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The Shooting Gallery

May 9 - June 5, 2009

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839 Larkin Street San Francisco, CA 94109
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Into The Woodz Honey Dipper
Opening Reception: May 9th 2009, from 7-11 pm. The Shooting Gallery is proud to present Isabel Samaras new works "Into The Woodz". Samaras rewrites a classic child's fairy tale in this collection of oil paintings. Magical realism, and the forbidden fantasies of fabled characters present a world where elusive desires become reality. Through "Into The Woodz" Samaras re-imagines the traditional fable of Goldilocks and The Three Bears into a modern day romance. In one painting titled "Honey Dripper" Samaras riffs on the French Neoclassical Ingres' Turkish painting called “The Bather of Valpincon”, depicting apple-cheeked Goldy at a wooded hot springs with the three bears. Goldy has taken on a different look, sexier and a bit more trendy, with an elaborate back tattoo of a huge bee hive with an arrow through it. The distant background the Woodland Fabulous forest is inhabited by blinged-out critters. Some include a porcupine with "love/hate" knuckle rings and a big black-power afro-pick stuck in his quills; a European red squirrel sporting a dookie chain with a huge gold acorn on it; and a boom box jammed up in a tree with a flock of mocking birds sitting on it having a "rap war." This story tells of a girl who didn't trade her identity in for a tiara, but she found true love (and love conquers all, even inter-species romance!). Samaras work is a form of visual story telling – witty, mysterious, and tender. Her painted narratives, classical in technique and pop in content, revolve around issues of secret love, unrequited lust and making things end the way we wish they would. While some paintings are reminiscent of formal Renaissance portraiture, others set in the woods are a bit more intuitive. The oil painted wood panels are lush with bold and sexy colors are complimented by a series of pencil drawings dashed with gold watercolor and framed in vintage "black forest" style wooden frames. Comparing her work to postmodern painting, one critic writes, “Samaras has created a truly populist art." Familiar to a broad audience through publications like Juxtapoz and International Tattoo Art magazines, Samaras' work has also been featured in the books “Vicious, Delicious & Ambitious: 20th Century Women Artists,” “Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art,” and “Weirdo Deluxe: The Wild World of Pop Surrealism and Lowbrow Art” and her upcoming monograph with Chronicle Books "On Tender Hooks: The Art of Isabel Samaras." She opened her studio to the television shows “Internet Tonight,” “SexTV,” “Ooh La La,” and the documentary films “The Lowdown on Lowbrow" and "Newbrow: Contemporary Underground Art."