Craig Kauffman and Blue McRight
APRIL 21 - MAY 26, 2007
Presented as Patricia Faure Gallery at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica.
Craig Kauffman and Blue McRight
April 21 - May 26, 2007
Craig Kauffman exhibits new work at Patricia Faure Gallery, showing new pieces for the first time since his move to the Philippines. The premiere of these new fiberglass and glitter constructions is an unparalleled exhibition of a true Los Angeles icon. Long revered by critics and academics, Kauffman came to popular international attention in a mixed blessing this past summer when his Untitled Wall Relief of 1967 tumbled from the walls of the Centre Pompidou and shattered. His stock has been on the rise ever since.
Kauffman’s upcoming exhibition at Patricia Faure Gallery will look at the artist’s history of working in threes – both in subject matter (landscapes, still lives, shoes) and media (paintings, glitter drawings, sculpture) – to uncover a rigorously creative progress. Tracing a thru-line across Kauffman’s tremendously varied output over the years, this exhibition reveals the constant direction Kauffman’s career has taken—from his acrylic sculptural work of the 1960s, to his line paintings of the 1970s, to his inlaid glitter sculpture of the 1990s, arriving at a combination of all three modes in his present work. This exhibition reveals an ever-evolving exploration of process and product in Kauffman’s work that is as vital today as it was more than four decades ago.
In the Small Gallery, Blue McRight will install a series of 55 small oil paintings titled “On the Lawn.” Created on sketchbook paper, these completed works possess a rare, diarylike intimacy. She will show a single large oil-on- masonite piece on the opossing wall, with a horde of disturbingly red lawn animals installed in the gallery’s newly remodeled grand entrance. McRight’s work cuts deeply into the ongoing dialogue of nature and culture – played out in her tableaux of the idealized American lawn – through this dialogue she uncovers paradoxes within the serenely benign landscape of domestic life.
