Want to see your San Francisco area art event listed on this page?
Instructions can be found here.
Search San Francisco and Bay Area art here:
Chris Ashley and Alan Disparte
August 7 - September 13, 2008
Opening Reception August 7, 6-9 pm
DCP Project Space, 1928 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Open Thursday - Saturday Noon - 6pm (and by appointment)
(Left) - 365-2007 (2 of 365 drawings), 2007 - 132" x 263.5" overall © Chris Ashley
(Right) - MILKROOM, 2008, acrylic on wood panel - 60" x 84" overall © Alan Disparte
DCP (David Cunningham Projects) is pleased to announce a two person exhibition of new and recent work by Bay Area based artists Chris Ashley and Alan Disparte. The exhibition includes painting, HTML drawings and a large-scale print installation.
Chris Ashley is a painter who began working with HTML to make drawings in 2000 and since July of 2002 has created and posted a unique HTML drawing to his weblog on a daily basis. Created entirely using HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), which restricts composition to rows and columns of hard edged solid colored cells the drawings are assembled "by hand" without use of a graphics program or scripting. Working to a daily deadline and with the extreme limitations imposed by the grid of the HTML table Ashley pushes the limits of the medium to produce painterly compositions of great inventiveness, wit and currency. George Lawson has said of his work "Ashley's roots are classical. The substantive value of his imagery will outlive any novelty of his working in HTML. He never forgets that his true medium is color and light, and he wields these basics with a deftness any painter would envy".(1)
Transcending formalist tropes and the merely diaristic Ashley makes the point that "This public, journal-like practice is an important aspect of how the work is made, and is a context that provides another layer of meaning to the body of work having to do with audience, habit, deadline, accumulation, aggregation, cross-referencing, and reflection". Although the drawings are often given individual titles and each has or responds autonomously to a subject or theme, they are most often created in series and exhibited in groups so that each becomes an element in a larger work. Ashley will exhibit several groupings of these drawings at DCP including a wall sized installation of all 365 drawings created in 2007.
Alan Disparte is a painter who also works in video, installation and sculpture. His work addresses issues of media and culture and is a response to what he perceives as the "subversion of reality in the media of the moment" in it's promotion of a "mass-manipulated "truth"". A deep yearning for "the authenticity of home" in the face of the blandness of urban sprawl and prevailing pop culture manifests itself in his work as a kind of "manufactured memory", a warped nostalgia. His recent paintings have a spatial complexity with suspended organic shapes and symmetries found in the natural world and human anatomy creating weightless environments where familiar forms are seen in unfamiliar ways. Writing for ARTWEEK Victoria Reed describes his new paintings as "Abstract in the densest sense, flat geometric forms hover amidst art deco curls, twirls and embellishments. Color reigns supreme and, even though the shapes may or may not be familiar..- the play of color, form and shape takes precedence over any reality, real or imagined. Disparte's paintings are pure joy to look at".(2)
For his first exhibition at DCP Disparte will show several new paintings.
(1)- from 'Painting on Water' - an essay by George Lawson, 2007 published by Marjorie Wood Gallery, © George Lawson
(2)- Artweek, July, 2008 - "5 from San Francisco at R.B. Stevenson Gallery" by Victoria Reed
Chris Ashley is an artist, writer and educator living and working in Oakland, CA. He earned his BA in Fine Arts at CSU Hayward. His work has been exhibited widely in the US, including Atlanta, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Portland and San Francisco and has been included in group shows in Tokyo (Japan) and Linz (Austria). Earlier this year he had a solo online show with Marjorie Wood Gallery. This is his first exhibition with DCP.
Alan Disparte lives and works in San Francisco. He earned his BFA at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo and his MFA in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. A painter, sculptor and video maker his work has been exhibited in London, Oakland and San Francisco and was recently included in a group show curated by Frances McCormack at R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla. His video work has been screened at New College Film Center and SFAI. This is his first exhibition with DCP.
For more information please visit
www.davidcunninghamprojects.com
San Francisco Art Magazine is not responsible for errors or changes in calendar submissions.
Please check with venues for the most up to date information.
|
|
