PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
C E R A S O L I gallery presents the fine art work of three painters invoking various photographic genres in their work: John Grande in Gallery One, Franziska Klotz in Gallery Two, and Nick Potter in Gallery Three at the Cerasoli Gallery (8530-B Washington Blvd in Culver City). Opens April 18, 2009, and remains on view through May 13, 2009. Opening reception is Saturday, April 18, from 6pm – 8pm.
In Gallery One, contemporary painter John Grande’s oil on canvas portraits often resemble archival budoir photographs cleverly interwoven with archetypal gender narratives. Grande’s approach to painting is influenced by high fashion photographers such as Annie Liebowitz, with whom the artist worked as a printmaker for years. His doll-like subjects are rendered in high relief with dramatic light and dark contrasts, reflecting both innocence and idealistic beauty as well as eluding to underlying chaos and mystery. Inspired by life and the consequences of its destruction, Grande’s paintings touch on enigmas of sexual culture and stereotypes while investigating the connection between art and fashion. Grande’s work has been exhibited worldwide with solo shows in Canada and the United States.
German-born artist Franziska Klotz collects, tags, and archives snapshots, which she then reconfigures as paintings that are often contradictory and dreamily abstract. Klotz’s deconstruction and composition process is not unlike the creation of a recipe whose end result no longer bears any resemblance to its original list of ingredients. Klotz’s layering technique allows viewers to make connections organically, rather than immediately: the representational quality of the paintings are embedded deep within the works. Delicious pastel hues are engulfed in shadow, cloaked in encroaching darkness and discord, conflating references to Monet and De Kooning. In many of Klotz’s large-scale paintings, brush and spackle paint applications coincide with graphic elements and aerosol techniques, further emphasizing Klotz’s consideration of the boundaries between depiction and abstraction, image and afterimage, expression and impression.
Influenced by the banality of everyday spaces in his native England, Nick Potter’s current works use architectural spaces and images of desire to explore the implicit interrelations between class, materialism, isolation and anxiety. Visually seductive, photo-real depictions of familiar Modernist settings and subjects constitute Potter’s compelling and, at times, unnerving imagery. Utilizing a gorgeous, sliding scale of grays in his black and white works, Potter employ elements of simplification and abstraction to build tension and to sow the underlying sense of anxiety and foreboding of our post-Cold War society within his dewy utopias. Potter’s recent exhibitions include a 2008 show at the La Salle University Art Museum in Philadelphia. He is an Associate Professor at Cal State University, Fresno.
C E R A S O L I gallery is located at 8530- b Washington Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232, and is open Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm. For additional information contact, Freddi Cerasoli at freddicerasoli@cerasoligallery.com or (310) 954 5974 Website: http://www.cerasoligallery.com
SOURCE: Elemental Consulting
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