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Mission 17

February 1 - March 9, 2008

Info

http://www.mission17.org/
(510) 467-4818

2111 Mission Street Suite 401 San Francisco, CA 94110

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Opening Reception: Friday, February 1, 2008. 6pm - 9pm Eileen Starr Moderbacher’s painting practice is rooted in collage. When first planning her com- positions, she employs photographs, film stills, and cut-outs from comic books. And she main- tains this ecclecticism in her paintings by using diverse painting techniques to contrast different aspects of a piece. In the foreground, an illustrated black and white figure of Ingrid Bergman as Joan of Arc, being burned at the stake, might be set off against a more painterly landscape in oils, and juxtaposed to a colorful, acrylic figure of a comic book heroine, coming to the rescue. Moderbacher’s compositions imply narratives, which tend to be dark and haunting, riddled with danger and vulnerability. But the narratives remain fragmentary and dreamlike, which adds to the sense of anxiety that permeates her work. For her show at MISSION 17, Moderbacher will present a new body of paintings, which focus for the first time on female characters. The work explores myths of feminine identity – the helpless victim tied to the train tracks, the femme-fatale, the lover, and the muscular super-hero, among others – both to explode the stereotypes they present and to explore their power in all earnest- ness for the sake of introspection.