Mercury 20 Gallery
475 25th St. (at Telegraph)
Oakland, CA 94612
510-701-4620
Thursday-Saturday 12-6pm and by appointment
Exhibition dates: September 2 - 25, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, September 3 from 6-9pm (in conjunction with Oakland Art Murmur)
Artists’ Talk: Saturday, September 4, 2010, 2:00 pm. Meet the artists and hear them talk about their work
Mary V. Marsh | Everyone Needs a Story
Mary V. Marsh, Lots of Readers, Bay Area 5/27/10, 2010, linocut on newspaper, 22” x 23”
Looking for meaning in patterns of everyday life, artist Mary V. Marsh records moments and collects artifacts from her daily activities to explore issues of media, memory and persuasion.
Drawing in a sketchbook on her daily commute, Marsh records people reading--engaged in their private experience within the public space. The drawings are transformed into relief prints that are hand-printed on discarded library cards, newspapers, and book pages. Marsh also prints over newspaper transfer on fine print paper. The materials and techniques used evoke a history of printing, suggest nostalgia for expiring mediums and chronicle the changing formats of reading. In Everyone Needs a Story, Marsh reflects on her need for reading and how the medium conveys the message. The ever-changing world of digital communication makes the artist anxious, while the static print on paper provides comfort, a relic of another time.
Mary V. Marsh was born in Portland, Oregon and has been living and making art in the Bay Area since 1982. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1992. She has exhibited in many venues in the Bay Area with solo shows at: the San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Center, and San Francisco Public Library, Skylight Gallery. She makes multiples and artist’s books under the imprint of Quite Contrary Press.
Laura van Duren | Not for Sale
Laura van Duren, 2010, Truth Scope, 12’x7’x7’, paper and steel
In Not For Sale, Laura van Duren introduces her most recent sculpture, drawings and a large installation that explore the current state of slavery and personal responses to confinement.
A twelve-foot interactive sculpture made of steel and paper dominates the space of this solo exhibition. The juxtaposition of these opposing materials illustrates the strength and weakness that exists in the human condition. Van Duren explicitly references struggle by using antique books about war, slavery and personal conflict to create a large paper cone that rises from five-foot steel legs welded into the shape of tree branches. Viewers are invited to climb into the sculpture and stand inside the paper cone. Once under the cone, they find themselves inside a bird cage looking out to see a flock of birds escaping.
Van Duren will also be displaying smaller works made from recycled cast-offs from a suburban landfill. Old drawers from kitchen remodels are transformed into wall sculptures that depict birds interacting with their entrapment. Confinement and regeneration are continuing themes in this body of work.
In recognition of the current reality of human trafficking in the San Francisco Bay Area and the world, van Duren will donate a percentage of sales from this exhibition to the nonprofit organization Not For Sale. The Not For Sale campaign equips and mobilizes "smart activists" to deploy innovative solutions to re-abolish slavery in their own backyards and across the globe. To learn more about Not For Sale go to: http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/about.
Laura van Duren was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which has a rich history rooted in the steel industry. After receiving her B.F.A. with an emphasis in painting and illustration from Carnegie Mellon University she continued to find her niche as an artist working as a graphic designer, an art school teacher and a public health illustrator in Kenya and Costa Rica. Van Duren has been sculpting with clay for the past 20 years, however in the last 4 she has returned to her "steel" roots by welding and casting in iron, bronze and aluminum. These mold-making adventures have led her to experiment with castings resin, sugar, salt and any other medium that will cooperate.
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Maya Kabat, Charlie Milgrim, Joan Weiss | Strange Nature
Mercury 20 Gallery is pleased to announce Strange Nature, a group show by gallery artists Maya Kabat, Charlie Milgrim and Joan Weiss. The show explores uncanny aspects of nature through painting, drawing and sculpture.
Maya Kabat, Break the Lake #6, 2010, drawing
Maya Kabat presents drawings evolved from an interest in language and numbers as systems of symbolic abstraction. Kabat's work relates to nature and natural laws as well as the human need to structure and order the universe; to tally, quantify, order and link. In the world of these drawings, time and space, numbers and language are constructs that bend, change and dance to rules not fully understood. These works play with a fantasy of space-time that is based in joy, beauty and order.
Charlie Milgrim, Yin Yang Pups, 2010, polyester, photo: Pons Maar
Charlie Milgrim explores, dissects and reconfigures perceptions of stuffed animals. Abandoning an ironic distinction between fake furry creatures and warm cuddly animals, the underlying theme of this work addresses consumerism in desperate, twisted and unnatural times.
Joan Weiss, Reckless Blooms, 2009, oil on canvas, photo: Tracy Bugni
Joan Weiss's recent paintings explore the processes of growth and decay in the natural world. Her large, richly colored works exploit the possibilities of oil on canvas with layers of underpainting and transparent glazes. Densely packed, teeming with plant and flower-derived forms, there is a sense of ripeness teetering on the edge of dissolution. Here nature beckons and threatens as beauty struggles with excess, in an overgrowth of reckless blooms.
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Founded in 2006, Mercury 20 is a contemporary art gallery established, supported and operated by East Bay artists. Mercury 20 maintains a venue for its member artists to exhibit, develop, and advance their work and is committed to exhibiting art of diverse media and content. Exhibitions rotate monthly and the gallery presents a well-attended opening event every first Friday in conjunction with the Oakland Art Murmur. ARTISTS REPRESENTED: JULIE ALVARADO, JO ANN BIAGINI, ERIC BOHR, MARGARET CHAVIGNY, CHELA FIELDING, POLLY FRIZZELL, PETER HONIG, MAYA KABAT, KATHLEEN KING, MARY V. MARSH, JILL MCLENNAN, DAVE MEEKER, CHARLIE MILGRIM, JAMIE MORGAN, MARY CURTIS RATCLIFF, JULIANNE STERLING, LAURA VAN DUREN, JOAN WEISS
For more info: mercurytwenty@gmail.com, 510-701-4620, http://www.mercurytwenty.com