Desaturated Rainbow At Field Projects, New York

Desaturated Rainbow is a traveling exhibition of New York and Los Angeles artists that centers on the context, stereotypes and originality of how artists use color from coast to coast. This exhibition is curated by Amir H. Fallah and Colette Robbins. It will premiere at Field Projects, NYC April 11th- May 18th 2013 and then travel to Kopeikin Gallery, LA from July 20th – August 24th 2013. LA based artists included in the show are Alison Blickle, Wendell  Galdstone, Sherin Guirguis, Amir H. Fallah, Dani Tull, Feodor Voronov, in addition to NYC based artists Justin  Amrhein, Micah Ganske, Norm Paris, Colette Robbins, Michael  Schall, and Heeseop  Yoon.

Desaturated Rainbow features vibrantly colorful works from a selection of LA artists and black and white works from NYC based artists. This exhibition playfully questions why many New York artists use a limited palette and why many LA artists use a more colorful palette. The proverbial New York artist is anxious and wears all black which comes from a stereotype about the beatniks. Whereas LA artists are generalized as more laid

back and interested in outdoor activities, which stems from the famous surfing and skating culture. Are these archetypes still integrated into our respective coastal art world cultures? While bringing up these questions about coastal stereotypes, this exhibition also highlights some overarching similarities between the entire groups’ works. All of the artists’ works have a plethora of details, patterns, or textures. The result is a group of complexly rendered artworks that have a contemporary baroque sensibility.

Heeseop  Yoon, Sherin Guirguis,  and Feodor Voronov’s drawings amass layers and layers of small lines and elements to create a contained but extremely ornate composite space. Because of the contrasting palettes between Yoon’s black and white tape drawing installations and Guirguis’ and Voronov’s colorful drawings, one can view how much a vivid palette or limited palette can cause such different emotional impacts on a viewer.

Justin Amrhein  and Micah Ganske both make system based works that reflect the future and manifest an interest in engineering and science. Amrhein’s synthetic trees and Ganske’s fictional space elevator show alternate futures where technology can augment nature.

Dani Tull and Michael  Schall works play with elliptical shapes and intricate textures. Both artists have a type of controlled chaos present in their works. In Schall’s graphite drawings, there is a cloud of dust that is being contained by a tarp and in Tull’s sculptures there are holes that appear throughout the spider web patterning on his sculptures.

Alison  Blickle,  Amir, H. Fallah, Wendell  Gladstone, Norm Paris and Colette Robbins all

have figuration present in their works. Gladstone’s and Fallah’s works look like either a fantastic ritualistic act is about to happen or has just occurred. Blickle, Paris, and Robbins are fusing figures with some sort of history. Blickle’s ‘Gene in the Hollywood Hills’ is a painting from her series of failed Hollywood starlets. Paris and Robbins both create works that look like they have been unearthed from a fictional archaeological expedition.

The Collected At Gallery Wendi Norris Installation Shots

Installation shots of my show The Collected at Gallery Wendi Norris. More images after the jump.

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Gallery Wendi Norris Presents Amir H. Fallah – The Collected

Amir H. Fallah’s “The Collected” draws inspiration from not only the subjects of Renaissance portrait and vanitas paintings, but also the economic models in which those works were produced.

Commissioned portraits traditionally involve visual symbols indicating the power, influence, and sophistication of their subjects. In this first exhibition of this ongoing global project, portraits have been commissioned and thereby sold before the opening of this show, which is a business reality rooted in traditions from medieval ateliers and modern galleries alike. In the style of such historical masters as Holbein and Ingres, Fallah went into each collector’s home to select personal mementos, souvenirs, and other objects to appear alongside his subjects to create each portrait. The Laws of Order (2012) includes a bongo drum, various houseplants, a knife, and a picture in a frame, among other items belonging to its subject. In Fallah’s works, however, these items take over the picture, and the identity of each subject must be pieced together through these symbolic clues. This is because Fallah drapes each subject he works with in blankets, obscuring their faces, forcing his or her possessions to the foreground. Improvised, colorful abstractions also decorate each composition. While of course the collectors are necessary collaborators in this process, Fallah’s portraits address issues of identity, economics, and artistic agency in a distinctly contemporary manner.

Similarly, Fallah’s wildly lush paintings of flower arrangements harken back to the old tradition of depicting objects of fleeting beauty to evoke thoughts of life’s brevity and fragility, but complicate the straightforward symbolism of the Dutch masters with color, abstraction, and other formal strategies. A contemporary merry prankster, Fallah’s depth of knowledge and painterly chops enable him to investigate serious issues about art, painting, life, and human power relations with adventurous wit.

A 20-page digital catalogue is available with essay by John Zarobell, Assitant Professor and Chair of European Studies at the University of San Francisco. He is an independent critic, curator, and author. 

Amir H. Fallah
The Collected

March 14th-April 27th 2013
Opening Reception: Thursday March 14th 5-8pm

Gallery Wendi Norris
161 Jessie Street
San Francisco, CA 94105