George Lawson to open new San Francisco gallery

GEORGE LAWSON GALLERY OPENS SECOND SPACE AT
780 SUTTER STREET IN SF ON JANUARY 17, 2013

San Francisco Inaugural Exhibition
780 Sutter Street
ALAN EBNOTHER
recent paintings
January 17 - February 16, 2013

ALAN EBNOTHER
September 5 2012, 2012
cat. no. ALE40
oil on linen
23.5 x 19.5 in.

On January 17, 2013, George Lawson will open a second exhibition space in San Francisco augmenting the program at our Los Angeles location. The new gallery will be housed in a downtown storefront at 780 Sutter Street at Jones, and the program will continue to emphasize contemporary painting. Our exhibition schedule for the new year starts off with recent paintings by Alan Ebnother from January 17 to February 16, John Zinsser from February 21 to March 23, and John Millei from March 28 to April 27. Please stay tuned for updates and photographs of the new space.

Join us at Aqua

Join us in room 103 at Aqua Art Miami on Dec. 6th

Please join us in Miami from December 6th to 9th. We'll be at Aqua Art Miami at the Aqua Hotel in Room 103 showing small scale works from a selection of gallery artists, highlighted on our gallery catalog page on the Aqua site. Artists represented include Stephen Beal, Sara Bright, Alan Ebnother, Nancy Haynes, Tama Hochbaum, Erin Lawlor, Donald Martiny, Jacob Melchi, Susan Mikula, Atillio Pernisco, Ward Schumaker, Linda Vallejo, Jennah Ward and John Zinsser.

TAMA HOCHBAUM
Garbo I (from the series, My Mother's Favorite Films), 2012
cat. no. TAH50
unique archival pigment print on aluminum
10 x 10 in.


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Masaru Kurose, Ward Schumaker

MASARU KUROSE

mudai: recent paintings

November 14 – December 22, 2012

reception Saturday, November 17, 5:00–8:00 PM

MASARU KUROSE
Mudai 20, 2012
cat. no. MAK20
oil on vinyl on wood stretcher
28.5 x 24 in.

For LA15 in the front room we are showing recent paintings by Kobe, Japan based artist Masaru Kurose. Kurose, who was trained as an architect, continues his exploration of oil paint on clear vinyl, an industrial support that belies the tradition and antecedent of his stretched "canvases." Vinyl allows the internal structure of Kurose's painting to show through, much in the way that a glass and steel building incorporates the supporting girder into its external sheathing. Kurose anticipates the collision of his drawn stroke with the exposed bracing of his painting's wooden chassis, and the drop effect of the paint's shadow cast unpredictably in different lights against the wall. He thus sets up a double plane, the skin of paint floating on its transparent ground against the solid wall, shadow and reflection each a measured step behind the other. Kurose's gesture is also a mixture of measure and hunch, his highly keyed hues carried by meandering strokes that are in turn considered and discovered. To see the paintings one must see through them. Their depth is sustained by an integrated drawing, an armature for color and light that supports both on more than one level and tends to splay itself wide open. Kurose's architecture, pervasive as it is across multiple surfaces, confounds the pictorial hierarchy of figure and ground we associate with the obvious historical precedent of stained glass, and positions these translucent works in the camp of painting's fresh potential, and in the ongoing understanding of painting's radical roots.

WARD SCHUMAKER dumb boxes November 14 – December 22, 2012 reception Saturday, November 17, 5:00–8:00 PM

WARD SCHUMAKER
Begins Each Moment (Dumb Box #2), 2012
cat. no. WAS39
acrylic and paste on wood, cardboard
15 x 7 x 10 in.

In the middle gallery for our 15th rotation in Los Angeles, we are showing the painted objects of Ward Schumaker, selections from a series of polychromed constructions he refers to as his Dumb Boxes. These are amongst the first works Schumaker completed after his move from San Francisco to New York last year, and in many ways reflect the energy, gridded planes and silvery daylight of his newly adopted city. Often an artist fresh to New York is caught in an onrush of memory and internal ponder that acts as ballast against the sensory overload from outside. The poet Michael McClure imagined the painter Franz Kline as caught in a world of night sweats. A certain kind of leeching occurs. Schumaker's characteristic layering of text and image and gesture and wit is particularly well-suited to externalizing reflection. I suspect upon arrival he simply found the flat plane of his canvases and panels suddenly inadequate for containing whatever poured forth. And yet a life in the studio instilled in Schumaker the discipline to contain it just so. The result is an isometric suspension between sculpture and painting, neutral in its initial effect and then persistently corrosive, eating away at the membrane between the unconscious and the waking life. His biographical titles reinforce this effect, but like reviews without spoilers, do nothing to curtail the necessity of simply looking, and participating in the unfolding, like pinewood origami gates, of Schumaker's open borders.

Nancy Haynes in the LA Times

Linda Vallejo at Cal Sate University San Bernardino

Linda Vallejo's Make 'Em All Mexican series featured in Cal Sate University San Bernardino's currently running Perspectives exhibition. Panel discussion with the artist October 18, 4-6 PM. For information, call 909-537-7373.

LA14 - Nancy Haynes, Erin Lawlor

NANCY HAYNES

recent paintings

October 10 – November 10, 2012

reception Saturday, October 13, 5:00–8:00 PM

NANCY HAYNES
Referent For Departure, 2012 (cat. no. NAH14)
oil on linen
18.5 x 21.5 in.

For our 14th exhibition in Los Angeles, we showcase in the front gallery recent work by esteemed New York painter Nancy Haynes. Haynes' career spans four decades and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including two NEA grants. She has shown in museums around the country, including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Rubin Museum in New York, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth, and the Harvard University Art Museums. Her work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, MOMA, the Whitney, and the National Gallery. This is her second solo with us. Of her last show, critic Kenneth Baker wrote, "I think of her position as somewhat parallel to Mary Heilmann a decade ago: regarded by colleagues as a standard-bearer of the artistic life, yet little known outside a circuit of fellow professionals and collectors." Just how little-known depends on who you talk to. It is hard to find a serious painter of my generation who doesn't admire Haynes' accomplishment. She has convincingly extended forward into the current moment, something perennial at the root of post-war painting's aspiration. A younger generation, rediscovering the power of the slow reveal, will find inspiration in Haynes' ethic and her means. The challenge with work based on color and light is to preserve the substance, the body wrapped around the spirit, yet Haynes manages to stay firmly grounded. Descriptors we tend not to associate together, such as radiant and earthen, seem aptly paired. Haynes' melding of intellectual rigor and meditative abandon keeps her painting in abeyance, and reveals her image not only slowly, but sustainably. ERIN LAWLOR recent paintings October 10 – November 10, 2012 reception Saturday, October 13, 5:00–8:00 PM ERIN LAWLOR untitled, 2012 (cat. no. ERL17) oil on linen 39.5 x 32 in. In the middle gallery we present a selection of recent paintings by British-born artist Erin Lawlor, who has been living and working in France since 1987. Her work has been exhibited in London, Brussels, Paris and more recently in San Francisco; this is her first solo in Los Angeles. Lawlor's work is characterized by wide, fluid marking, closely-valued, tertiary colors, and matte, light-absorbing surfaces. Although her process involves discipline and self-editing, her painting seems effortlessly suspended, at once turgid and poised. In her own words, she is fascinated by "the small miracle of the way in which painting, in one stroke of the paintbrush and paint, can constitute all at once both space, volume, shape and time." She has synthesized much of the international diaspora of gestural painting (American Abstract Expressionism, in particular Kline and Rothko; the Sumi-inspired aspects of the Japanese Gutai movement such as Kazuo Shiraga, and the French Tachists such as Pierre Soulages come to mind) but with a release of the stress associated with these examples. The undulation between convexity and concavity in Lawlor's color-space recalls the natural rhythm of breathing. These are open images. The juxtaposition of these two artists this month sets up a serendipitous exchange about painting's adeptness at shedding light on the darker end of the chromatic spectrum, and the articulate range of touch.

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