Reed Danziger Exhibition

McKenzie Fine Art

[Image: Reed Danziger "Separating Within" (2016) oil, watercolor, and graphite on paper mounted on panel, 32 x 32 in.]

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McKenzie Fine Art presents an exhibition of new abstract paintings by Bay Area artist Reed Danziger. This will be Danziger’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Reed Danziger’s new paintings continue her exploration and development of a visual language that captures moments of flux and transition. Using abstracted forms derived from science and nature, Danziger creates densely layered, disrupted environments. There is a sense in the work of energy that may shift or reorganize, and that disturbances caused by the interaction of forces may allow new systems to emerge. Although they represent larger continuous events, the paintings also capture unique and intimate moments. Within each are passages conveying flashes of momentum and of forces gathering or dissipating energy. Linear and geometric elements swirl, repeat, and collide with one another, while moments of settling and stillness appear throughout. As she notes, “My interest is in the uneasy tension of these fleeting moments; the tension between the elemental forces and competing energies battling for control, and the instability that occurs.”

Danziger commences her works with loose washes of watercolor and graphite powder pushed through hand-drawn screens, onto panels covered with paper. Once this base is sealed, she applies her vocabulary of forms in multiple dense layers of oil paint, overlapping and repeating in a dialogue with the atmospheric and irregular ground. The work develops slowly and intuitively, each element a reaction to the next, until the accumulation of marks and motions crescendos to a critical moment. Danziger allows for irregularities in the painted marks – the instability in her patterns and lack of symmetry in her compositions is purposeful. She notes that the “push and pull of the mark making is a chain of interactions and repetitions that attempts to shepherd the energies and forces at play…[the paintings] hover somewhere between the representation of an unseen energy and the abstraction inherent in capturing something so unknowable.”

Danziger has been exhibiting her work nationally and internationally for over two decades, including solo and group exhibitions at Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, Robischon Gallery in Denver, the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. Her work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation in Los Angeles, the Achenbach Foundation in San Francisco, Wichita’s Ulrich Museum, and the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program.