February 21 - March 21, 2009


opening reception for the artists:
Saturday, February 21, 2009  5:30 - 8:30pm

Johnny Robertson
Twenty Hong Kong Dollars

Known for his examination of the mythic West, sweeping stark landscapes and iconic highway imagery, Robertson provides a more diverse set of mediums and literal context in this show than in past exhibitions.  Influenced by the romance of a Kerouac-like affinity for the road, and a sense of displacement and idyllic sovereignty, he supports his vision with a review of prevailing themes: the promise of paradise, and the passage there.
The way, a video piece and noticeable departure from the format of past exhibitions, delivers the most literal and documentary arrangement of content concerning the journey. The piece features a 30-hour, real-time video recording of the entire drive from Robertson’s home in Celina, Texas to the Pacific coast in Los Angeles.    

left: Johnny Robertson,  Olive Branch, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 78x120"
right: Johnny Robertson, Corona del Mar, 2008, oil on canvas, 91x77"

Robert Jessup
Creatures

Robert Jessup's newest body of work hones his unique style of fictional realism. A thin application of paint to canvas conveys a more detailed and anatomically exact rendering thus fine-tuning Jessup’s  ability to describe a different kind of creature.
These imagined creatures were inspired in whole by a recent sabbatical to Europe where he was most drawn to the boundless collection of European painting at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, specifically the paintings of Bosch, Goya and Velasquez.

left: Robert Jessup, Finger Creature Hat, 2008, oil on canvas, 24x24"
right: Robert Jessup, Winged Mouth Creature in a Landscape, 2008, oil on canvas, 30x24"

 

 

PROJECT ROOM

Denise Duong

Oklahoma City artist, Denise Duong’s mixed media on panel paintings narrate a world inhabited by strolling accordion players, senior cyclists and numbers of swans always present as if to guide the lyrical action of the multiple characters. Fantastical and dreamlike, Duong’s paintings employ color, pattern and flatness reminiscent of the French illustrators of the early twentieth-century, Barbier and Toulouse-Lautrec. Also included in the exhibition will be several ceramic works created in collaboration with her husband Matt Seikel.

left: Denise Duong, Untitled, 2009, mixed media on panel, 36x36"
right: Denise Duong & Matt Seikel, Flasher, 2008, ceramic, 20" high