Closing Saturday April 24
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Ben McLaughlin: Ex Libris
Liliana Porter: The Riddle / Charada
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The tiny and evocative oil-on-panel paintings by Ben McLaughlin are intimate, often dream-like tableaus that reflect the slower, more interior-focused lives many of us have found to be a side effect of pandemic shelter-in-place. The eccentrically cropped, ambiguous scenes are drawn from childhood memories of growing up in a home he describes as more “like a collage, with books and papers everywhere” than a flat in London.
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McLaughlin titles the paintings after books from his parents’ extensive library, but the pairing is randomly assigned and intentionally unrelated. Often simultaneously bucolic and slightly ominous, McLaughlin’s imagery, in conjunction with his appropriated titles, conjures an open-ended, multivalent narrative.
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Liliana Porter’s The Riddle/Charada features an idiosyncratic cast of characters situated in darkly humorous vignettes, accompanied by a poignant soundtrack by Sylvia Meyer. Leaving the narrative intentionally ambiguous and open to a variety of interpretations, Porter entices the viewer to unravel the riddle.
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Virtual Event Tuesday April 20 |
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In Conversation: Liliana Porter & Humberto Moro |
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Join us on Zoom for a virtual tour of The Riddle / Charada and conversation between Liliana Porter and Humberto Moro, Deputy Director and Senior Curator at Museo Tamayo Arte, Mexico City.
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Tuesday April 20
12pm PT / 2pm CT / 3pm ET
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Self-taught in the meticulous and time-consuming techniques developed by 17th century Dutch painters, Isabella Kirkland directs her technical proficiency and rarefied access to biological specimen collections and scientific experts towards illuminating the ecological instability inherent in the Anthropocene — and more specifically, the acute threat to Earth’s smallest creatures.
In the world of environmental activism and nature documentaries, much attention is given to the large, majestic animals facing habitat loss and extinction as a result of sea level rise, ocean warming and acidification, human encroachment and climate change. Kirkland instead turns her focus to the more minute organisms that tend to go unnoticed, but that make up the majority of the natural world. Though seemingly insignificant, the decline of any of these tiny creatures instigates a domino effect of ecological disruption and potential collapse.
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A Bay-Area artist having her first solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, Kirkland purposefully chooses archaic methods to convey an urgently topical message. Her mode of depiction is an adaptation of the still life genre and 19th century natural history illustration — traditions revered for their accurate depictions of flora and fauna before the advent of photography. Executed in the enduring technique of the Dutch masters, Kirkland’s paintings enable a form of physical preservation of species that may otherwise soon disappear forever. |
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Patricia Piccinini, The Awakening, 2019, still from digital video, duration: 9 minutes |
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Patricia Piccinini creates some of the most surprising, provocative and pertinent artworks of our time. Famous for her life-like, chimeric creatures, anthropomorphic sculptures made of fiberglass and extraordinarily elaborate auto body paint jobs, and sculptural hot air balloons, Piccinini raises questions about how we define “human” and how we resolve the complex bio-ethical issues of our rapidly changing world.
In September of this year (2021) Hosfelt Gallery will host Piccinini’s most recent sculptures in an immersive installation. In May, as a foretaste of that exhibition, Hosfelt is screening Piccinini’s new 9-minute digital animation, The Awakening — its premiere in the Americas.
The Awakening is about something both quintessentially common and inordinately miraculous — birth. It is mesmerizing, beautiful and frightening.
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Studio Visit with Birgit Jensen |
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At the most basic level, Birgit Jensen is a landscape painter, innovative in that she paints with silkscreens rather than a brush. She’ll appropriate an image of a site—often someplace she’s never been, sometimes a place that doesn’t even exist—and manipulate the pixels into geometric marks or patterns. The new images are made into silkscreens, which she uses in layered applications to create "low-resolution,” partially-pixelated paintings in acrylic on canvas.
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Watch Birgit demonstrate her unique process of creating large-scale silkscreened paintings in her Düsseldorf studio here.
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Inspired both by Japanese woodblock prints and the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, Jensen’s paintings vibrate and shimmer. From a distance (or viewed as a small photographic image), they’re easily discernible. Upon closer inspection however, they break down into textile-like patterns and become more abstract – a comment on the relationship between perspective and understanding. |
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Birgit Jensen, YASU III, 2018, acrylic on linen, 31 1/2 x 24 3/8 inches |
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Birgit Jensen, KAGAMI 33 IV, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 66 7/8 x 55 1/8 inches |
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Much of Jensen’s recent work revolves around the moon and its reflection in a still body of water. Vibrant, unexpected color combinations, achieved through a meticulous process of layering silkscreens custom-made by the artist, speak to the nature of perception, mediation, interpretation, and memory. |
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Crystal Liu – image courtesy of K Interiors San Francisco |
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Max Gimblett – Image Courtesy of K Interiors San Francisco |
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Reed Danziger – Image Courtesy of Studio Collins Weir, Sausalito |
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Emil Lukas – Image Courtesy of Studio Collins Weir, Sausalito |
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Cornelius Völker: Volatilizations / Verflüchtigungen
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Hosfelt Gallery is located at 260 Utah St, between 15th & 16th streets. Wheelchair accessible entrance at 255A Potrero Avenue. For more information call 415.495.5454 or visit hosfeltgallery.com. Open by appointment Tuesday through Saturday
To schedule an appointment, call the gallery or sign up online:
calendly.com/hosfelt-gallery
Hours: Tu, W, F, Sa 10-5:30, Th 11-7
Copyright © 2021 Hosfelt Gallery, All rights reserved.
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