Benbanaste Gallery is pleased to present Into The Unnavigated by Turkish artist Kemal Önsoy in his first Bay Area exhibition. This set of eight acrylic on canvas paintings are a glimpse of a larger body of work that he created in 2018. Önsoy, working in isolation for the previous two years, was driven to express the grief and despair he sensed regarding the future.

Known primarily for his work focusing on traces of existence and antiquity, Önsoy uses layers of color and texture to explore residues of the past and ruins of history left by the passage of time. His work has been featured in international exhibitions including the 25th Sao Paulo Biennale, the 44th Venice Biennale, the 4th and 7th Istanbul Biennales. Önsoy currently resides and works in his home country.

Austin Eddy explores the formal concerns of shape, light, color, and collage while embracing the complex and broad spectrum of human emotion in his semi-autobiographical paintings. The artist created this new body of work as stringent quarantine orders began to lift and the world drastically changed once more. The sentiments bound up in Eddy’s vivid paintings reflect this unfamiliar time…from solitude and anxiety to romance and harmony to tension and tragedy. Birds, which sprawl across each of the artist’s canvases, are the driving subject matter and motif for these conflicting sensations. Eddy presents his birds as a way to understand the strain engrossed in the human experience—whether we are caged, soaring through the sky, or something in between.

Marrying a skewed perspective with dimensional flatness, Eddy’s paintings allude to the Cubist movement that defined the early twentieth century. The artist also offers up a delicate balance between figuration and abstraction, mirroring the real and unreal ways in which he renders lived experience. Moreover, his myriad mediums (including oil, flashe, colored pencil, pastel, and paper) further support these dichotomies as the image becomes simultaneously flattened and fractured by referencing painterly collage. Eddy explains, “the goal is to create a harmonious image through tension.”

Austin Eddy was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1986 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his BFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Recent exhibitions include Seeuferweg at Livie Fine Art, Zurich, (2021), Light Reflecting Distance at The Pit, Los Angeles (2021), Birds At Night at Althuis Hofland Fine Arts, Amsterdam, (2020), Cold On The 4th Of July at Institute 193 B, New York, (2020), and The Poet And The Muse at Knust Kunz, Munich (2020).

Eleanor Harwood Gallery is pleased to share selections from our current solo show with Paul Wackers, “The Space We Take” and a preview of our upcoming Fall solo show with Terri Loewenthal entitled “Havasu Falls”.

“The Space We Take” is the gallery’s seventh solo show with Paul Wackers, marking 15 years of working together. The body of work in “The Space We Take” was painted during the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020/2021 in its American epicenter, New York City. In his new works Wackers’ long-term inquiry into imaginative domestic tableaus, the tradition of still life painting and the creation of a personal visual lexicon takes on new meaning when set against the backdrop of social isolation and stay at home orders.

Loewenthal’s new body of work is shot in the Havasu Falls area at the base of the Grand Canyon inhabited by the Native American Hualapai tribe. Loewenthal developed a method to create single-exposure, in-camera compositions utilizing special optics developed to compress vast spaces into complex, evocative environments. Her usage of multiple vantage points and spaces in one image conveys the complexity both geologically and historically of the land she shoots. They are undeniably delicious images that celebrate the terrain, but she also nudges us towards thinking about the Environmental Personhood Movement, the granting of legal personhood to natural entities. We will present works from this series in her upcoming solo show “Havasu Falls”.

Mel Bochner’s Thesaurus paintings transform loaded or banal words into graphic arrangements, often piling synonyms into a mass that moves from respectable language to vulgarity. The paintings blur the lines between looking and reading, leaving viewers to bring their own associations.

Bochner works across a wide variety of media including photography. This exhibition focuses on his paintings and prints, a celebration of the artist’s range of technique and palette.

Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Vessel, a group exhibition inspired by the classical form and motif found throughout art history and contemporary art practices alike. Laden with symbolic meaning and layered with historical references, each of the artists’ works featured brings a fresh perspective to the archetypical form.

Utilizing a variety of mediums, from traditional ceramic to oil painting on canvas to plush textile works, each artist contemporizes the representation of the vessel and the materials used within the work. Anna Valdez throws and paints ceramic vases in electric patterns that are then incorporated into her still life oil paintings. Stephanie H. Shih meticulously hand builds everyday objects and transforms them into commentary of our society. Hilda Palafox’s stylized figures feel ancient and of the future, holding space between.

From highlighting the beauty in the every day utility, such as Josh Stover’s quiet table scene or Francisco Diaz Scotto’s saturated garden scapes, to the primal, ritualistic feeling work of David Heo or Laura Berger – each depiction is unique. Each vessel takes a new form, adding to the eternal legacy and containing the history that came before.

On view until July 31st at Hashimoto Contemporary San Francisco.

K. Imperial Fine Art is thrilled to welcome Mel Prest in her inaugural show with us. COLOR UNFOLDING will be on view online and in the gallery from July 15th – August 31st, 2001.

Prest’s work employs phenomena of landscape and light. Recent paintings are inspired by scents found in nature, wind, light effects like penumbras and sun dogs, and energies that are experienced with non-optical senses. The color comes through like a flavor, or a touch or scent that emerges slowly through semi-transparent layers. The linework follows as a mark; building in tempo, shaking like a maraca or flowing like the waves coming toward shore. Between the spaces the perceived combinations often create an optical mirage that hovers above the painting’s surface.

In addition to natural influences the paintings collected in COLOR UNFOLDING incorporate the construct of time- how it was once charted as discrete moments or memories, rather than 24-hour, 7-day increments. This selection of works explores stages of color from a period that included isolation, political and social unrest and transformation. Where time slowed and warped, sped up and became disconnected from the traditional pace. Each painting reflects a moment or passage disconnected in this timeless juncture.

Pamela Walsh Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by Kerr Ashmore and Andrew Faulkner.

Kerr Ashmore is a contemporary British painter who is creating atmospheric renderings inspired by her feelings, memories and the landscape of Northern England, where she was raised. From an early age, she felt a strong acuity to light and sound, which led to her development as a visual artist and musician. All of her paintings begin with an emotion that is expressed in music or poetry, then articulated on canvas.  Although her paintings evolve into landscapes with great depth, they are rooted in emotional expression and inward exploration. “Growing up in North Yorkshire so close to the Moors and the cold North Sea, I was surrounded by beauty and inspiration. I have always been mesmerized by the ever-changing movement of light and dark that change the natural landscape and my emotional response to it.” This selection of new paintings are part of her debut exhibition, “The Comfort We Seek,” on view at PWG from July 10^th – August 21^st.

Andrew Faulkner is a contemporary painter based in Marin County. With a focus on abstract landscapes, cityscapes and architectural interiors, Andrew’s artistic practice is influenced by the vibrant colors and dazzling light of Northern California. Many of his landscapes use what he calls “invented color space” to break up the composition and achieve a depth of atmosphere that can be open to multiple interpretations. His most recent paintings from his Shoreline series are pushing even further toward abstraction. He says,  “I start with the horizon and the rest is up for grabs.”  By allowing the painting to evolve as an abstract composition, he can be free to compose without obligation to the subject.

pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by John Martin. Martin is known for his vibrant and whimsical interpretations of vehicles and tools, which are often anthropomorphized to a degree in which personality outweighs functionality. For his first exhibition at pt. 2 Gallery, Martin presents new drawings on paper and sculptures in wood and cardboard.

pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to announce The Stories I Tell Myself, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Lenworth Joonbug McIntosh. For McIntosh’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, he draws on memories of his native Jamaica. McIntosh explores the influence of American television, local music, and interpersonal relationships during his upbringing. Scenes of matriarchs, cowboys, and late nights on the town reveal the ways in which memory and imagination overlap, blurring the line between truth and discovery in pivotal moments of his life.

Rena Bransten Gallery presents Unnatural Order, a selection of works centered around the intersection of human life and plant life. Reveling in its beauty and complexity, the artists in this grouping explore both coexistence with and disruption of the natural world.

Esteban AKA Pops or Wulffvnky is an Oakland based artist from Sacramento CA. The inspiration for Pop’s work is based on his trials and tribulations as a youth as well as family and old school music/pop culture. Displaying complete emotional transparency through his work, he hopes that his viewers can relate to the ups and downs of his life.

A Life Like Ours represents love and pain in the artist’s community.
It shows the joys of simple times as well as the hardships of life’s journeys. This is a combination of cultures, a reflection to show that our joys and pains may not be so different. This is A Life Like Ours.