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Comments (0) By Keith Bowers Wednesday, May 25 2011

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Art exhibits have no winners. Except when they do. And this one does. Or, it will. Which is to say, you don’t know who the winner is. Until you do. Welcome to “The Abstract,” a show that includes Phil Linhares, chief curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California, as a juror. The gallery solicited works from California artists and received materials from more than 350. It was limited to two-dimensional art, but the gallery reports getting works in multiple media and subject matter. Susan Bolen’s Fish, for example, is an acrylic work that includes, well, fish, in addition to a lot more. Using rich primary colors, she mixes scale and perspective to create a scene that includes the medieval, the biblical, the early American, and the apocalyptic. Kathryn Arnold, meanwhile, in Flowering Branch, renders in oils barely discernible plant life that evokes de Kooning and Pollock. Jessica Eastburn, in Wipeout, uses gouache to piece together an abstract work that could be plucked from a Rod Serling dreamscape. The exhibit opens today, and at a June 9 reception the organizers will reveal the winner, who will be awarded a solo exhibition at the gallery. So now you know. Except, you don’t, really. Yet.
June 1-27, 2011