Tuesday, January 20, 2009

2006 - Conversation 2: Marcel Dzama & Alice Shaw

Title: Conversation 2: Marcel Dzama & Alice Shaw
Dates: February 23 - April 8, 2006
Location: The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (main gallery), 401 Van Ness Ave., SF, CA

Conversations is an ongoing series of exhibitions at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery featuring a local artist alongside an artist from another point on the globe. The intent of this series is two-fold: on an intimate level it allows for a closer look at the production of two individual artists, and it also informs an expansive perspective of how artists from our region participate in an international contemporary art dialogue.



In the South Gallery we will be presenting the drawings of internationally renowned artist Marcel Dzama. In 2004 Dzama relocated to New York, but hails from Winnipeg where he was a founding member of the Royal Art Lodge, an artists' collective that creates drawings, videos, and performances. In 2000, Dzama was presented with the New Artist Award by Art Cologne. Dzama is represented by Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles and David Zwirner Gallery in New York, and he has exhibited his drawing in museums and galleries around the world. He is perhaps most widely known for creating the cover art for Beck's 2005 release Guero, and his 2003 collaboration with They Might Be Giants on a collection of stories and songs called Bed, Bed, Bed. We will be exhibiting over 30 drawings created in the past five years. This remarkable collection is on loan from the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.




Exhibiting in the North Gallery is San Francisco artist Alice Shaw. Shaw's signature snapshot- style of photography yields images that are at once humble and remarkable. Her work focuses on the uncanny nature of everyday gestures and locations, bringing into focus a frank and sometimes humorous perspective on what we value and how we spend our time. In addition to one person exhibitions, Shaw's pieces have been exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Camerawork and the SF MoMA. Her work has been recognized through awards such as Visions of Excellence Award sponsored by Mumm Cuvee and The SF Art Institute (1st Place) and the Paul Sack Award (3rd Place). The SF MoMA, Rena Bransten, Ruth Braunstein and the di Rosa Foundation possess her photographs in their collections. She will be presenting a slide show of images with an original soundtrack.

Marcel and Alice both have a wonderfully humorous and slightly biting way of filtering the world. There is an immediacy about both of their work. Marcel's drawings are clean and uncluttered, and aesthetically recall illustrative practices ranging from classic fairy tales to contemporary comic books. His compositions thrust together disparate-seeming elements to build quick, complex narratives that often ring true as reflections of the absurdity of human nature. Unlike Marcel, Alice's images are not magical, they are honest. They are bits of our world isolated and framed in such a way as to emphasize the extraordinary in the ordinary. Her snapshot-style heightens the sense of familiarity of the often tender images - we've all seen these broken things, these awkward people, these strange places - and if we look carefully, they are what makes the world a more interesting place.