JUDITH LINHARES / FRANCES STARK September 3 - 27, 2003 Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent works by Judith Linhares and Frances Stark. Linhares'subjects are often figures and animals set in a dream-like narrative. Her fables and allegories, depicted in a raw and immediate style, feature dark outlined figures against luminous backgrounds. With broad, bright brushstrokes she creates personal mythologies from a fascinating collection of distorted barnyard animals, flowers and haunting figures. Judith Linhares has exhibited her paintings at Gallery Paule Anglim for over twenty-five years. At age 17 she moved to the Bay Area from Southern California, where images of cartoons and pirate movies had helped form the core of her visual language. As a young woman she admired artworks shown at the Ferus Gallery and gave allegiance to the bohemian spirit of Wallace Berman and his circle of beat artists. Her unmistakable figurative style of painting developed fully in Northern California, where exposure to painters as diverse as Peter Saul and Elmer Bischoff combined with strong influences from Outsider Art and an inspirational stay in Mexico. The artist now teaches and maintains her studio in New York. Her works are represented in distinguished collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Yale University Art Gallery, the Oakland Museum, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Chase Morgan Bank and the Bank of America. Image: Judith Linhares, Plenty, 2002, Oil on linen, 58" x 78" FRANCES STARK And Another One at the Same Time In her second show at Gallery Paule Anglim, Frances Stark will present a group of recent works featuring her spare use of carbon-paper tracing and collage. The artist, who is also a writer and poet, often uses words or phrases as visual motifs in her compositions. Through the artist's tracery, a line of text borrowed from a novel, poem or even a pop song will lead the viewer through the experiences that are the hallmark of her work: Words become an abstract design through repeated hand-tracing, while they cognitively but subtly introduce a subject, mood, and often the context of another discipline such as music, architecture, philosophy. Frances Stark has achieved broad recognition through many one-person gallery presentations in San Francisco, New York, London, Cologne and Los Angeles, and through numerous group shows mounted internationally. In 2002, the UCLA Hammer Museum presented the exhibition "The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work of Art" featuring 16 artworks produced over a 5-year period. The works were shown with texts by the artist; both addressed the idea of mutable meaning and context. Frances Stark lives and works in Los Angeles. A book compiling the artist's writings will be released this fall. A reception for the artists will be held Thursday, September 4th from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at Gallery Paule Anglim. Frances Stark will be reading from her own writings Friday, September 5th at 6:30 pm at the gallery.