her work is an attempt to resolve the difficulties of living with threats of violence, political and domestic, that are out of our control.

CLIFFORD RAINEY

Classical icons, contemporary society, and diverse cultural symbols collide in clever, allegorical sculptures. Clifford Rainey's first issued edition work, Amphictyonis: Greek Goddess of Wine and Friendship Between Nations is nothing less. Born in Northern Ireland and now a San Francisco Bay Area resident, Rainey chairs the Glass Program at the California College of the Arts. His work is exhibited in collections that include the Victoria and Albert Museum, the MH de Young Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Rainey's work pushes the veristic boundaries of figurative glass sculpture, finding opulent visions in muscle, bone and sinew to create dense and exquisite allusions. Always working with glass, introducing techniques of polychromy married with ideas of personal expression, Rainey's sculpture and its seemingly abstract manipulation of the human figure reveal alarming depths in the loveliest of forms.

AMORPHOUS DREAMS is about visual expression - the ideals, interpretation, materials and hope - articulated by these artists and used in a contemporary and classic vernacular.

Micaëla Gallery + Projects is a project-oriented program and art advisory, independent of traditional gallery confines, retaining presence through curated exhibitions, international art fair participation, collaborations with private art consultants and gallery colleagues, publications, gatherings (where select artists, critics and friends come together to enhance our visual art community), and of course, through new and traditional social networks.

Micaëla Gallery + Projects

BEKRIS GALLERY

49 Geary Street (2d Floor)

San Francisco, California.

HOURS

Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 6

and by appointment

CONTACT

info@micaela.com
for questions or to set up an appointment

OPENING RECEPTION

March 5 from 2 to 4.30 pm

Exhibition runs through March 29