Masami Teraoka | Christopher Russell
Works on Paper | New Work
OCTOBER 29 - DECEMBER 5, 2009
Presented as Samuel Freeman Gallery at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica.
Masami Teraoka Works on Paper
Christopher Russell New Work
October 29 - December 5, 2009
Samuel Freeman presents “Masami Teraoka: Works on Paper – 1960s to 1990s,” a month-long museum-level survey of works on paper including prints, original drawings, watercolors, fragments and studies.
Born in Japan, educated in Los Angeles, and currently residing in Hawaii, Masami Teraoka is a cultural outsider by circumstance, but as an artist who came of age during the 1960s he is a cultural observer by birthright. Teraoka’s career has been marked by pronounced moments of cultural critique: Ukiyo-e style visions of the American fast food empire invading Japan in the 1960s; the threat of AIDS and its accompanying specter of death in the 1970s and 1980s; exploration of globalization, environmental and gender issues in the 1990s; crises of conscience within modern politics, religion and sexuality in his current work. In each of these periods Teraoka's work has invoked a profound opposition of forces: political vs. sexual; humiliation vs. titilation; technocracy vs. prophecy; consumerism vs. tradition.
“Masami Teraoka: Works on Paper – 1960s to 1990s” presents exceptional examples of Teraoka’s work from these periods, including the 31 Flavors Invading Japan, New Views of Mount Fuji, McDonalds Hamburger Invading Japan, Hanuama Bay and Snorkel Series. Teraoka last exhibited “The Cloisters Confession” at Samuel Freeman in April 2008.
Christopher Russell will exhibit in the Chapel Gallery. Russell employs photography, bookmaking, writing, drawing, and digital-media printmaking to illustrate his explorations of the darker side of the human psyche. Investigating, and sometimes fabricating, the reasons people live or behave outside of socially acceptable margins, his work offers visions of what many would deem dirty, broken, useless, or criminal. Through the lens of a present-day flâneur, viewers are made privy to Russell’s observant, analytical wanderings along the physical and emotional outskirts of society. Russell most recently exhibited at the Hammer Museum in early 2009.
