Dec. 2007, "Thierry Feuz" & "Stephen Galloway"
Show dates: 11•09•07 through 01•05•08
Reception: 11•09 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm
•••Thierry Feuz •••
El dorado
LIMN gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Swiss artist Thierry Feuz whose lacquer paintings are first a radical experimentation with materials. The subjects represented in his paintings are primarily justified by the possibilities they offer in terms of pictorial potential. Indeed, there are no specific guidelines, other than a constant fragile equilibrium of forms and colors, light and darkness which could, at any moment, be destroyed. Once Feuz has reached a momentum with the mixed mediums, these paintings are synonymous of a world of wonderful yet scary meanderings with neither time nor spatial limits. A diffused and gloomy light bathes this uncertain world of sprouting flowers, genetic experiments and magical mutations. It’s an explosion of life and forms which, from the infinitely far to the infinitely small, comes forth like fireworks. But, hidden behind the allures of a garden of Eden, monsters and traps lie; honey and poison argue the favors of a nature coming into form. The artist uses flowers as well as a pretext to play with the unmixed colors. The organic changes of the color intermingle on the canvas, bursting and pouring out into colored plasmas that tumble and swell in a sometimes dangerous way. At one point the painting evolves into an epidermal pleating and at another it looks like a network of vessels, cellular tissues or veining. By the richness of their tones and their multiple layers, his second series, Technicolor works play on the same principle of precarious equilibrium. They are larger, panoramic visions, new horizons looking at worlds being formed under tropical heat and marine air currents. Thierry Feuz lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. This is his first solo show in California.
•••Stephen Galloway •••
Ab Aeterno
Galloway’s work is about looking at nature, and letting it drive our creative impulse. His photographs are inextricably linked to the plants and forests from which they came. Clarity of visual representation is a key concern in emphasizing the primary physical reality, the 'such-ness' of these materials, which exist long before we come to see them as beautiful or valuable. In these large-scale works Galloway is able to present these materials life size, in a format that begins to reference the magnitude of the forest floor. NextNature has, however, left the forest in order to explore the forces of nature: the pushing, the attracting, the falling. This series makes palpable both the order and the chaos that ripple through existence. ?The work is composed on a large lightbox on the floor of his studio and then photographed straight down using a high resolution scanning back in the place of film. Galloway’s ingenious innovation of combining the scanning process and the digital printing process in this way pushes photography forward in its ability to show detail at large scale. It allows the artist to make images that are less metaphorical in their representation and more direct. This clearer representation supports a sense of 'matter-of-fact-ness' in the work. The materials used have been re-moved: from the forest floor to an even vaster space that is virtual, the space of the imagination, a place of "seeing" the landscape, an issue often forgotten by photographers and their audience. Using these incredibly fine imaging technologies, Galloway works with an astonishing visual clarity at the same time as working fully in the imaginative space. Other times, the materials such as mattress vine, a massive tangle of sticks and strands, will dictate the composition leading the final photograph toward abstraction. Galloway lives and works in San Francisco. This is first solo show with LIMN gallery.
Reception: 11•09 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm
•••Thierry Feuz •••
El dorado
LIMN gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Swiss artist Thierry Feuz whose lacquer paintings are first a radical experimentation with materials. The subjects represented in his paintings are primarily justified by the possibilities they offer in terms of pictorial potential. Indeed, there are no specific guidelines, other than a constant fragile equilibrium of forms and colors, light and darkness which could, at any moment, be destroyed. Once Feuz has reached a momentum with the mixed mediums, these paintings are synonymous of a world of wonderful yet scary meanderings with neither time nor spatial limits. A diffused and gloomy light bathes this uncertain world of sprouting flowers, genetic experiments and magical mutations. It’s an explosion of life and forms which, from the infinitely far to the infinitely small, comes forth like fireworks. But, hidden behind the allures of a garden of Eden, monsters and traps lie; honey and poison argue the favors of a nature coming into form. The artist uses flowers as well as a pretext to play with the unmixed colors. The organic changes of the color intermingle on the canvas, bursting and pouring out into colored plasmas that tumble and swell in a sometimes dangerous way. At one point the painting evolves into an epidermal pleating and at another it looks like a network of vessels, cellular tissues or veining. By the richness of their tones and their multiple layers, his second series, Technicolor works play on the same principle of precarious equilibrium. They are larger, panoramic visions, new horizons looking at worlds being formed under tropical heat and marine air currents. Thierry Feuz lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. This is his first solo show in California.
•••Stephen Galloway •••
Ab Aeterno
Galloway’s work is about looking at nature, and letting it drive our creative impulse. His photographs are inextricably linked to the plants and forests from which they came. Clarity of visual representation is a key concern in emphasizing the primary physical reality, the 'such-ness' of these materials, which exist long before we come to see them as beautiful or valuable. In these large-scale works Galloway is able to present these materials life size, in a format that begins to reference the magnitude of the forest floor. NextNature has, however, left the forest in order to explore the forces of nature: the pushing, the attracting, the falling. This series makes palpable both the order and the chaos that ripple through existence. ?The work is composed on a large lightbox on the floor of his studio and then photographed straight down using a high resolution scanning back in the place of film. Galloway’s ingenious innovation of combining the scanning process and the digital printing process in this way pushes photography forward in its ability to show detail at large scale. It allows the artist to make images that are less metaphorical in their representation and more direct. This clearer representation supports a sense of 'matter-of-fact-ness' in the work. The materials used have been re-moved: from the forest floor to an even vaster space that is virtual, the space of the imagination, a place of "seeing" the landscape, an issue often forgotten by photographers and their audience. Using these incredibly fine imaging technologies, Galloway works with an astonishing visual clarity at the same time as working fully in the imaginative space. Other times, the materials such as mattress vine, a massive tangle of sticks and strands, will dictate the composition leading the final photograph toward abstraction. Galloway lives and works in San Francisco. This is first solo show with LIMN gallery.
