Caleb Duarte & Forces of Nature
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Show dates: 07•26 through 08•29•2008
Reception: 07•26 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm
Caleb Duarte
Since his graduation from the SF Art Institute in 2002, Caleb Duarte has chosen mixed media installations as his art form. The themes of architecture, shelter and/or home have been central to his work. His travels around the world are often his inspiration for exploring the social inequalities and the realities of globalization. “It is evident from his work that Duarte has a political bent and regards his work as an activist practice of sorts”, (Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times, 2004). Duarte’s most recent trip to Brazil inspired him to combine materials and techniques that involve natural as well as Home Depot disposable materials. But his focus has recently shifted from the notion of shelter to the symbolism of social protection and the truth contained inside these “architectural sanctuaries.” For a number of years, the buildings that house museums, skyscrapers, and churches have become as important as the institutions themselves. Architects vacillate between modesty and grandeur. Buildings are described as “hypnotic urban objects. And so Duarte searches for the truth and the balance between the message and the messenger. He explores the ideas of faith and truth as a form for our evolutionary survival. Is a church built with wood and sticks as powerful in delivering its message as the Vatican in Rome? By replacing high-tech materials with mud, cement and wood, Duarte reveals the fragility of preserving whatever we perceive to be true. Partial walls and unfinished structures stand like vestiges of our evolution, like the columns of the Parthenon. This site specific installation at LIMN Gallery is the natural progression of Caleb Duarte’s personal journey through a world of expectations, deceptions, and hope.
Caleb Duarte was born in 1977 and migrated from Mexico to the Central Valley in California. His work has been featured on Spark, KQED, Art ltd., and The Los Angeles Times. Duarte works and lives in Oakland, CA and is currently finishing his MFA at the Chicago Art Institute.
The Forces of Nature
Lisa Dahl, Thomas Doyle, Wendy Heldmann,
Liz Hickok, Emily Hung, Chris Ballantyne, Jessalyn Haggenjos, Lori Nix, Maura Jasper
“Forces of Nature” is a group exhibition that explores the intertwine between architecture and the environment through observing weather patterns and their affect on society. Since the first weather report in 1875, it has become a “must check” of our daily life. These days, global warming is on everyone’s mind and tornados and earthquakes have lately dominated the news. But how does our society adapt to the forces of mother nature? Eight artists throughout the United States respond to their surrounding and its permanent changes.
Wendy Heldmann’s paintings depict the aftermath of a natural disaster. A building that has survived an earthquake exists as an abstraction of its former. Beautifully painted untenable and wrecked buildings show what such a site represents the futility of invention and architecture in such a cataclysmic environmental condition. Thomas Doyle’s work from the “Distillation” series mines natural disasters waiting to happen through the creation of intricate worlds in 1:43 scale. Often sealed under glass and like frozen in time, the viewer approaches these worlds as an all-seeing eye, but remains powerless. Chris Ballantyne is familiar with suburban developments, the one that looks the same, no matter where you are in the US.
Banal features of suburban and industrial zones are sources 
for his drawings that highlight the quirky and absurd. Raised in Kansas, Lori Nix is no stranger to disaster and her post apocalyptic photographs are both haunting and alluring with a play betwen illusion and truth. Liz Hicock’s video and photographs are both serious and comical. In 2005, Hicock built the city of San Francisco out of hundred of multi color Jell-O and reproduced in the span of a few minutes the 1906 earthquake. Maura Jasper, “Weather You Remember” is a series actual weather reports delivered by senior citizens asked to rely only on personal experience and memory and in particular to consider change as it relates to technology. Lisa Dahl’s video “Flooded” showing Sugar cubes disguised as tiny houses are ravaged by the power of raging waters and are slowly washed away. The video “Lawn” on the other hand, enforces the powers of nature. Shoots of grass grow out of control to the point of uprooting the foundations of homes. Jessalyn Haggengos creates picturesque landscapes that form out of the flow of poured paint. Strange habitation and rock formations are built for this new imaginative site conveying a sense of beauty and contamination of the American landscape.
Show dates: 07•26 through 08•29•2008
Reception: 07•26 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm
Caleb Duarte
Since his graduation from the SF Art Institute in 2002, Caleb Duarte has chosen mixed media installations as his art form. The themes of architecture, shelter and/or home have been central to his work. His travels around the world are often his inspiration for exploring the social inequalities and the realities of globalization. “It is evident from his work that Duarte has a political bent and regards his work as an activist practice of sorts”, (Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times, 2004). Duarte’s most recent trip to Brazil inspired him to combine materials and techniques that involve natural as well as Home Depot disposable materials. But his focus has recently shifted from the notion of shelter to the symbolism of social protection and the truth contained inside these “architectural sanctuaries.” For a number of years, the buildings that house museums, skyscrapers, and churches have become as important as the institutions themselves. Architects vacillate between modesty and grandeur. Buildings are described as “hypnotic urban objects. And so Duarte searches for the truth and the balance between the message and the messenger. He explores the ideas of faith and truth as a form for our evolutionary survival. Is a church built with wood and sticks as powerful in delivering its message as the Vatican in Rome? By replacing high-tech materials with mud, cement and wood, Duarte reveals the fragility of preserving whatever we perceive to be true. Partial walls and unfinished structures stand like vestiges of our evolution, like the columns of the Parthenon. This site specific installation at LIMN Gallery is the natural progression of Caleb Duarte’s personal journey through a world of expectations, deceptions, and hope.
Caleb Duarte was born in 1977 and migrated from Mexico to the Central Valley in California. His work has been featured on Spark, KQED, Art ltd., and The Los Angeles Times. Duarte works and lives in Oakland, CA and is currently finishing his MFA at the Chicago Art Institute.
The Forces of Nature
Lisa Dahl, Thomas Doyle, Wendy Heldmann,
Liz Hickok, Emily Hung, Chris Ballantyne, Jessalyn Haggenjos, Lori Nix, Maura Jasper
“Forces of Nature” is a group exhibition that explores the intertwine between architecture and the environment through observing weather patterns and their affect on society. Since the first weather report in 1875, it has become a “must check” of our daily life. These days, global warming is on everyone’s mind and tornados and earthquakes have lately dominated the news. But how does our society adapt to the forces of mother nature? Eight artists throughout the United States respond to their surrounding and its permanent changes.
Wendy Heldmann’s paintings depict the aftermath of a natural disaster. A building that has survived an earthquake exists as an abstraction of its former. Beautifully painted untenable and wrecked buildings show what such a site represents the futility of invention and architecture in such a cataclysmic environmental condition. Thomas Doyle’s work from the “Distillation” series mines natural disasters waiting to happen through the creation of intricate worlds in 1:43 scale. Often sealed under glass and like frozen in time, the viewer approaches these worlds as an all-seeing eye, but remains powerless. Chris Ballantyne is familiar with suburban developments, the one that looks the same, no matter where you are in the US.
Banal features of suburban and industrial zones are sources 
for his drawings that highlight the quirky and absurd. Raised in Kansas, Lori Nix is no stranger to disaster and her post apocalyptic photographs are both haunting and alluring with a play betwen illusion and truth. Liz Hicock’s video and photographs are both serious and comical. In 2005, Hicock built the city of San Francisco out of hundred of multi color Jell-O and reproduced in the span of a few minutes the 1906 earthquake. Maura Jasper, “Weather You Remember” is a series actual weather reports delivered by senior citizens asked to rely only on personal experience and memory and in particular to consider change as it relates to technology. Lisa Dahl’s video “Flooded” showing Sugar cubes disguised as tiny houses are ravaged by the power of raging waters and are slowly washed away. The video “Lawn” on the other hand, enforces the powers of nature. Shoots of grass grow out of control to the point of uprooting the foundations of homes. Jessalyn Haggengos creates picturesque landscapes that form out of the flow of poured paint. Strange habitation and rock formations are built for this new imaginative site conveying a sense of beauty and contamination of the American landscape.
