Bruce Conner - Mabuhay Gardens: Punk Photography & Collage

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:17:16 -0800

February 29 - March 31, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3rd from 4:00- 6:00 p.m.

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to present a photo-based body of work by Bruce Conner (1933-2008), his 1978 record of the Punk scene in San Francisco.

The exhibition will premier a suite of 13 color photographs edited and transferred by the artist to digital color format before his death in 2008. The just-published set will also be exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver as part of the exhibition, Bruce Conner and the Primal Scene of Punk Rock, on view from March 30 through June 24, 2012.

In 1978 Conner photographed Punk Rock shows at the Mabuhay Gardens, a club on Broadway in SF's North Beach strip-club zone. The club was the scene of the 2nd British invasion of punk bands and also, importantly for Conner, local groups like Negative Trend, The Mutants, Crime, UXA and the Avengers. Sometimes his photos captured the first performance of a group, and some of the groups were short-lived. Selected photos were published in the Punk magazine, "Search and Destroy."

"I had always liked the idea of action photos... Like-sport events. Basketball. They're floating in the air, part of this suspended sphere, and they've got these beatific looks on their faces, they're in anguish. Or combat photography..."
-Conner quoted by Greil Marcus in Bruce Conner Mabuhay Gardens 1978. publ. NRW Forum Kultur und Wissenschaft, Düsseldorf, 2006

Bruce Conner heroically created a new lexicon of film and fine art for post-war America. Repurposing found films, engravings and discarded objects, he explored precepts of metaphor and history, physical and metaphysical, by means of a new consciousness. Born 1933 in McPherson, Kansas, Conner moved to San Francisco in 1957 where he became a pivotal figure in the Beat scene of poets, writers, artists and performers.

His work is in the permanent collections of many museums including New York's MoMA and the Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Los Angeles MOCA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center, LACMA, and SFMoMA.

George Herms

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:08:43 -0800

February 29 - March 31, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3rd from 4:00- 6:00 p.m.

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to present a selection of assemblage sculptures by George Herms.

A central figure in the California assemblage scene, Herms synthesized poetic objects from refuse, discovering beauty in rusted metal, weathered wood, used coffee filters and magazine ads. The new forms defined a West Coast aesthetic allied more to jazz and Eastern spirituality than European tradition.

Over the past 25 years Herms' work has been exhibited at Gallery Paule Anglim in the series of exhibitions Sight Vision (I -IV) celebrating the radical Beat spirit, including friends Wallace Berman, Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hedrick, Jess, and Larry Jordan.

Herms' 50 years of influence were recently acknowledged in the Los Angeles MOCA exhibition George Herms: Xenophilia (Love of the Unknown), where his work was shown in its relationship to younger artists, and again in the exhibition Two Schools of School at the Orange County Museum of Art. Since his first solo show in 1957 at the Ferus Gallery, the artist has shown internationally, with recent gallery presentations in Paris and London.

In 2011, as part of the Getty-sponsored Pacific Standard Time, Herms presented The Artist's Life, a free-form jazz opera at LA's REDCAT Theater. Collaborating with jazz musicians, he created sets and sculptural installation-instruments played by the participants.

Canan Tolon - Then, and then

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:41:27 -0800

February 1 - 25, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 4th from 4:00- 6:00 p.m.

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Canan Tolon.

Tolon will show new black and white paintings in a remarkable technique manipulating oil paint over a surface of slick gesso. Although purely abstract, the works engage the viewer's sensory response to landscape, architectural space and photography. Tolon's mysterious and elusive imagery triggers the mind to search for references in the real world. With a painter's knife she creates fine lines, building up matrices that seem to define depth and distance, or capture movement frozen in time.

Tolon, who has lived and maintained a studio in the Bay Area for over twenty years, has a devoted following abroad, especially in Turkey where she was born. She has exhibited frequently in Istanbul, and with recent shows in New York and Berlin. For the gallery Tanas in Berlin she exhibiting an installation, an illusory space created with live grass and mirrors: http://www.tanasberlin.de/index.php?nav=aktuell. Educated in Germany, England and at UC Berkeley, she is also an architect and designer. Aside from her painting practice, she works with sculpture and installation, emphasizing the mutability of form.

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalog Then, and then with an essay by Jacqueline Baas.

Andrew Masullo

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:35:18 -0800

February 1 - 25, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 4th from 4:00- 6:00 p.m.

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Andrew Masullo.

For his fourth exhibition at the gallery, Masullo has selected a group of small paintings (most 16” x 20”) as a prescribed installation in Gallery II. The oil paintings on pre-made stretchers are bright, nonobjective compositions with hand-delineated areas of color. His thoughtful approach pays subtle homage to his chosen pantheon of artists, including Forrest Bess, Florine Stettheimer, Friedrich ‘Vordemberge-Gildewart and Augusto Giacometti, yet he puts his faith in the immediacy springing from intuition, chance and ‘automatic’ creativity:

“Each (painting) has its own internal clock and I’ve got no sway with any of them as to when they’re done. When working, I may have an idea of what to do next, but I rarely know if that idea is going to be “the big one” or a big fat setback. That’s OK, because setbacks, along with worry, doubt, and General Chaos are all valuable tools. …No matter how much I love looking at a finished picture, it’s the finding-my-way-from Chaos-to-terra firma that is at the heart of making things.”
From an interview with Hudson at Feature Gallery, October 2006

Andrew Masullo’s work will be represented in the 2012 Whitney Biennial opening March 1st. In 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship Grant. He lived and worked in New York City for 20 years before making San Francisco his home in 2005. His works have been exhibited in galleries internationally for over 20 years.

Clare Rojas - Piecemeal

Tue, 3 Jan 2012 15:25:46 -0800

January 4 – 28, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 7, 4:00 - 6:00pm

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Clare Rojas.

In “Piecemeal”, her third exhibition at the gallery, Rojas will present a group of paintings on stretched linen. Rojas has painted precise and colorful compositions using the traditional format of a free-hanging painting. Stepping back in her perspective from the tight, detailed narrations of previous bodies of work, the artist has taken a hard-edged view of interior spaces and the abstract shapes produced by architecture and shadow.

Clare Rojas studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Chicago Art Institute before moving to the Bay Area where she lives and maintains her studio. She has exhibited internationally, including solo shows at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, the Museo De Arte Contemporaneo de Castillo y Leon in Spain and the Museum Het Doemien in the Netherlands, She received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Artadia and the Fleishhacker Foundation’s Eureka Fellowship.. An accomplished musician and performer, she has several books and music CD’s published.