Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Laurie Steelink 310.264.4678
BRURIA FINKEL: THE COMPLETE ALEPH SERIES
CONNIE ZEHR: ANGLES OF REPOSE
May 9 - May 30 2009
Opening reception on Saturday, May 9 from 6 to 9 PM
1 April, 2009, Santa Monica–Track 16 Gallery is pleased to present two concurrent exhibitions, BRURIA FINKEL: THE COMPLETE ALEPH SERIES and CONNIE ZEHR: ANGLES OF REPOSE. Both exhibitions will open on Saturday, May 9, and run through Saturday, May 30, with an opening reception on Saturday, May 9, from 6 to 9 PM.
Bruria Finkel’s Complete Aleph Series is inspired by and named after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet aleph. Art critic Peter Frank quotes, “Bruria’s art is not commentary on the Kabbalah, but is a reconfiguration of its logic, a putting-to-work of Kabbalistic theory—not quite in the same way as, say, alchemical efforts to turn lead into gold, but definitely a means of giving form to verbal and numerical expression, form that such expression had not been given before. Form is informed by information, detail follows on detail, and abstract knowledge takes circular shape, the same shape assumed by galaxies and drops in a pond”.
Finkel’s installation is a creation of a sacred space with its central ritual piece, The Divine Chariot Series, four eight-foot-tall bronzes, inspired by the writings of Avraham Abulafua a kabbalist mystic, poet, Rabbi, who lived in 13th century, Spain (whose writings Finkel has translated since the 1960s). The exhibition also consists of large-scale paintings, originally created in 1991-93 for the Stadtmuseum in Düsseldorf, Germany, handmade books, meditation pieces, and a temporary installation combining elements of earlier (1980) and more recent work.
Connie Zehr has been making large temporary floor installations using sand with other materials and sculpted objects since the late 1960s. The installations are created directly on the floor of the gallery, and remain in place for the duration of the exhibition, and are then later swept away. The scale and formality of the installations paradoxically reveal intimacy and vulnerability when you are in their presence.
Her current exhibition, Angles of Repose, consists of both sand installation and large inkjet prints. Zehr has been creating two-dimensional images that fuse the temporary arrangement of particles with pixels since 1997. Her prints show movement in space by capturing ambiguous "events" that hover between abstraction and representation. They are a continuation of her fascination with disruption and repose, matter as fact and as metaphor.
The artists will be conducting a walk-through tour of their exhibitions on Saturday, May 23, from 4 to 6 P.M. They will be available to address questions from the public during that time.
For more information, please visit our website at archive.track16.com.