Event

Strange NaturePost an Event »

Mercury 20 Gallery

September 2 - September 26, 2010

Info

475 25th Street Oakland, CA 94612
Google Map »
Strange Nature Maya Kabat, Break the Lake #6, drawing
Opening Reception: Friday, September 3 from 6-9pm (in conjunction with Oakland Art Murmur) Artists’ Talk: Saturday, September 4, 2010, 2:00 pm Mercury 20 Gallery is pleased to announce Strange Nature, a group show by gallery artists Maya Kabat, Charlie Milgrim and Joan Weiss. The show explores uncanny aspects of nature through painting, drawing and sculpture. Maya Kabat presents drawings evolved from an interest in language and numbers as systems of symbolic abstraction. Kabat's work relates to nature and natural laws as well as the human need to structure and order the universe; to tally, quantify, order and link. In the world of these drawings, time and space, numbers and language are constructs that bend, change and dance to rules not fully understood. These works play with a fantasy of space-time that is based in joy, beauty and order. Charlie Milgrim explores, dissects and reconfigures perceptions of stuffed animals. Abandoning an ironic distinction between fake furry creatures and warm cuddly animals, the underlying theme of this work addresses consumerism in desperate, twisted and unnatural times. Joan Weiss's recent paintings explore the processes of growth and decay in the natural world. Her large, richly colored works exploit the possibilities of oil on canvas with layers of underpainting and transparent glazes. Densely packed, teeming with plant and flower-derived forms, there is a sense of ripeness teetering on the edge of dissolution. Here nature beckons and threatens as beauty struggles with excess, in an overgrowth of reckless blooms.