LASKER, MARCACCIO, USLÉ
Project Room: JOIE ROSEN
Dates: September 16 – October 28, 2000
Opening Reception: Saturday September 16, 3–5 pm

Contact: Matthew StrombergMarcel Sitcoske is proud to present paintings by contemporary abstract artists Jonathan Lasker, Fabian Marcaccio, and Juan Uslé. This is the first time their work has been shown together in this context in San Francisco. By exhibiting their work together, Marcel Sitcoske Gallery will present a generational perspective on contemporary abstract painting.

All three of these artists have been instrumental in changing the way painting is thought about and defined. In Jonathan Lasker’s canvases, he deconstructs the language or syntax of painting. His works are full of contradictory elements that find resolution in a balanced composition. Graphical and painterly elements, grids, abstract shapes, planes of color, and brushstrokes are all used as interchangeable forms. Lasker’s “painting has always illustrated how an image is constructed, what an image is, and what painting is about.” Although his work may look spontaneous, every painting is very carefully planned beginning with small studies or maquettes that the artist produces. The gallery will have on exhibit two maquettes as well as a full size painting that illustrate the process that Lasker goes through to arrive at his final work. By adhering rigidly to the structure he sets down in the small studies, Lasker is able to balance the intuitive with an objective approach to painting.

Fabian Marcaccio describes his work as a “complex or expanded abstraction,” which incorporates elements from a number of visual traditions. His work stretches the boundaries of what we have come to expect from abstract painting as it strains to come off the wall, and is composed of paint with mixed media such as silicon, photography and collage. He also uses technology to alter the way paintings are traditionally made, as a painted brushstroke is replaced by or painted over a digitally printed substitute. The sensuous, gestural brushstrokes that feature so prominently in his work are often transformed into bubbles, canvas grids or cultural signs and symbols. In this way, Marcaccio seeks to free painting from the limitations that have been imposed upon it.

In Juan Uslé’s work, he boldly engages the physical properties of his medium using a combination of paint and raw pigment. He presents an entire range of abstract form and expression that is at once playful, dynamic and carefully composed. “Uslé transforms the canvas into a battlefield on which different forces face each other with aesthetic tension which is at the limit of what is ‘acceptable’.” By maintaining this tension between varying and opposing aspects of abstraction, Uslé creates truly engaging and contemporary work.

For our first project room exhibition, we will be presenting new work by New York based painter Joie Rosen. Her cool geometric abstractions are painted on silk that is stretched over painted wood. The translucency of the silk allows for interaction with the work as the light and one’s orientation to the work changes.