June 20th through July 18th, 2009

Rowan Morrison Gallery is proud to announce Steven Barich: The Logic Stone and other new work opening on June 20th, 2009

In his solo exhibition, Barich presents a new series consisting of graphite works on paper, mixed-media wall sculpture and short video. This series investigates the relationship between visual patterns, codes and text in the digital age. Barich blends organic shapes, ranging from abstractions to anonymous silhouettes, with geometric patterns and coded writing that creates an association between the natural and virtual worlds, blurring the boundaries of the two.

The work on display at Rowan Morrison Gallery is focused around one large-scale work (42 x 60 inches) and accompanied by a group of smaller 16 x 16 inch drawings, each related to Chinese Scholar's Rocks.. Historically, Chinese Scholar's Rocks were appreciated for their physical/visual representation of a spiritual concept of universal balance embodied in a unique natural object: the rock itself. However, most rocks were "improved" by human hands, a process known but hidden. The Logic Stone and other artworks adopt that process of manipulation via pattern and various manifestations of visual information, to arrange a modern form of balance between the natural form and digital or processed information.

Steven Barich holds an MFA from Mills College, and a BFA from California College of the Arts. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at The Compound Gallery (Oakland) and Animal Magnetism at The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art. He has shown widely in the last decade at renowned local spaces like 21 Grand, StartSOMA, CELLspace, and Southern Exposure, in addition to spending time as an artist in residence in the Netherlands, and exhibiting throughout Europe. He lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

Rowan Morrison Gallery is an artist-run exhibition space in Oakland, California. The gallery and art book publisher is owned and operated by Pete and Narangkar Glover, both graduates of California College of the Arts. The focus of Rowan Morrison Gallery is to exhibit artists whose work and ethics reflect critical thought in contemporary art. By offering solo exhibitions the artist is allowed to express a full body of work early in his/her career. The gallery features an eclectic selection of artist books, zines, paper goods and prints as an avenue for individuals to affordably, yet intellectually pursue art in any vein.

Rowan Morrison Gallery
330 40th Street (at Broadway)
Oakland, CA 94609
+1 510 384 5344

 

 

 

 

 

june 18 - august 8, 2009

peter belyi, justine cooper, guerra de la paz, leemour pelli, stephen j shanabrook

For the end of the season we present five artists who's work reflect on the passing year: Russian sculptor Peter Belyi reminisces unsentimentally about the fall of empires; Guerra De La Paz's Snake Charmer series recast the Power Tie as an emblem of submission and greed; conceptual artist Stephen J Shanabrook, known for his expression of beauty on the threshold of disaster, waterboard's two choir boys in chocolate; Leemour Pelli's paintings evoke the collapse of the human psyche; and Justine Cooper's fictitious drug "Havidol" - created for a disease she coined, Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder - markets desire for those not satisfied with a generic sense of well being.

Peter Belyi's Unecessary Alphabet are homemade signs which read Bread, Cheese, Wine and Vodka - plain and basic commodities. The objects are memorial plaques to history - simple-hearted Soviet era signs from a time of a total deficit of goods.

In response to the marketing and advertising tactics of the pharmaceutical industry Justine Cooper has created a fictional marketing campaign to launch her magic-bullet lifestyle pharmaceutical HAVIDOL® which treats Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder. Presented in this exhibition are the TV commercials which tap into our collective desire and expectation that there is always room for improvement - while walking the line between poking fun at ourselves and wondering how to obtain a prescription. Cooper's work comments on our temperamental relationship to western medicine, built upon the idea of a malfunctioning body or mind, and the yearning to believe everyday life can be remedied.

Guerra De La Paz's work is composed from appropriated clothing. The term, 'Power Tie', surfaced in the 1980's as stakes and earnings rose to uncontrollable heights. The Power Tie projected a certain level of success by defining one's place in the hierarchy of the corporate world; as well as expressing wealth and influence amongst the wearer's contemporaries - a sign of membership and professional expectation among the business elite. The figures are faceless entities like the powerful institutions they represent. Their ties transform into vipers, insinuating the treachery behind their alliance as they suspiciously guard themselves from each other.

Leemour Pelli aims at exploring fundamental aspects of human experience, both real and imagined. Though the work consists of single figures or couples, larger issues concerning the break down or malfunctioning of human relations and humanity itself are invoked.. A general failure at connection is evident. Indeed, the work is about fundamental collapse: of contemporary social conventions, perceptions, relationships, and individuals' internal and exterior worlds. The theme of susceptibility and proclivity for bad and uncertain manifestations seems to abound in Pelli's works.

Stephen J Shanabrook's Waterboarding is the peaceful song of a pair of choir boys turned into a silent scream. Shanabrook mixes an array of materials - from chocolate to various melted plastic objects. Shanabrook gives a new and often disturbing meaning to substances otherwise associated with comfort and happiness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

18 June 2009 to 24 July 2009

Hudson Franklin is pleased to present "Embedded",  a group exhibition featuring the work of Alice Könitz, Fawn Krieger, and Jamisen Ogg.

These three artists embed forms associated with modernist architecture and design as well as Minimalism into their sculptures and works on paper. Each artist has subsumed the modernist vocabulary, and in varying degrees of transparency, each artwork in the exhibition investigates the ubiquity and precedents of that language. Jamisen Ogg's "Associate (bench)" is a handmade replica of a George Nelson bench altered to include an appendage: a custom-shaped canvas painted with his signature drippy CMYK palette. Similarly, in Fawn Krieger's "Case Study 63", the foundational shapes of a Case Study house design are surmounted by a concrete rock formation. In other works, the modernist embed is more suggested, as in Alice Könitz's Untitled (3 pieces), which subtly relies on a modernist grid as its skeleton. The artists in Embedded create objects with a lingering sense of utopia that supply perceptual shifts while building within an assimilated vocabulary.

Alice Könitz (Los Angeles, CA) was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. She received her M.F.A. from the California Institute for the Arts after graduating from the Academy Düsseldorf, Germany, as a Master Student. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Suzanne Vielmetter Projects Los Angeles and Berlin; University Art Museum, California State University Long Beach; and at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. This fall, she will take part in a two-person exhibition with Arthur Ou at LAXART in Los Angeles.

Fawn Krieger (New York, NY) received an M.F.A. in 2004 from Bard College. Her most recent solo project, "COMPANY," began at Art In General, New York, in 2007 and continues in the recently published catalogue "Fawn Krieger: COMPANY." This fall, she will be working on a commissioned project at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, and her work will be included in a group exhibition at the Lambretto Art Project, Milan, Italy.

Jamisen Ogg (New York, NY) studied printmaking at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving his M.F.A. in 2004. His recent exhibitions include "I Don't Believe You" at Roots & Culture, Chicago, IL, and "One Loses One's Classics" at White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO. His first solo exhibition with Hudson Franklin was reviewed in Artforum last October.

 

 

 

Hudson Franklin
508 West 26th Street, #318
New York, NY 10001
+1 212-741-1189

 

 

 

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