The University Art Gallery at Sonoma State University is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Wood: Six Artists/One Medium, which opens with a reception for the artists on Thursday, Nov. 7 from 4 - 6 p.m., and runs through Sunday, Dec. 15.
The exhibition features the work of Kyoung Ae Cho, Jeff King, Dennis Leon, Alvin Light, Bernie Lubell, and Walter Robinson,
The artists in Wood: Six Artists/One Medium share not only the same medium, but a reverence and respect for the material with which they work. Like other 20th century sculptors before them, they were attracted to wood in part because of its physical and expressive qualities.
Each artist devoted a considerable amount of time developing a relationship with wood. In turn, each artist, in his or her own way, pushed its potential in unique directions.
Kyoung Ae Cho's work is a celebration of nature. She gathers natural materials in a spiritual, ceremonial manner. In an empathetic way, Cho intervenes with the materials, quietly transforming them. Her grid-like, formal work makes us aware of the transformations a tree goes through on its way from the forest to the mill to the lumberyard, and ultimately to an object formed by human hands. Cho's sculpture speaks of change, time, essence, and rebirth.
Jeff King also shares this quiet respect for and observation of nature. He goes right to the source, taking logs and filleting them like MRI slices, then reconstructing them into formal, altered shapes. Although his work is heavily process oriented, he generously allows the material to choose it's own voice.
The work of Dennis Leon (1933 - 1998) is also quite labor intensive. Leon was always drawn to nature and the landscape of the Bay Area and early in his career created site-specific works in the East Bay hills. His monolithic accretions of plywood allude to natural forms and confront the viewer viscerally like the geological formations they resemble.
Combining consummate craftsmanship with an innate sense of balance and composition, Alvin Light (1931 - 1980) skillfully captured in wood the sense of gesture, movement, and spontaneous invention expressed on canvas by such Bay Area Abstract Expressionist painters as Jack Jefferson, Frank Lobdell, and Clyfford Still. His funky yet graceful constructions show all of the evidence and sensual pleasure of their creation. They are like long, daring, well resolved jazz solos.
Bernie Lubell constructs complex kinetic contraptions whose absurdfunctions poetically refer to the repetitive futility and inevitable failure of toiling humankind and the human body. He could have chosen other materials, but his choice of wood makes the work look as if it was whittled in shop class by Leonardo daVinci and Rube Goldberg.
Walter Robinson is an old-fashioned object maker. His use of the material can be highly crafted or deliberately crude and borrows from the historical traditions of woodworking: furniture makers, boat builders, and folk whittlers. His objects or systems of objects can be representational or more vaguely referential and open to interpretation. They are often goofy and absurd and present an uncomfortable, indecipherable conundrum.
Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and weekends, noon to 4 p.m. The gallery is closed Mondays and holidays. Admission to the gallery is free.
For more information or press photos, please call (707) 664-2295.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Flagellon" by Walter Robinson. Douglar Fir (48" x80" x 70")
