Sally Webster “Daydream Believer”

33 Orchard

[Images: Sally Webster "Sailor" (2017) Oil on linen, 14 x 14 in.]

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33 Orchard presents an exhibition of Sally Webster’s new series of paintings titled “Daydream Believer”.

The eight paintings in the show convey both the ambience of a precocious child and a child-like mischievous adult. Colors suggest candy and toys; images suggest sex, psychedelia, death, myth, morbid fairy tales, coloring books and poisoned apples. The fan club of this artist thus ranges from 5 year olds to mature and or immature adults. Sailor (2017) is a whale exhaling a plume of water and oxygen molecules suggest splooge in a field of repeating aqua wave patterns. When medusa’s hair morphed into a nest of phosphorescent snakes, it landed in a Webster painting against a trippy background. Medusa (2017) and Fright Wig (2016) are hairdos detached from heads floating in candy colored space. Willin’ (2017), rendering of two naked girls’ silhouettes found on the flaps covering truck wheels, with smaller floating images of pairs of lovers in 1970’s style astrological sex positions, refers to the song by Little Feat.

Sally Webster is a self-taught painter. Her metaphoric imagery could be described as meditative and surrealistic. Often there exists some form of conflict: abstract to realism, background to foreground, dreamscape to reality. Floating figures in a strange cosmos express distractions and interpretations but rarely give the viewer complete answers. Her paintings release from the mind notions of the real but suggest by design and intense colors a universe to reflect, ponder, and become a believer to Ms. Webster imagination.

The artist studied sculpture and performance art at the San Francisco Art Institute and has been making visual art ever since. In the late ’70’s and early ’80”s she was part of the influential art-punk scene in San Francisco and became a founding member of the punk band the Mutants. A selection of her recent exhibitions include : Larry Clark: White Trash Bushwick. Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York, 2017; Four More Years. Planthouse Gallery, New York, 2017; Dark Star; Abstraction and Cosmos. Planthouse. Curated by Raymond Foye, New York, 2016, NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York, 2013; Dream Out, Showroom, New York, 2013; Crybaby, Bowman/Bloom Gallery, New York, 2013.