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Pro Arts Gallery

January 25 - February 26, 2011

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150 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza Oakland, CA 94612
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2 x 2 Solos Weston Teruya, The Gracious City at its Neighbor's Edge, Spraypaint and drawing media on paper sculpture, 168" x 96" x 92", 2010
Curated by Michelle Mansour Reception: Friday, February 4, 6 - 8 pm Berkeley-based artist Weston Teruya uses paper to create intricate sculptural installations inspired by built environments. For his first solo exhibition at Pro Arts, Teruya investigates a specific Los Angeles location in which a juvenile hall is surrounded by a public golf course. Working from research documents, photographs, maps, and city plans, the artist has reinterpreted the site, arranging the objects and buildings to draw attention to their coded relationships. The resulting installation is both an acute investigation of relational dynamics and a quiet critique of urban transitional space. Weston Teruya was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’I and received an MFA in Painting and Drawing and MA in Visual & Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. He is a the recipient of a 2009 Artadia grant and has exhibited artwork at Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Intersection for the Arts, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Southern Exposure, and the de Saissett Museum. His work is featured in the upcoming Bay Area Now 6 exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Michelle Mansour is an artist, educator, curator, and the current Executive Director of the arts non-profit Root Division. About 2 x 2 Solos 2 x 2 Solos is a series of solo exhibitions featuring new work commissioned from four accomplished emerging artists based in the Oakland/Bay Area. The program recognizes artistic excellence and supports the freedom to create challenging and noncommercial work. It provides a platform for cutting-edge, risk-taking art and situates artists in a critical contemporary art context. Supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2 x 2 Solos engages multiple layers of the region’s arts ecology by providing institutional and monetary support for artists, curators, and writers in the Oakland/Bay Area. About Pro Arts Pro Arts supports the arts within communities by serving the ongoing needs of artists. This Oakland-based arts organization provides critical access to contemporary art in the region and serves as a regional hub for arts activities, independent curated exhibitions, advocacy, and capacity-building artist services. Pro Arts’ visual arts programming showcases for the best new work made in the Oakland/Bay Area, including cutting-edge, risk-taking contemporary art, and important works by artists representing under-served populations and communities of color, and working artists. Pro Arts provides fiscal sponsorship to artists and professional services matching artists with community partners. Additionally, Pro Arts’ Youth Fellows program integrates arts education, exhibitions, arts training, and youth development. Last year Pro Arts exhibited 690 artists and produced 62 events drawing an annual audience of 72,000.