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Andrea Schwartz Gallery

October 7 - November 7, 2009

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525 2nd Street San Francisco, CA 94107
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Five Seamus Conley, Arctic Bum #1, oil on canvas, 36" x 60"
Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 7, 5:30 - 7:30 PM Andrea Schwartz Gallery is pleased to announce Five, a group exhibition of new work by artists from the Bay Area, Southern California, and New Mexico. The show is comprised of both painting and sculpture, featuring painters Seamus Conley and Pang-Chieh Hsu and sculptors Brad Howe, Gordon Huether, and Ted Larsen. In Seamus Conleys new series of paintings, the artist explores the idea of transience. In one painting, a homeless person gazes over a frozen landscape with their back to the viewer. Conleys subjects are nomads, traveling from place to place without direction. They underscore the relative brief time we are here, although sometimes it can seem like an eternity, says Conley. Working in a realist style as well, painter Pang-Chieh Hsu extracts abstract qualities from the objects he depicts. In his current body of work, Hsu paints Taiwanese paper money, which is made to communicate with gods or underworld spirits in traditional Taiwanese culture. Hsu magnifies the stacked bundles of bills to such an extent that every crease and fold is evident and the subjects texture, shape, and volume takes center stage. Both Brad Howe and Ted Larsen build on the tradition of geometric abstraction. Howes aluminum wall sculpture is from his Aperture Series, in which layered planes offer the viewer alternate ways for looking at the piece. The interplay between the various layers gives the sculpture an ever-changing and complex facade. Working on a smaller scale, Larsen is interested in the ways in which pieces of scrap metal can be combined and shaped to produce a larger form. The surfaces are patchworks of metal elements pieced together in a systematic pattern and according to a particular geometry. Like Larsen, Gordon Huether manipulates found objects to create a new form. In Huethers Magic Lantern series, the artist uses Fresnel lenses to amplify vintage slides. By using modern technology to showcase the slides, Huether provides a contemporary catalyst through which to view these long forgotten images. Also on view is Huethers Neon Noodle series. Inspired by his doodles on cocktail napkins, the artist intertwines fluorescent neon tubes in plexi glass boxes to create luminous, large-scale renderings of his original drawings. Andrea Schwartz Gallery was established in 1982 and is located in the South of Market district of San Francisco. ASG exhibits contemporary work of emerging to mid-career artists from the Bay Area and across the country. ASG participates in Last Saturday, www.last-saturday.com and is a member of SFADA, www.sfada.com. Gallery Hours are Monday - Friday 9 - 5, Saturday 1 - 5.