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Vintage Prints and Posters + WearingPost an Event »

Rena Bransten Gallery

March 17 - April 24, 2011

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#210 #210 San Francisco, CA 94107
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Vintage Prints and Posters + Wearing Ian McDonald, Hanging Vessel Collection, 2011, ceramic, powder coated steel, rope, 48 x 20 inches
The Rena Bransten Gallery will present vintage works on paper by Rupert Garcia and new ceramic and mixed media sculptures by Ian McDonald. Rupert Garcia’s vintage works will include silk-screen images made during the turbulent 1960’s and 70’s, a time when political, social, and cultural questions were being addressed in the visual media via protest posters and prints. His images reference art, Mexican American history, advertising and consumer iconography, the Vietnam War, and the Mexican Revolution. As with his current art works in different media, Garcia’s early posters and prints used emotionally charged symbols to reiterate the point that cyclical upheavals have defined changes in human power structures, commerce, and civic progress throughout history. With the current global state of affairs, what resonates profoundly throughout the works is how timely they are today almost fifty years later. Garcia received a Masters degree in art history from the University of California, Berkeley and recently retired as a tenured professor from the school of Art and Design at San Jose State University. Concurrent with this exhibition, will be Rupert Garcia, The Magnolia Editions Projects 1991 – 2011 at the De Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco through July 17th. Ian McDonald’s exhibition, Wearing, refers to the displays of non-functional ceramic objects hung, assembled, or arranged to evoke clothing or containers re-configured for puzzling purposes. As in past bodies of work, multiple forms in different sizes and shapes are grouped to suggest mass produced items of quotidian or even specific functionality – in this case, “things” that are worn down or out or hung up to be worn later. The hardness of fired clay makes it difficult to relate the hanging forms to “things worn” or to imagine what their industrial use might be, but McDonald has long enjoyed stretching the possibilities of both forms and functions. His title urges viewers to process the physical inventory and its functions as a mental exercise, but otherwise, to enjoy the shapes, colors, and arrangements for the aesthetic harmonies they may suggest. McDonald graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2000 with an MFA and currently teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work is included in the collections of The Museo Internazionale della Ceramiche in Faenza, Italy, the International Sculpture Center Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10:30 to 5:30, Saturdays 11 to 5. For more information, please visit our website at www.renabranstengallery.com or contact the gallery directly at (415) 982-3292.
Vintage Prints and Posters + Wearing Rupert Garcia, El Grito de Rebelde, 1975, Color silkscreen on white wove paper, AP, 32 1/2 x 26 1/4 inches