Purchasing

The Golem project is a suite of twenty etchings by Matt Rebholz, inspired by the tale of the Frankenstein-esque figure from Jewish folklore. Perhaps the best known of the Jewish legends, the Golem is an automaton, usually made from mud or clay and created through an intense and systematic mystical process. In Hebrew, the word golem refers to something unformed and imperfect, and implies a body without a soul. The narrative arc of the prints is a loose re-imagining of the 1915 Gustav Meyrink novel Der Golem, in which the title character wanders the streets of a corrupt and ruined city, blissfully unaware that he is a malfunctioning meat robot and not truly a man.

The prints are organized in a theatrical fashion, the spaces constructed as though they were the sets of a stage play and the players carefully arranged within them. Often the environments become more important than the figures, sometimes to their ultimate exclusion. These elements conspire to form a series of intimate, allegorical vignettes pregnant with obscenity and metaphor. The grotesque tableaux of The Golem serve as a polluted and uneasy dreamscape, peopled by a cast of damaged characters eager to do each other harm. Within this environment, the Golem himself can be read as a metaphor for humanity adrift in an absurd and dystopian world. As The Golem project ran its course, it deviated significantly from Meyrink’s original narrative, becoming less and less concerned with the original storyline. As it metastasized and evolved thematically, the imagery became increasingly concerned with my own thoughts about contemporary society and the manifestations of consumption, ingestion and expulsion within it.

View the entire series and additional work by the artist.

Next week, Museum of Northwest Art unveils Representing Abstraction, an exhibition of five contemporary local painters, including Davidson Galleries artist Mary Iverson.

Mary Iverson. Waterway 2, 2008. Oil and ink on canvas. 48 x 72 inches.

From the press release:

Five Northwest artists combine the abstract and the representational with very different results. Three of the artists’ paintings relate to three-dimensional objects also shown in the exhibition: Mary Iverson and Margie Livingston work from handmade models to create their abstract structures on canvas, while John Keppelman’s early sculptures prefigure his current paintings. Iverson depicts landscapes beset by cargo containers—abstract forms arranged along gridlines that stretch into and along the horizon of otherwise pristine landscapes. Livingston faithfully portrays light, space, and form from direct observation, and draws from the essence of each a pure abstraction. John Keppelman conveys multiple narratives in his figurative paintings, folding space in the same way he conceived and constructed his abstract wall sculptures. The other two artists in the exhibition represent landscapes in the abstract, from distinct vantage points: Philip Govedare paints the earth from above, abstracting the terrain with line, color and perspective, and Kelly Neidig portrays movement through landscape, distilling the view with bold bands of color.

The exhibition opens Saturday, October 10, from 2-5 pm, and continues through January 3, 2010.
For more information, visit MoNA’s upcoming exhibitions page.

We would like to invite you to support an exciting printmaking project artist Don Fels will be undertaking this fall in Spain. We are seeking subscribers to help fund a special opportunity for Don to work on monoprints inspired by the historic birthplace of the Kabbalah.  Each subscriber at $250 will receive one of the small edition of works associated with the monoprint/collage project. This contribution represents less than half the usual price for the artist’s work in this scale.

Don Fels. Trajectories (preliminary study), 2009. Mixed media. 9 x 32 inches.

Fels will be working for the month of October 2009 with Spanish master-printer Eusebi Subiros at the Lupusgrafic studio in Girona on the Costa Brava, in collaboration with Davidson Galleries in Seattle and Michael Dunev Art Projects in Torroella dei Montgri, Spain. It was in Girona that the Kabbalah was first published. With the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, the book made its way with them around the world.

Working with Sebi, Fels will create a series of monoprints to include chine colle and collage, found images, diagrams and drawing. The series will pursue the intersection of the Zohar (the most important work of the Kabbalah) and Linear Perspective- the external and internal. The Zohar grapples with the concept of infinity and looking deeply inwards. Linear Perspective and the concept of the Vanishing Point produced a system for projecting outwards into infinite space. Moving in opposite directions, the two bodies of knowledge developed simultaneously in Spain and Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries.

For some years in Italy and then in India, Fels has been researching the relationship between the art of perspective and the Voyages of Discovery, which the perspective system made possible.  The time spent in Girona offers the extraordinary chance to broaden his research to re-consider these developments in light of the life of the mind.

“Trajectories”, mixed media, 2009, 9×32” is a study for the print project. It reproduces a 1521 diagram by Cesare Cesarino, itself based on Leonardo da Vinci’s ground-breaking work on perspective from 1492. In the mid-15th century, the funnel, as pictured in the piece, brought the French word trajectory into the English language.

If you would like to participate in this important project, please email or call 206-624-7684 to subscribe.
We are hoping to complete the subscription by September 25. Thank you very much.

Eunice Kim. Porous #55, 2009. Collagraph and chine colle. Edition of 20 EV. 4 x 4 inches.

Eunice Kim’s solo exhibition Recent Work, opens next month at Augen Gallery in Portland with a Preview Reception on September 2, 5:30-7:30pm and First Thursday Reception on September 3, 5:30-8:30pm.  The exhibition will be on view from September 1 - 25, 2009.

Contemporary printmaker and current exhibitor at Davidson Galleries, Lee Chul Soo has work in The 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts, a multifaceted event consisting of a number of exhibitions as well as other happenings in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The exhibition, The Matrix: An Unstable Reality, will focus on contemporary graphic art in the broadest sense of the term.

Rice is Heaven and Earth, for Which We Should Be Truly Grateful, 2006. Woodcut. Edition of 35. 11 x 12 inches.

The exhibition responds to certain vital questions for society and art raised by the cult movie trilogy The Matrix. Does a medium stay the same once it incorporates new technologies in its discourse? Does this increase the audience for art? What is the social power of those who possess the matrix? Is the possession of the matrix enough to also justify exclusive reproduction rights? Can we create a perfect world, whether real or virtual?

The exhibition offers a selection of more than eighty internationally established and emerging artists. Their work extends from traditional and contemporary printmaking to artist’s books and interventions in the public space, in the mass media, and on computers.

On view 4 September through 25 October, 2009. More information available at Art Knowledge News.

A Special Evening with Susan Bennerstrom

Thursday, August 20th, 6 - 8:30 pm

This is a one-night-only exhibition of Susan’s most recent work. She will discuss the exciting new direction her work is taking. For an invitation to this special event please contact Cara at cara@davidsongalleries.com, 206-624-1324.

• View previous works by Bennerstrom

Gibraltar, 2005. Lithograph. Edition of 4. 18 x 14 inches.

Contemporary printmaker Ben Moreau is officially ubiquitous. His works are presently included in the 2nd Bangkok Triennale International Print and Drawing exhibition, which runs through September and is hosted by Silpakorn University in Bangkok, and in the Lucia Douglas Print Invitational at the Lucia Douglas Gallery, through July 25 in Bellingham. WA.

Moreau has also been chosen as the 2009 Lithographer in Residence at the Black Church Print Studio in Dublin, Ireland, and will participate in the Biennale internationale d’estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivieres hosted by Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, which runs from June 21-September 6.

Recent Davidson Galleries exhibitor John Grade is included in ÜberPortrait, now showing at Bellevue Art Museum.

Comprised of over 30 works by celebrated local, national and international artists, this unique exhibition examines the ‘portrait’  in all its facets – from individual likeness to overarching cultural identity. Working in a broad range of media such as sculpture, ceramics, photography, fiber, performance art and film, artists highlighted in ÜberPortrait share a common interest: exploring the age-old fascination with capturing a person’s likeness and/or recreating his or her identity, both as individual and collective entities. Continue reading…

Artists include: Nick Cave (IL), Kate Clark (NY), Sonya Clark (VA), John Grade (WA), Margot Quan Knight (WA), Ledelle Moe (MD), Darrel Morris (IL), Brian O’Doherty (A.K.A. Patrick Ireland; NY), Kukuli Velarde (PA), Dan Webb (WA) and Ah Xian (Australia). ÜberPortrait continues through October 18, 2009.

Etsuko Ichikawa’s exhibition Glass Pyrographs is now showing at Randall Scott Gallery in Brooklyn, through July 11. Elusive Element, with Leo Saul Berk, Shawn Patrick Landis and Claude Zervas runs July 3 - October 4, 2009 at Museum of Northwest Art, with an opening reception Saturday, July 11, 2-5pm.

Four Northwest artists work with the fleeting nature of the elements–earth, air, fire, and water.  Two of the artists represent or mimic nature with synthetic mediums, while two use elements to make their art.  Shawn Patrick Landis’ medium is air; Leo Saul Berk diagrams inaccessible caves deep into the earth; Etsuko Ichikawa makes calligraphic marks on paper with fire; and Claude Zervas maps Northwest watersheds in neon.  “Elusive Elements” features large-scale works and installations.

Contemporary printmaker Eunice Kim is exhibiting work in the 2009 Guanlan International Print Biennial at the Guanlan Museum in Shenzhen, China, from May 14 through July 14.  The exhibition features 253 prints from 70 countries selected from nearly 3,000 worldwide submissions.  The biennial, in its second installment this year, is co-sponsored by the China Artists Association, Shenzhen Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and Baoan District People’s Government.

Barbara Robertson has been awarded a 2009 Individual Artists Projects Grant by 4Culture for her Mixed Media Animation project which will result in hybrid work that combines large scale works on paper with projected, time-based imagery. Robertson will exhibit a solo show at Davidson Galleries in June 2010.

Parallel Lines, featuring works by eight Seattle artists, including recent paintings by Davidson Galleries artist Tram Bui, opens tonight at the (New!) Wing Luke Asian Museum, from 6:30-8:30pm. The opening reception is free and open to the public.

The exhibition also features Mark Takamichi Miller, Jason Huff, Akio Takamori, Pattatti Warashina, Saya Moriyasu, Thúy-Vân Vu and Joseph Park. The artists are paired to accentuate thematic or biographic similarities within their work and lives.

Artist Trust has announced the recipients of their Grants for Artist Projects (GAP). The GAP program provides up to $1,500 to individual artists for various projects. In 2009, Artist Trust received 933 applications from artists working in all disciplines across Washington State.

Two Davidson artists were awarded grants:

Samantha Scherer, for assistance in the production, presentation, documentation, and storage of her current project “Floodplains.” This project will examine the ways people cope in adverse circumstances and how the media records their reactions. It will result in a collection of larger watercolor drawings focusing further on the emptiness and minutiae of the captured events. Borrowing from images collected from various sources, Samantha reinterprets and personalizes contemporary culture in the drawn and painted snapshots.

Allan Packer, for materials purchased to bring completion to a sculpture. The work, titled “The Transformation of Existence and Property in Space and Time – Ka Ba Akh,” follows in the pattern of Allan’s work in referencing a scientific device, a mathematical equation, or a culturally-specific structure or belief in generating the conceptual basis of his pieces. The cryogenic apparatus is to be represented by a machine cast sarcophagus suspending an encapsulated translucent body casting.

Congratulations to all of the recipients!