THE PROM Curated by Alex Ohge With work by: Tomory Dodge (LA) Ingrid Calame (LA) Yoon Lee (SF) Robert Hardgrave (Seattle) Eric Sall (NY) Gordon Terry (NY) Joseph Park (Seattle) Tiffany Calvert (NY) Nicholas Nyland (Seattle) EXHIBITION RUNS January 11th - February 23rd Lawrimore Project is pleased to present the second of a three-part series devoted to contemporary painting strategies. Curated by Gallery Manager, Alex Ohge, THE PROM... is a pure celebration of the medium. This semi-formal survey brings together a group of artists from around the country all completely devoted to the process of painting and all exploring the semi-formal terrain where representation meets painting for painting's sake. At right: Installation view of THE PROM at Lawrimore Project INGRID CALAME Calame's bold contrasting colors, meticulous tracing and transfer technique is evident here in her preliminary drawings for future paintings. Appropriating the contours of stains she finds on the streets of various cities, Calame's technique mimics the appearance of gestural abstraction with a subversive take on everything from the spilled canvases of Pollock, the piss paintings of Warhol, and the stained canvases of Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, to the conceptually-driven stain paintings, sculptures and photographs of Ed Ruscha. Calame states, "I trace the lacey stains left by the evaporation of nameless liquids, their contours determined by the viscosity of the vanished fluid and the texture of the surface which it pools." Part chance, part choice, in Calame's hands these anonymous, abstract forms come into focus. A small blob becomes a shoe print. A stretched arching line is now a tread mark from a race track. A series of loops is now made clear as graffiti from the side of a building. Calame documents the history we want to dismiss. Her layers are numerous and calculated in both form and content. Calame received her BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1987, and her MFA in Art and Film at the California Institute of the arts in 1996. Upcoming solo museum exhibitions include: St Lous Art Museum; Alright-Knox Art Gallery; and Monterey Museum of Art. Her work was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Calame's public collections include, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA); ?Misumi Collection (Tokyo, Japan);? Museum of Fine Arts Houston (Houston, TX)?; Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); ?National Art Gallery (Bangkok, Thailand); Neuberger Berman,LLC (New York, NY)?; Progressive Corporation (Mayfield Village, OH)?; Sammlung-Goetz Collection (Munich, Germany); ?Samsung Collection (Seoul, Korea); SunAmerica - Eli Broad Foundation (Santa Monica, CA); ?United Bank of Switzerland Hong Kong (Central, Hong Kong);? Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); and ?Utah Museum of Fine Arts , UT. Ingrid Calame's work shown courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York At left: Ingrid Calame #222 DRAWING, 2005 Ink on paper 50 x 34 inches ERIC SALL Sall pulls, scrapes and rakes the paint across the canvas to create swirled ribbons of color and salt water taffy blobs that are loosely held together by backdrops of washes of paint. He tackles the medium with a deep understanding of what paint can do yet constantly finds new and challenging ways of pushing the medium. The work is held together with some structure, offering references to architecture and landscape while deploying his own lexicon of abstract gestures. As ATM Gallery, New York notes, "Sall uses free-association and instinct when approaching his canvases. Utilizing the tradition within painting of presenting a figure, a protagonist, over a marginal background, he merges marks to create a non-representational figure sitting atop a more general background as a nod to representational painting without depicting any discernable forms. His manipulation of paint is informed by art history equally with instances from his personal experience. Magazine advertisements, movies, logos, his youth, and background are all sources from which he draws his inspiration. He states that his influence can be 'a memory of the Northern Lights at 3:00 a.m. on a secluded dirt road in the middle of South Dakota to an image of a brand name jacket in a magazine that I desired. It is just as likely that I would associate graphic marks to designer logos as I would associate a washy field of color to a Midwest sky.'" Sall's work was included in the influential, "Triumph of Painting" at the Saatchi Gallery, London. He is a recent graduate of Viginia Commonwealth University's prestigious painting program. His work has been seen at ATM Gallery, NYC; Alona Kagan Gallery, NYC; ADA Gallery, Richmond, VA; Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, MO; Joseph Nease Gallery, Kansas City, MO; and the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM. He is the recipient of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship Program Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant Program Award, and a Charlotte Street Fund Award. His work is in the collections of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; The Saatchi Collection, London; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, NM. Eric Sall is shown courtesy of ATM Gallery, New York At right: STOCKPILE, 2007 Oil on canvas 96 x 78 inches TOMORY DODGE Dodge's work epitomizes the semi-formal tenets of the exhibition by allowing the paint and its application to work equally against representational elements. Dodge's loaded brush is pulled across the canvas leaving heavy trails of streaked color and grey matter. The landscapes and architectures created by these gestures seem to float in space barely held together by thick lines of paint ready to collapse or change at any moment. Dodge calls on Richter's squeegees and even Lichtenstein's 'brushstrokes' but moves beyond these references allowing his trust and devotion to the medium to take over the work. Dodge received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He was awarded the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant in 2004. He has had solo exhibitions at ACME., Los Angeles, CRG Gallery, New York, and Taxter and Spengermann, New York. His work was included in group exhibitions at Galerie Schmidt Maczollek, Koln Germany; CUE Art Foundation, New York; LA Louver, Venice, CA; San Francisco Art Institute; Columbia University, New York; and Plalazetto di Cenci, Rome. Permanent collections include, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Knoxville Museum of Art; Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, Kansas; Dallas Museum of Art; and The Smithsonian American Art Museum. Reviews of Dodge's work include The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Modern Painters, ArtForum, Flash Art and Art Week among others. Dodge is shown courtesy of ACME., Los Angeles At left: SURVIVALIST, 2007 Oil on canvas 13.75 x 16 inches GORDON TERRY With juicy fluid gestures and heavy use of thick passages of paint, Gordon emphasizes materials and technique in his work. His complex use of the medium and plexiglas as surface further challenges what we know about paint and its characteristics. His swirls of juicy blobs give a nod to Pollock and abstraction yet offer the viewer so much more to contemplate. Beyond the science and microscopic environments created in the work, the titles provide challenging and humorous possibilities to debate. Yet in the end, we can sit back and simply absorb the visually stunning quality of the work. Terry received his BFA from R.I.S.D in 1993 and his MFA from New York University in 1995. He has been exhibiting his work in the U.S. and Europe since 1998. His work will be included in "Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960's" at the San Antonio Museum of Art in October 2008. Most recently, Terry's work was included in "Aspects, Forms and Figures", at Bellwether Gallery in New York. He has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, ArtForum, Art in Review, Le Monde, The New Yorker, and the Village Voice among others. Gordon Terry is shown courtesy of ATM Gallery, New York At right: SKY OBSERVES TIME, 2007 Acrylic on acrylic panel 96 x 72 inches TIFFANY CALVERT Tackling themes of spatial illusion and juxtaposed environments, Calvert's paintings challenge what we understand as landscape and architecture. Tightly rendered interiors are meshed with loose washes of muted colors creating a strangely beautiful dream-like environment. The artist's painterly execution constantly reminds us that her work is as much about the medium as it is about the content. In her latest body of work Calvert continues to explore similar themes while adding new layers for the viewer to negotiate. Detailed patterns suggesting wallpaper or fabric are mixed with piles of furniture giving these dark interiors a sense history. Although there are passages of tight rendering, the work still remains somewhat loose and painterly reminding the viewer that the work is still about the celebration of the medium. Calvert received her BFA from Oberlin College in 1998 and her MFA from Rutgers in 2005. Grants and Awards Include the 2007 Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside CA. 2006; ArtOmi International Artists Residency, Omi NY,? 2006; Artists Residency Program, Artists' Enclave at IPark, East Haddam CT;? Geraldine R. Dodge Fellowship?, 2005?; John Bettenbender Commencement Award recipient ?2003-2005?; Rutgers Scholars Award, all semesters? Teaching Assistantships and Part-Time Teaching awards, all semesters?; 1999 SFAC Grant: finalist for $10,000 grant by the San Francisco Art Council? 1998;? BA with Honors, Oberlin College ?Art; Students Committee Grant: Oberlin College? 1997 ?Honorarium, awarded by president for outstanding services to Oberlin College. Tiffany Calvert is shown courtesy of Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago At left: UNTITLED (Chandelier #1) Oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches JOSEPH PARK Although he painted as an undergraduate, Joseph Park came out of Cal Arts as an installation, performance and video artist. His last few installations were actually sculptures about painting. His breakthrough came when he decided to make paintings about sculpture. He has been painting ever since. Recently Park has shifted his painterly attention to portraiture. He had avoided using specific characters in past work, substituting animal imagery to convey human emotions and conditions. In this portrait of Leipzig painter, Tim Eitel, Park takes identification as a given. As in the rest of this series of portraits, he is deploying new mark making for each subject, allowing painterly expressions to work for, by, or against their facial expressions. Eitel is known for his large canvases in muted palettes that combine geometric abstraction with photographic realism. Park's portrait combines photographic realism with his own version of a 'soft' Cubism that also approaches certain Futurist mannerisms, treading that fine line between the mimetic and the abstract. Due to the interest in this series, Park has been commissioned for a number of individual portraits. We welcome your inquiry if you are interested in such a commission. At right: TIM EITEL 24 x 18 inches Oil on panel YOON LEE Lee is widely regarded for her colorful, palimpsest paintings in acrylic on large sheets of PVC. Digitally manipulated silhouettes of engineering structures provide the backdrop while wild splashes of gestural abstractions that swirl throughout simultaneously activate and obscure these recognizable structures. Even these seemingly instantaneous gestures begin digitally. Lee starts with scanned images, digitally rendering them into flat planes with their accompanying low-resolution pixilation. She then painstakingly transfers the image-dot by tedious dot-to the surface with squeeze-nozzle bottles containing a resinous acrylic. For this recent series of "Subatomic Verve" pieces on frosted Mylar, Lee has distilled her imagery and palette down to the 'simple' gestures seen here. Yoon Lee received her BFA from the University of California San Diego in 1998 and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. She was awarded the Stuart Collection Committee Prize in 1997; The Tournesol Award at The Headlands Center for the Arts in 2005; The Outstanding Local Discovery Award from The San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2006; and the Eduardo Carillo Price from the San Jose Museum of Art in 2007. She has been included in group exhibitions at the Riverside Art Museum; DCKT Contemporary, Miami; Peirogi, Liepzig, Germany; Peirogi, New York; and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her first solo exhibition at Pierogi, New York occurs later this year. At left: SUBATOMIC VERVE #7, 2006 Acrylic on frosted Mylar 30 x 42 inches ROBERT HARDGRAVE A 'colophon' is a historical statement typically printed in the back of a book giving information about its authorship and the technical details associated with its production. Here Hardgrave presents his own colophon-a guide to his painterly interests, personal narratives and compositional strategies that have informed all of his recent work. As his Los Angeles gallery, BLK/MRKT writes, "Manifested in richly hued layers and expressive line, the creatures and mercurial forms that inhabit Robert Hardgrave's visions of reincarnation come to life in this emotional new series of paintings. Soon after receiving a kidney transplant in 2003, Hardgrave learned that his new kidney had developed lymphoma that necessitated an arduous six-month course of chemotherapy. The remission of the cancer subsequently ushered in a new duality in Hardgrave's life: relative good health and a reinvigorated approach to his work. Channeling themes of life, death, and the gray spaces between, Hardgrave's organic, multi-layered paintings appear as though they've been summoned from an alternate mystical dimension. And while that notion may seem whimsical, the paintings are proof that Hardgrave's transformative personal turmoil has awakened a profoundly new creative reservoir." Hardgrave has received both national and international attention, exhibiting in the U.S., Germany and Australia. He has been featured in publications including Color, BPM, The Stranger, Canceled Flight, and BLK/MRKT Two. Robert Hardgrave is shown courtesy of BLK/MRKT, Los Angeles At right: COLOPHON, 2007 (installation view) Acrylic on canvas 120 x 88 inches NICHOLAS NYLAND If the painting on canvas and watercolors presented here are what we typically associate with traditional manners of working and presentation, Nyland's floor cloth and sculpture force us to reconsider just where and how a painting can exist in this world. "I intend to conjure a world or a space for imagination and reverie in my work that may manifest itself in miniature form or room sized wall drawing/painting installations. My work is driven by a fascination with the life of form, the nature of creation and the will to decorate. I feel reassured to borrow freely from our gloriously diverse visual culture because, as George Steiner reminds us, 'there are no more beginnings'; we are playing with all the cards. The true creation, the art, lies in the transcendence of those parts into an animate whole." -Nicholas Nyland Nicholas Nyland is shown courtesy of S.O.I.L Gallery, Seattle At left: Installation view, The White Cube, Lawrimore Project