Bruce Pearson “Free Getaways”
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts
This event has ended.
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts presents new works by Bruce Pearson in his sixth solo exhibition at the gallery. Well known for his multi-layered kaleidoscopic paintings on large, intricately carved Styrofoam reliefs, the works in this exhibition move his aesthetic into new realms by examining the possibilities of their unexpected interaction with architectural space, light, and location.
Throughout his career, Pearson has pulled and pushed at the traditional 2-D painting surface, literally carving out nooks and crannies to imbed text, patterns, and reworked photographic images that form the underlying structure of his paintings and gouache drawings. The legibility of both text and image are often overwhelmed by a spectacular abundance of color, texture, and pattern, tapping into the process by which we turn symbols into meaning. With this exhibition Pearson has now pushed all the way through the 2-D surface, finding light and space on the other side. We see this most clearly in the painting “Itch” and its accompanying photograph. With diamond shaped holes carved throughout the painting, and executed in a color palette to match a specific outdoor location, the text no longer just disappears into the painting itself but also into the environment for which it was made. In the mixed media sculpture “Inhale” Pearson goes even further and trades in his signature Styrofoam and rich color for glass, light, and shadow, giving us something both familiar and alien.
Also on display will be two models for large site-specific sculptures, demonstrating Pearson’s investigations into how to incorporate his sculpted language into settings outside museum and gallery walls. Text mined from both mass media and classical sources has always provided the initial starting point for Pearson’s work. While this unifying principle remains, he is now weaving these cultural, philosophical, and personal references into buildings and the very landscape we inhabit. Pearson is taking phrases that he views as indicators of “where we are culturally and philosophically” and putting them back into the world at a scale that is impossible to ignore.
[Image: Bruce Pearson “Premonitions Study” (2013)]
Media
Schedule
from October 19, 2013 to November 16, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-10-19 from 18:00 to 20:00