Urban Sprawl: Examining the Human Environment

URBAN SPRAWL E xamining the Human Environment

URBAN SPRAWL

Examining the Human Environment At a time when San Francisco and cities across the US are experiencing unprecedented shifts in demography and landscape, it has become ever more crucial for artists to examine the human environment, asking us to pause in the face of the small moments that create the backdrop of our everyday lives. In Urban Sprawl, CK Contemporary presents eight artists’ interpretations of the public terrain, and how it has become a metaphor for the human condition.

While there are elements in the work of several of the artists represented in this exhibition that could be labeled as “documentary”, each one approaches their subject as an experience more than merely an opportunity for replication. Elizabeth Patterson’s exquisitely rendered colored pencil drawings of rain on the windshields of moving vehicles are less about the cityscape beyond, and more about the feeling of being immersed in an environment from which you are protected. Light and movement dance across her picture planes in a flurry of alluring distortion, creating a sense of abstraction both literally and cognitively.

Marc Trujillo, employing a deep understanding of the formal elements of Old Master paintings, creates meticulous and curiously luminous compositions of mundane shopping malls, food trucks, and parking lots. He says of his work, “The locations in the paintings are non-destinations, particularly North American kinds of nowhere, at once ubiquitous and yet largely unseen.”

Trujillo’s process is slow and traditional, but his subjects are arenas of fast consumerism, forcing the viewer into a rare moment of genuine observation regarding our own relationship to these pervasive environments.

Spanish painter Juan Escauriaza and Belgian artist Ronald Dupont approach their visions of the American landscape as outsiders looking in. While Escauriaza mines for beauty in the most subtle details of our urban surroundings (the patina of a forgotten storefront or a net of shadows cast from nearby telephone wires across an aging neon sign), Dupont imbues his canvases with the vibrating energy of the city itself. Both artists, who’s foreignness makes them naturally objective in their study of the American milieu, are able to capture the feeling of seeing a city anew–on the one hand, keenly aware of each exquisite detail, and on the other, immersed in the pace and fervor of the city as a whole.

An “urban landscape” is defined merely as a “representation of the physical aspects of a city or town”, but where that definition ends is precisely where the works by the eight represented artists in Urban Sprawl begin. The images in this exhibition are not simply documents of our thriving metropolises and small towns, but are instead windows from which we can examine the beauty of our shared human experience.

CK Contemporary

RONALD DUPONT

Ronald Dupont San Francisco - Home Port Oil on canvas 71 x 47 1/4 inches

Ronald Dupont City View 2 Oil on canvas 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 inches

Ronald Dupont City View 1 Oil on canvas 47 1/4 x 39 1/2 inches

Ronald Dupont NYC 33 Oil on canvas 55 x 55 inches

Ronald Dupont NYC 30 Oil on canvas 55 x 55 inches

Ronald Dupont City View 2 Oil on canvas 55 x 59 inches

Ronald Dupont NYC Facade 7 Oil on canvas 47 1/4 x 55 inches

JUAN ESCAURIAZA Juan Escauriaza

La Fundaciรณn #3

Acrylic on canvas

29 1/2 x 51 inches

Juan Escauriaza

Oakland #2

Acrylic on canvas

38 x 51 inches

Juan Escauriaza

Modern #2

Acrylic on canvas

25 1/2 x 36 1/4 inches

Juan Escauriaza

The Bridge

Acrylic on canvas

29 x 45 inches

Juan Escauriaza

Coffee Break

Acrylic on canvas

19 3/4 x 28 3/4 inches

Juan Escauriaza

Sutter Street

Acrylic on canvas

19 1/2 x 39 inches

Juan Escauriaza From the Window Acrylic on canvas 31 x 31 inches

Juan Escauriaza Modern #3 Acrylic on canvas 51 x 51 inches

Juan Escauriaza No End Acrylic on canvas 51 3/4 x 38 3/4 inches

Juan Escauriaza Franklin Acrylic on canvas 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

Elizabeth Patterson

Magazine Street III, New Orleans

Colored pencil, solvent and pastel on illustration board

18 x 36 inches

Elizabeth Patterson

Dusk, Avenue des Champs-ĂˆlysŃ?es II

Colored pencil, solvent and pastel on illustration board

22 x 34 inches

Elizabeth Patterson

Century City, 3 pm

Colored pencil, solvent and pastel on illustration board

12 x 26 inches

Elizabeth Patterson Glen Park, 6 pm Colored pencil, solvent and pastel on illustration board 12 x 12 inches

Elizabeth Patterson Coldwater Canyon Boulevard II Graphite, colored pencil and solvent on Strathmore Bristol vellum 15 x 30 inches

Elizabeth Patterson Ventura Freeway V Colored pencil and solvent on Strathmore Bristol vellum 14 x 26 inches

Elizabeth Patterson Eiffel Tower IV Colored pencil and solvent on Strathmore Bristol vellum 10 x 18 inches

Elizabeth Patterson La Conciergerie Colored pencil and solvent on Strathmore illustration board 16 x 22 inches

Elizabeth Patterson

Beverly Glen Boulevard V

Graphite and colored pencil on illustration board

16 x 24 inches

Elizabeth Patterson

Place De La Concorde

Colored pencil on Strathmore illustration board

12 x 22 inches

MARC TRUJILLO

Marc Trujillo 13463 Washington Blvd.

Oil on polyester 34 x 22 inches

Marc Trujillo

14409 Vanowen Street

Oil on polyester

19 x 22 3/4 inches

MICHELLE OSMAN

Michelle Osman

Shell

Oil on canvas

32 x 86 inches

Michelle Osman

Storm Warning

Oil on canvas

20 x 44 inches

Michelle Osman Drummond MT Oil on canvas 26 x 26 inches

Michelle Osman Dixon Bar Oil on canvas 24 x 24 inches

ROSALYN BODYCOMB

Rosalyn Bodycomb D.C. Metro VII Oil on panel 36 x 27 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb DC Metro XIV Oil on panel 36 x 27 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb

MTA I

Oil on panel

16 x 24 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb MTA III Oil on panel 24 x 16 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb DC Metro VIII Oil on panel 27 x 36 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb D.C. Metro VII Oil on panel 27 x 36 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb

Gene’s Po-Boy

Oil on linen

18 x 31 3/4 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb

L9 House # 1417

Oil on linen

18 x 31 3/4 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb Nola Duplex #2654 Oil on panel 12 x 16 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb Nola Duplex #2656 Oil on panel 12 x 16 inches

Rosalyn Bodycomb

Brooklyn Bodega

Oil on panel

18 x 32 inches

HOLLIS DUNLAP

Hollis Dunlap Long Distance Oil on linen 40 x 50 inches

Hollis Dunlap San Francisco Sun Oil on linen 30 x 30 inches

EMILY FROMM

Emily Fromm SFO 4 - North Beach Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30 inches

Emily Fromm Yellowstone Inc. Acrylic on canvas 16 x 20 inches

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