Summer refresher at Pentimenti

By libby

August 15, 2008   ·   5 Comments

Aurora Robson’s plastic sculptures are made from recycled materials, this one from plastic bottles.

In a final hiccup before the onslought of September shows, Pentimenti has reopened its sweet summer group show, Summer Journeys, Summer Dreams for a couple of weeks. There’s some terrific and surprising work here.

The artists in the show are a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar–Darlene Charneco, Heather Hutchison, Aurora Robson, Ben Roosevelt, Paul Villinski and Mauro Zamora.

I was pretty taken with hanging sculptures from Aurora Robson–biomorphic interplanetary shapes from recycled, repetitive materials. They were a sort of non-robotic, decorous cousin of Shi Chieh Huang‘s creatures and of Jae Hi Ahn‘s plastic fantastic hanging kelp gardens.

Aurora Robson

Robson also collages vortexes of junk-mail imagery, adding biomorphic shapes and juicy curves–taking a maximal approach that contrasts nicely with the elegant single gesture of Rachel Perry Welty‘s cut fruit labels, seen recently at Gallery Joe.

by Ben Roosevelt, from the The Reconnaissance Devices series

Ben Roosevelt is another artist whose work–beautiful drawings of figures floating in the paper’s white space–is new to me. There’s a sense of something happening here that’s not exactly clear, maybe even threatening.

Ben Roosevelt, from the The Reconnaissance Devices series

The work looks completely contemporary and fresh, as if the figures have been plucked from off the street.

Heather Hutchison

Another pleasant surprise was luminous work from Heather Hutchison, translucent paintings using beeswax on plexiglas. Their colors glow and almost vibrate!

Mauro Zamora

Darlene Charneco’s juicy map-like forms embedded in epoxy continue to raise questions about just where in the world or the internet or suburbia we have landed, and Mauro Zamora’s meditations on the relationship of where we are inside with what’s growing outside continue to deliver their graphic punch.

Paul Villinski

The exhibit also includes Paul Villinski’s installation of butterflies cut from aluminum cans, dipped in paint and pinned to the wall. Some of the pieces in this exhibit have been rotated out and replaced since the day I saw the exhibit, but work in the same vein should be in its place.

Tags: aurora robson, ben roosevelt, darlene charneco, heather hutchison, mauro zamora, paul villinski, pentimenti gallery

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