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Don Soker Contemporary Art

March 3 - April 15, 2012

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80 Sutter Street San Francisco, CA 94104
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Concentric "Open-Ended Series, III", 2010, foil, acrylic, 15" x 8" x 6"
March 03, 4-6pm Mitra Fabian was born in Iran and raised in Boston. She received a BA in Art with an Anthropology minor from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. She moved to Los Angeles in 1996 and began to show her work both locally and nationally. In 2002 she received her MFA from California State University, Northridge. Since May 2005 she has resided in the Bay Area. Fabian has been showing her work nationally since 1997, including a solo show at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art in 2007. Her work has been featured in shows at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Armory Center for the Arts. Concentric is a solo show by Bay Area artist Mitra Fabian exhibiting a new body of sculptures, installation, and drawings. Concentric refers to the patterning of organic line that Fabian has been exploring through materials such as tape, plastic film, glass, and pen on translucent surfaces. Each material has been vetted for its unique ability to reflect light and create undulating contours. The patterns that emerge conjure visual references to topographic features, crystalline structures and the intricacies of biological growth. Influenced by the aesthetic of Minimalism, the concepts of Arte Povera and artists such as Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou, Sol LeWiit, and Tara Donovan, Fabian transforms a singular material with abstract results. She often works with atypical materials of discontinued, post-consumer, or “garbage” status, such as tape, plastics and various office and scientific products. As she builds with these materials, she deconstructs them or alters them in such a way that they are not immediately recognizable. This “reconstruction” is determined by what the material is capable of doing, not meant to do. The new physical form is always more organic, often mimicking the appearance of tumors, magnified cells, or mold. The materials often perform as a skin – their translucency captures light and plays tricks on the eye; breathing, swaying, or slowly and quietly growing. Fabian uses exclusively manufactured materials thereby transforming the artificial, throwaway product into something seemingly natural. This serves as a commentary on the increasingly modified condition of humanity, which pits nature against culture and blurs the line between organic and manufactured. She has also shown with prominent galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the summer of 2009, she was an artist in residence at Bemis in Omaha, NE. Her work has been reviewed by several media organizations including Spark, KQED Television, Ruby Mag, an online Argentinean art magazine, Angeleno Magazine, the Sacramento Bee, and Artweek. She is currently a professor at Sacramento City College teaching sculpture and drawing.
Concentric "Outlier", 2011, ink on tracing paper and vellum, 19 1/2" x 25 1/2"
Concentric "Cleft", 2011, glass, glue, 15" x 20" x 20"