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Oyster Pirate Workshop: Vehicles of EmancipationPost an Event »

Varnish Fine Art

December 2 - January 11, 2009

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16 Jessie St., #C120 San Francisco, CA 94105
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Oyster Pirate Workshop: Vehicles of Emancipation
The Oyster Pirate Workshop sets sail at Varnish Fine Art The Oyster Pirate Workshop: Vehicles of Emancipation December 2, 2008 – January 10, 2009 Opening Reception Thursday December 4, 7-10pm The Vehicles of Emancipation collection of collaborative paintings by The Oyster Pirate Workshop, a group of seven artists opens with a reception for the artists. The Oyster Pirates are James Lichnovsky, Joel Mejia, Michael Page, Christian Rothenhagen, Shawn Webber, Jason Wheatley, and Sri Zeno Whipple. Brought together by a long relationship of mutual artistic drive and criticism, The Oyster Pirate Workshop creations pull the pearl out of the oyster for each individual artist, celebrating the best of each in single harmonious works of art. With the exception of one European and one out-of-state artist, the Oyster Pirates live and work in San Francisco. Berlin-based Christian Rothenhagen focuses his drawings, paintings and illustrations on the architecture of his beloved city. Raised in Utah where his studio remains, Sri Zeno Whipple combines his love of the masters with comic book art and animation to create bold and fluid hypersexual masterworks which would taste like ginger cookies if you could eat them. Jason Wheatley mixes impeccable brushwork with Oriental motifs and Audubon-quality fantastic tableaux, using electric color and painterly gestures. Tending toward non-representation in his own artwork, James Lichnovsky nevertheless carries with him a background as prop-master and painter for film and a sculptor for the likes of Disney, Warner Bros., and Mattel. Michael Page returns to Varnish as an Oyster Pirate with his increasingly complex, outer-worldly, narrative oil paintings, adding yet another dimension through collaboration to his international career as an artist. Informed by years of sculpting before a return to 2-dimensions and the inspiration of fellow painters/pirates, Shawn Webber allows the paint to direct his representational work. Reminiscent of the height of days-gone-by carnival troupe theatrics, The Oyster Pirate collaboration presents a unified series of easy intensity. Varnish welcomes the Oyster Pirates return to San Francisco from their recent exhibition in Germany. **Varnish is a 21+ only venue. No babies or children will be admitted.