Event

Until the Bright Logic is Won Unwishpering as a Mirror is BelievedPost an Event »

Noma Gallery

November 13 - December 14, 2009

Info

80 Maiden Lane 3rd Floor San Francisco, CA 94108
Google Map »
Until the Bright Logic is Won Unwishpering as a Mirror is Believed Joshua Churchill, Untitled, 2009, digital c-print, 12 x 16"
Opening reception: Friday, November 13 , from 6 to 9 pm Please join us at Noma Gallery for the opening of Until the Bright Logic is Won Unwishpering as a Mirror is Believed featuring new works by artists Peggy Cyphers and Joshua Churchill. This show is the second in the gallery's Fall series of intersecting solo shows, combining established New York artists with emerging San Francisco artists. The title of the show is borrowed from Hart Crane's poem The Legend. Crane's poetry is congruent with both of the artists' practice in its use of metaphors to transform elements from chosen surroundings into "mystic possibilities", as described by Crane. In the poet's case the point of departure was his urban environment. For Cyphers and Churchill, both urban dwellers, nature is evoked as the chosen point of departure. Depicting these spaces in painting and photos and sound, respectively, the works in the exhibition blur the abstract and representative form throughout the natural landscape. The use of luminosity by either subtraction or addition also intersects in both works. Topography becomes the setting for an unknown narrative that allows the viewer a personal point of entrance. Peggy Cyphers was born in Baltimore, Maryland and has lived and worked in New York City for over 25 years. Her work investigates through the painting medium processes of Evolution and Entropy and finds inspiration in the natural world. Recent paintings channel animal spirits through an automatic writing form of painting using traditional painting materials, sand and gold leaf. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in the New York Times, New York Observer, Art in America and San Francisco Chronicle, among others. She exhibited with the Proposition Gallery for over a decade. Recent exhibitions include "Animal Spirits" at Creon Gallery, New York City and a two person show at the Kleinert James Arts Center in Woodstock, New York in October 2009. The Noma Gallery exhibition is Cyphers ‘s first show in San Francisco in 11 years. Cyphers’ exhibition of large scale paintings and works on vellum will be accompanied by a color catalogue and feature an essay by art critic Lilly Wei. Cyphers’ has had solo shows in San Francisco at Cheryl Haines Gallery, Mincher-Wilcox Gallery and Khiva Gallery. The Noma Gallery exhibition is an exciting return to the bay area. Joshua Churchill is a San Francisco based cross-disciplinary artist who works primarily in the context of sound and light installation and photography. Churchill’s work explores the aesthetic and emotive qualities of environments and objects that are in states of transition, disuse, or decay, often focusing on contrasts and similarities between urban and rural, organic and inanimate. His immersive site-specific installations utilize sound, light, and appropriated technology to re-contextualize and reanimate these environments and objects. The function of light in Churchill’s photographs is similar to that of sound in his installations; its presence and absence share equal importance as they are used to simultaneously illustrate and obscure the subject, evoking an atmosphere rife with mystery. He has exhibited and/or performed at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery (San Francisco),, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Meridian Gallery (San Francisco), Luggage Store Gallery (San Francisco), Recombinant Media Compound (San Francisco), National Showa Kinen Park (Tokyo), Aqua Art Fair (Miami), New Media Scotland, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Post Gallery (Los Angeles), and Galeria Ze Dos Bois (Lisbon, Portugal).