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Swarm Gallery

August 7 - September 14, 2009

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560 Second Street Oakland, CA 94607
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Natural Selection Reenie Charriére (2009)
Swarm Gallery is pleased to present the pairing of Portland-based artist Josh Keyes and Seattle-based artist Vaughn Bell in the exhibition Natural Selection. The exhibition explores ways we interact with nature, and comprises new paintings and site-specific installation. Josh Keyes' work brings to mind the detail and complexity of natural history dioramas, and the color and diagrammatic complexity one might find in cross section illustrations from a vintage science textbook. His work has developed over the past years into an iconic and complex personal vocabulary of imagery that creates a mysterious and sometimes unsettling juxtaposition between the natural world and the man made landscape. The work conveys an anxious vision of what the world might be like in the future as a result of current global warming predictions. Keyes' interest in creating paintings that fuse realism with the possible often evokes the imagery found in dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature, while other works express the optimism and utopian ideas found in the writings of Buckminster Fuller and Paolo Soleri. Keyes often incorporates objects and animals into his dissected environments that have personal iconographic significance. He weaves his personal mythology through fractured and isolated landscapes that are either overgrown with vegetation or underwater, and often depict historic or military monuments covered with graffiti. The imagery functions as a way for Keyes to express his personal experience and also allows him to comment and interpret events in the world. Vaugh Bell's work is informed by an ever-expanding array of ideas and histories. She is as interested in discussions of sustainability, property rights, public space and ecological function as she is in a range of contemporary art practices. Investigations into local sites, art histories and cultures become the groundwork for site-based work, whether it is performances in public space or installation works. In some cases, a conceptual exploration takes form in drawings, objects and actions, and then adapts to diverse locations and contexts. She is inspired by moments of absurdity and contradiction as well as my own visceral experiences of place. In a recent body of work, she explores the iconic aspects of a mountain landscape, traditionally represented in landscape painting as the distant mountain peaks on the horizon. "Surrogate Mountain" is a portable version of Mt. Rainier, recreated at a scale of 1:30000 (1 inch=2500 feet). The miniature mountain can travel throughout the city with its caretaker, providing a mountain view when clouds obscure the horizon. In this piece, the majesty of Mt. Rainier becomes something we can literally carry with us everywhere, and the iconic view of the mountain is accessible on any street corner. The human desire to make the landscape knowable and controllable is satirized, as the diminutive mountain is pulled along concrete pathways.
Natural Selection Vaughn Bell, Village Green, Installation at MassMoCA (2008) Photo by Kevin Kennefick
Natural Selection Josh Keyes, Evacuation I (2009), Acrylic on panel