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Haines Gallery

November 3 - December 25, 2011

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49 Geary Street Fifth Floor San Francisco, CA 94108
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Split Array Leslie Shows. Detail from "Face K." 2011. Mylar, acrylic, plexiglass, sand, crusted glass and engraving on aluminum, 82 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the Artist and Haines Gallery.
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 3, 2011, 5:30pm to 7:30pm We are pleased to present new paintings, sculptures and video by Bay-Area based artist Leslie Shows in her first solo exhibition with Haines Gallery. This new work continues Shows' investigation of the connectivity of philosophies of matter and ontology, geology and the materiality of painting. Using sheets of plexiglass, inks, mylar, crushed glass, metal dust and engraving, Shows has reconstructed images of two pyrite rocks – more commonly known as fool’s gold – on thin, reflective aluminum panels. For Shows, the luminous reflectivity and multifaceted appearance of pyrite gives visual representation to her conceptual concern with the various lenses through which we understand objecthood. The resulting paintings appear abstract, yet are photo-realistically constructed. Shows’ large sulfur sculpture refers to the elemental composition of pyrite (iron disulfide, FeS2). While pyrite is a valueless material in industry, sulfur production is a strong indicator of a modern civilization’s economic viability. Shows casts commonplace objects and pieces of pyrite itself in vivid yellow sulfur, utilizing an industrially ubiquitous material to create a sculpture that resists notions of function and value. Leslie Shows’ work has been exhibited at the Orange County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Oakland Museum of California. She has been the recipient of an Artadia Award (2009), SFMOMA SECA Award (2006) and Tournesol Award (2006) from the Headlands Center for the Arts. Shows was recently included in the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil and just completed a residency at the Bemis Center for the Arts in Omaha, NE. She will be included in upcoming exhibitions at the Salina Art Center, SFMOMA and Nelson Gallery at the University of California, Davis.