JULY 17 through AUGUST 21, 2004

Westcoasting


SUSAN MARIE FREDA weaves wire, semi-precious stones, tree sap, sugar and glass into intricate garments. Her long, diaphanous dresses are a visceral dialogue between the feminine and the natural. The glass surfaces expose the inner networks of veins and arteries with trailing roots that reach, interlace and weave themselves into new forms.

Through the process of application and elimination, painter, HENRY JACKSON, builds frenetic layers of color that reveal solitary figures separate from traditional portraiture or narrative understanding. Jackson uses unconventional tools to apply dry pigments, cold wax and graphite relying on intuitive mark making and simple composition. The end result is a powerful insight into the human psyche.

REX RAY is one of San Francisco's most accomplished and prolific visual artists known for his commercial work designing CD covers for David Bowie and Yoko Ono. In 1994 Rex Ray received the Publish Magazine Award and was selected by Swatch for his competitive designer watch series. Late night trysts with fashion magazines, scissors, paper and glue and a penchant for working with negative space yield for Rex Ray smart and vivid collages whose ambiguous forms can read as landscape, botanical studies or cellular modulation.

ROCKY SCHENCK's silver gelatin prints traverse human spaces; hotel rooms, museums and lobbies as well as isolated natural spaces; lakes, fields and roadways. Each image is shot spontaneously and in places throughout the world. Soft focus and dramatic use of light and shadow play produce images vaguely threatening and yet somehow are offset by moments of pure beauty.

TARA THACKER's three-dimensional ceramic works serve as architectural building blocks which are then combined in different ways to discover how they visually interact. Thousands of porcelain needles are bunched and tied to create fields and landscapes. The tactile fingers possess a fragile, chaotic quality.

CHONGBIN ZHENG's paintings are abstract in the western art historical sense but created using traditional Chinese ink techniques. Enigmatic and shadowy, their multiple layers seem both controlled and uncontrolled, referential and non-referential, intentional and completely accidental.




PROJECT ROOM

Kelly Flynn
Male Torso Series

The Conduit Gallery PROJECT ROOM will feature five large scale c-prints from KELLY FLYNN's Male Torso Series. The Male Torso Series is a continuing project for Ms. Flynn whose focus sets on satirizing gender stereotypes by photographing the female torsos acting out professions historically reserved for males. Kelly Flynn is a current M.F.A. candidate at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. This exhibition will be the first one person exhibition of Ms. Flynn's photography in Dallas.