Exhibition

SUMMER SOLOS: CHELSEA PEGRAM, YVETTE MOLINA AND AMANDA WILLIAMS

June 22- July 21
Artists' Reception, Friday, June 21, 6:00-8:00 pm
Artists' Talk, Thursday, July 12, 6:00-7:00 pm

Summer Solos highlights the region’s hottest talent through a solo exhibition opportunity in the gallery. The exhibition showcases three Oakland-based artists working in painting, graphite drawing on aluminum and mixed media site-specific installation.

With the detail of a botanist, Yvette Molina records her surroundings with delicate precision; each painting contains 15 to 20 layers of paint that imbues the surface with a dense atmospheric quality. Molina is inspired by traditional Chinese landscape paintings specifically for their use of perspective, detail and compressed range of color.

"My work is both a celebration of nature as well as an invitation to consider its fragility. With patience and detailed observation, I record segments or moments of plant and sky from my own backyard and surrounding neighborhood in Oakland, California. I take my subjects from this urban environment with the express intention of documenting the tenuous existence of green spaces in our modern world," states Molina.The exhibition includes both large-scale oil on aluminum paintings and smaller graphite on aluminum works by the artist.

Yvette Molina was born in Kansas City, Kansas and studied painting at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio; the Norfolk Institute of Art and Design in Norfolk, England; and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Angers, France. Molina has exhibited at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica, the Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica, California and the Legion of Honor and de Young Art Center in San Francisco.

Chelsea Pegram showcases several site-specific installations created from such materials as wax paper, plaster, wire, foam, Plexiglas, and acrylic fiber focusing on the conceptual elements of process-based art while emphasizing the aesthetic and formal qualities of the composition.

As stated by the artist, "Inherent motion and intermingling textures are stimulated by the viewer's natural impulse to create order and patterns amidst seemingly unrelated components. It is this impulse or instinct which I am most interested in exposing from its most primary to complex and over-processed moments, extending from the initial visual response, through the physical sensation of curiosity, excitement and uneasiness, to the need for superstructures absorbing irregularity out of our day, thoughts, and experiences." It is through this use of non-referential materials often installed as points of internal and external struggle that Pegram solicits the viewer to respond emotionally to people's need for structure, regularity and habits.

Chelsea Pegram was born in Pasadena, California and studied art at the University of San Francisco. Pegram has exhibited her work internationally, including the 30 Sorauer Strasse in Berlin, Germany; Root Division in San Francisco and has created set designs for performances at 21 Grand and Temescal Arts Center in Oakland.

For the exhibition Amanda Williams creates a site specific installation that includes a large map of Oakland and a series of small oil on panel paintings. The map 'marks' sites of violence in Oakland over the past year. In the recent past, Williams produced maps of sites both real and imagined that are associated with uncertainty or instability. It is through these maps that the artist merges her interest in painting and architecture.

"The paintings will engage in a similar discussion about the limits or boundaries of identity, self determination and its relationship to physical movement or lack there of. They will be arranged in a way that suggests that they are perhaps narrating the lives or spirit of each of the fallen victims from the map, though they will make no specific references. Both sides will tackle issues of boundaries, limits, borders, ownership, authority, territory, freedom and identity," states Williams.

Amanda Williams was born in Evanston, Illinois and studied architecture at Cornell University. Williams has exhibited her work nationally including the August Wilson Center for Art and Culture in Pittsburgh; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Williams work is held in collections that include Hennessy Cognac in Cognac, France and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Summer Solos Press Release (PDF Download)

Image: YVETTE MOLINA, Bougainvillea, 2007, graphite on aluminum, 6x6”