© Rana Begum upstarts Rana Begum, Carlee Fernandez, Lucie Noël Thune Rana Begum, a London based mixed media artist, will be exhibiting her brightly colored, linear abstractions for the first time in the United States. Begum is Bangladeshi by birth but her family moved to England when she was nine-years-old. Her work confronts the challenge inherent in being a Muslim woman artist fusing both Western and Eastern artistic traditions. Begum's panels are strongly imbued with references to Islamic art and architecture, not only its colors and forms but also its symbolic and spiritual dimensions. Using such alternative materials as vinyl and electrical tape, Begum carefully and intuitively lays on vertical and horizontal bands of color on formal geometric shapes. By completing her work with a thin coating of resin these surfaces take on an almost "fetish finish". While seemingly in opposition to the repetitive mark making, it captures the viewer's attention and slows the eye for further consideration of these luscious, yet disciplined, works. Gallery 2 will be filled with a variety of Carlee Fernandez's stunning surrealist sculptures incorporating small taxidermic animals morphed with elements natural to their environment. The wings of twinkling blue parakeets converge with the branches entwined around them linking one bird to another. A stuffed lobster literally appears to have a large growth of coral completely fused to its shell - a "saccharine" sweet white rabbit has cherries protruding from its fur. Cycles of life and death and certainly dark humor pervade Fernandez's "Still Lifes". At first glance the viewer may see these stuffed animals as grotesque abominations of nature but over time these sculptures evoke a scrutinized beauty of the reality of nature. L.A. based Carlee Fernandez has exhibited extensively in southern California and was recently included in "Domestic Odyssey", a group exhibition, at the San Jose Museum of Art. Norwegian artist Lucie Noël Thune's sculptural installations play on issues of consumerism, mass-production and cultural identity. The work exhibited consists of materials commonly found in our daily existence but transformed into something "other". "Coil" is an installation of black crater-like forms strewn across the gallery floor that consist of full-length 35mm films. The materiality of these sculptures, although recognizable, has an organic, tangible quality foreign to the use of the material in its utilitarian role. Alongside "Coil" is the work "Pictogram", in which clippings from the reels in "Coil "are draped in front of wall-mounted light boxes - some strips extending down to the floor or looped just past the edge of the light box. Again the materiality of the objects takes precedence over the subject matter of the film frames. Thune has actively exhibited her work in Norway including the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo. Exhibition: July 29 - September 4, 2004 Gallery Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30am - 5:30pm, Sat 10:30am - 5:00pm Haines Gallery also stays open until 7:30pm on the first Thursday of every month Haines Gallery 49 Geary Street, Suite 540 USA-San Francisco, CA 94108 Telephone +1 415 397-8114 Fax +1 415 397-8115 Email info@hainesgallery.com www.hainesgallery.com |
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