Larry Bell has been breaking boundaries in the art world since the early 1960s, making history in the Light and Space movement of Southern California. Our curator Michelle Bello proudly presents Unbounded, a collection of recent works by Bell and three other dynamic California artists: Joey Piziali, Judith Foosaner, and Casper Brindle. Each artist distinctively explores boundaries in their art now on view at Sloan Miyasato in San Francisco.

Throughout his career Larry Bell has made investigations into the properties of light on surface. By experimenting with the nature of surface and its relationship to space, Bell has devised a methodology characterized by spontaneity, intuition, and improvisation. His experiments are primarily concerned with technically advanced material and their potential to challenge and extend the thresholds of perception.

Made from papers, Mylar, and laminated film, his recent collages are seemingly smooth swathes of luminous colors that appear to change from different angles. “Sheets of these materials have been coated with vaporized metals and quartz in a thermal vacuum chamber,” says Bell. “Heat is then applied to the metals. The metals melt, and then gas or vaporize. As this is taking place in a vacuum, there is no resistance to the vaporized metals spreading throughout the chamber and coating the materials. Metals have a crystalline structure as solids. When they gas, and then coat the surface of a material, they retain the same crystalline structure. Crystals and light create rainbows, or light interference colors.”

Larry Bell
SF 1.30 12A, 2012
Mixed Media on Black Arches Paper
30 x 22 Inches

Larry Bell in the studio

Larry Bell was born in Chicago in 1939. Having grown up in the San Fernando Valley, Bell attended Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles from 1957 through 1959 where he was a student of Robert Irwin. He was extraordinarily successful as a young artist and showed regularly at Pace Gallery in New York. Bell’s work was also included in the seminal Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Responsive Eye in 1965. His art is in public collections throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and Tate Gallery in London.

Joey Piziali
The Difference Between You and Me, 2008
Acrylic, Ink, and Latex on Canvas
60 x 72 Inches

“This series was influenced by my ongoing appreciation of contemporary architecture,” says artist Joey Piziali. “At the time I was looking at buildings by Rem Koolhaus, like the Seattle Central Library and studies of the CCTV towers in Beijing as well as Norman Foster’s Hearst Tower in New York. I loved the way the buildings performed as massive sculpture, they transform the space around them, engaging unexpected aspects of the urban environment. They create such unique and challenging compositions. They make me rethink what is possible.”

“In a painting I often think about subverting the expectation of a composition,” adds Piziali. “In the painting The Difference Between You And Me, I wanted to present a painting that fully established itself within an expected form, the architecture of the pictorial plane. The painting, composed of a geometric abstract work is floating in a frame of white space. The slashing sprayed lines activate the frame of the image. This gesture disrupts or defaces the image, pushing it to the background while simultaneously becoming a part of painting and engaging the white space. These lines push the composition to the edge of the frame. It’s as if they continue well beyond the painting/object itself.”

Judith Foosaner
Egyptian Chapter 12, 2014
Collage with Acrylic on Canvas
40 x 80 Inches

“All of my work derives from the ancients,” says artist Judith Foosaner. “The Egyptian Chapter series is the result of an investigation of organic forms, broken and reassembled into geometric units. Each unit combines with the next to express simultaneously, both continuity and interruption. I love the sinuous shapes in combination with the staccato supplied by the geometry. I love the suggestion of what is implicit. Once launched on these pieces, it became clear that their rhythms and the “stacked space” in which they were aligned was suggestive of so much of what I’d experienced with Egyptian hieroglyphs. The visual beauty of this early language never fails to call–this work of mine is its reply.”

Casper Brindle
Tange, 2014
Acrylic, Automotive Paint, and Resin on Panel
44 x 96 Inches

The paintings of Casper Brindle look as sleek as surfboards and shiny as high beams. Using color-shifting automotive paints and coats of glossy resin, this contemporary Los Angeles artist’s work stems from the Light and Space and Finish Fetish art movements of the 1960s, reflecting the car and surf culture of Southern California. Brindle was mentored by the internationally acclaimed artist Eric Orr, one of the pioneers of the Light and Space movement. Though Brindle’s work cannot be separated from the movement’s practice, it does stand out with its sophisticated studies of atmosphere and vaporous ambiguities that intrigue and compel us to navigate the hazy borders of perception. Subtle horizon lines aide this navigation. His richly hued canvases, composed of bands of softened colors, seem to radiate and extend far beyond the boundaries of the picture plane. Having spent a considerable amount of time on a surfboard, his work also reflects his personal passion for the ocean and skies of California.

Pricing
Tommy Talbot
(415) 431-1465 tommyt@sloanm.com

Sloan Miyasato
2 Henry Adams Street, Suite 212
San Francisco, CA 94103

Hours
Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm

Curator
Michelle Bello Fine Art Consulting
(415) 317-5975 info@michellebello.com

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