Friday, October 14, 2011

Folio Fantastico


Isabel Samaras Nutz plate just joined her books on the shelf at the gallery in time for the Gallery Walk tomorrow.  


Yay! 


These plates are fancy, detailed, awesome, silly, wonderful little versions of the original painting hanging in the closing room.  


You can also pick up copies of Isabel's On Tender Hooks and her saucy coloring book.
Isabel Samaras' quirky, sexy, pop-surrealist art has had a cult following for years and now at long last her first monograph, On Tender Hooks, is here. Drawing her influence from classic TV shows and paintings by the Old Masters, for example riffing on Gricault's Raft of the Medusa by replacing the figures with characters from Gilligan's Island Samaras has created a witty, erotic, and surreal body of work.


Chris Mars Tolerance, The Extraordinary Drawings of Laurie Lipton, Robert Williams Through Prehensile Eyes ---just one of several R. Williams' currently on the shelves, Scott Musgrove's The Late Fauna of Early North America are just a few of the fantastic Emporium items on display on the gallery shelves.


Tolerance features 159 of Mars' technically brilliant and emotionally stirring paintings as well as numerous essays by Mars regarding the nexus and symbolism of individual works, offering rare and candid insight into the mind of the artist and the imagined minds of the troubled and triumphant souls who populate his canvases. 


A collection of Robert Williams' most paintings from his first three shows at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York (1999-2005). The images range from Williams' familiar lowbrow and biker culture, stretching deep into a faux science of quantum mechanics leaving the viewer in a world of scientific mind-play. After singlehandedly becoming the model of Lowbrow art, Williams has now penetrated the inner sanctum of the fine arts movement. 


Scott Musgrove unearths previously undiscovered animals through a dedicated and scientifically un-approved practice of zoological impressionism. A lone-star in the field, he ventures where the gray-maned, khaki-clad, anthropologists with ivory walking sticks have not--tunneling beneath freeways and ditch-combing along the rough borders of American mini-malls, in search of undiscovered and, up to this point, at least, extinct animals.  The Late Fauna of Early North America features lush, highly detailed landscapes and up-close encounters with all manner of strange and beautiful creatures. Full color reproductions of his paintings abound, including unique antique frames, custom gold engraved nameplates, carved wooden sculptures, watercolors, ink drawings, and pencil renderings from the field. 

Laurie Lipton's vast and eerily memorable drawings have been widely recognized for their sublime references to life's predicaments. Portrayed with teeth-clenching humor and consummate skill, her work is rich in imagination, artistry and social awareness. Laurie has been drawing since the age of four and has developed her own technique inspired by the 16th Century Flemish Masters: using thousands of tiny lines, like the brush strokes in an egg-tempera painting, to build-up tone and form. The subjects of her art -- fear, politics, sexuality, murder, mayhem, greed, indifference -- are timelessly classic yet relentlessly up to date. Almost all of Laurie's works are black and white, but the book is printed in full color, showcasing over 70 drawings spanning 3 decades. 


The Emporium is always open online, and there you'll find quite a few more publications, ephemera, prints, objet d'art to choose from.  

Still, it's a lot more fun to come in and see it all in person, and for us to see you!  You can get anything you've seen online right here at the gallery.  So if you can't join us on Saturday October 15, 4-7pm for the Yerba Buena Alliance Fall Gallery Walk, then come by when we normally open every Tues.-Sat. 11am to 6pm.  Or, check out the Gallery Walk as we live stream from the gallery.