Hello, Goodbye

Country:

United States

Categories:

Exhibition

15 artists respond to the concept of impermanence

Opening in December, a month that marks the close of one year while also signifying the start of another, Hello/Goodbye explores themes of impermanence and transience broadly. What does it mean, for example, to live and die, to experience change, to let go of attachments, to have faith, and to find liberation? While each artist approaches these and other questions differently, they share a common understanding that all life is indelibly linked and constantly changing, nothing ever repeats itself, and each moment is always different than the next.

Left: Joshua Meyer, Just After (2009), Oil on canvas, 14 x 14 inches
Right: Ann Gale, Portrait in Last Light, detail, (2012), Oil on copper, 12 x 9 inches

Several of the artists featured in Hello/Goodbye focus their explorations almost exclusively on the human subject. Not only are Jerome Lagarrigue and Kai Samuels-Davis both known for their tightly-cropped paintings of faces, both also use a technique—one that relies on facets of colors—that reinforces motion and the passage of time. And while Ann Gale and Joshua Meyer also play with discrete brushstrokes to build up faces and bodies, the atomic-like quality of their markings produces an energy that’s more electrical than cinematic. Despite these differences, the works are united by a preoccupation with the liminal: their subjects exist on the edge and in between.

Stephen de Staebler, Figure with Eroded Hip, Bronze, 82 x 18 x 16 inches

These curiosities are picked up by Stephen De Staebler, whose sculptures directly confront the intermediary states touched upon by much of the art included in the exhibition. His monumental bronze statues of winged figures embody conflicting characteristics: Are they of this world, or another? Human or spirit? Modern or primordial?

Forrest Williams, No. 429 (2010), Oil on panel, 46 x 66 inches

Although Alex Kanevsky and Edwige Fouvry are both noted for their paintings of human figures, they are also accomplished landscape painters. Rendered in heightened colors, these uninhabited, atmospheric worlds could just as easily be interpreted as coded explorations of psychological space. Travis Collinson’s meditations on wide-eyed subjects lost in thought, Shelley Hoyt’s ukiyo-e-inspired landscapes, Ada Sadler’s hyper-realistic oil paintings of empty chairs, and Forrest Williams’s use of the body to interpret the architecture of our inner lives also invoke a certain pathos, though one that is more meditative than somber. The union of the existential and the natural is brought full circle by Danae Mattes’s mixed media artworks, which recall geological phenomena such as cracked riverbeds, marshes, and stalagmites. The organic and prehistoric qualities of her art are visceral reminders of where we come from and where we go.

Left: Edwige Fouvry, Daniel (2013), Ink on mylar, 47 x 41 inches

A hallmark of many of the works is their tendency to straddle naturalism and abstraction. For some of her most recent pieces, Katina Huston works directly from the shadows cast by human skeletons hanging from her studio ceiling. In Christina’s World (2013), the impression of a skeleton lies buried beneath the shadows of a fast-growing spring weed—fennel. The intersecting forms move in and out of coherency thanks to the contrast offered by three strategically-placed swatches of striped fabric.

Katina Huston, Christina's World (2013), Ink on mylar, 42 x 84 inches

Hollis Heichemer’s exuberantly painted, synaptic forms encourage a visual- and neural-frenzy that pushes Hello/Goodbye even further toward abstraction, an agenda shared by John DiPaolo. Though deeply inspired by nature, DiPaolo moves beyond the visible world to uncover universals that exist, according to the artist, in the spirit of each painting. By pulling the viewer into an all-encompassing deluge of energy and light, DiPaolo’s paintings exceed the experience of one individual and, in so doing, show us that our joy, suffering, and losses are shared.

Venue ( Address ):

Dolby Chadwick Gallery
210 Post Street, Suite 205
San Francisco, CA 94108