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Preview: Deth P. Sun’s “Being and Nothingness” at Grumpy Bert

Berkeley painter Deth P. Sun's work, taken a whole, can be read almost like a comic book. With each solo show, his blank-eyed cat character — whom longtime fans have come to know well — returns for new adventures. Coming up on April 25, the artist has a solo show at Grumpy Bert in Brooklyn titled "Being and Nothingness." This time, his mystical feline tackles themes of global proportions. Set against a backdrop of a star-lit sky, Sun places the microcosm of his protagonist's world in the larger context of the universe. Amid the endearing visuals are bouts of melancholy as our hero ultimately must face his own mortality. "Being and Nothingness" will be on view through May 24.

Berkeley painter Deth P. Sun’s work, taken a whole, can be read almost like a comic book. With each solo show, his blank-eyed cat character — whom longtime fans have come to know well — returns for new adventures. Coming up on April 25, the artist has a solo show at Grumpy Bert in Brooklyn titled “Being and Nothingness.” This time, his mystical feline tackles themes of global proportions. Set against a backdrop of a star-lit sky, Sun places the microcosm of his protagonist’s world in the larger context of the universe. Amid the endearing visuals are bouts of melancholy as our hero ultimately must face his own mortality. “Being and Nothingness” will be on view through May 24.

Topics

art, Deth P. Sun, painting

f. scott hess, painting

May 21, 2014

F. Scott Hess's oil paintings balance time-honored compositional techniques with a bright, saturated color palette and elements of kitsch. He directly translates the cultural symbols of American suburbia — country club dads, manicured lawns — into modern-day history paintings. Like the 18th and 19th-century depictions of great battles, his oil paintings feature multitudes of characters sprawled out across a single canvas, each person involved in his or her own activity and reacting to the situation at hand in different ways. At times, Hess plays with perspective, warping the scene as if it was distorted by a fish-eye lens or a botched panoramic photo on an iPhone. The results give viewers a chance to be voyeurs in situations that were once mundane but have become far-removed and strange.

Preview: Kent Williams’s “How Human of You” at 101/Exhibit

101/exhibit, How Human of You, Kent Williams, painting

October 17, 2014

Bright flora bursts in Kent Williams's paintings (featured in HF Vol. 21). Thick brushstrokes of hot pink, mint and navy hint at an arrangement of organic growths. Williams frequently positions his subjects in the outdoors, where they inhabit areas that seem wild and overgrown yet feel contained like miniature Edens. His characters fervently move as if enacting a frenetic dance performance, their motion captured by his expressive use of paint. While Williams has been widely recognized for his figurative work over the past 20 years, his first solo show with 101/Exhibit in Los Angeles, "How Human of You," marks a shift into abstraction. Figures are still present in many of the works, but Williams removes the idea of time and place, instead suspending them in an imaginary space where his flamboyant color choices elicit a visceral, emotional response.

The Disquieting, Wide-Reaching Paintings of Margaret Curtis

Margaret Curtis, oil painting, painting

July 12, 2018

The work of Margaret Curtis moves between provocative and quiet moments, each reflecting both on our current social climate and the act of painting itself. She has said that her process is “a geological process of layering and erosion.” In a statement, she offers some insight into the more consistent themes in her paintings over time:

José Luis López Galván’s Surreal Oil Paintings Utilize Techniques of Old Masters

Jose Luis Lopez Galvan, painting

July 24, 2014

Mexican artist José Luis López Galván works with oil paint to create dark and unsettling scenes that can be simultaneously erotic and grotesque. His paintings further estrange the viewer by calling to mind wildly different artistic styles, from the quietly dramatic chiaroscuro of Rembrandt to the surrealism of Dali. López Galván maximizes the dramatic potential of oils, creating lush and eerie tableaux that are populated by enigmatic characters, such as anthropomorphic and lavishly attired rabbits, disembodied limbs and half-human robots. As in paintings by the Old Masters, López Galván’s storybook-like scenes often feel like allegories for a larger narrative. In this case though, the background story resembles the logic of a nightmare or a hallucination more than the workings of the divine.

Preview: Deth P. Sun’s “Being and Nothingness” at Grumpy Bert

F. Scott Hess’s Voyeuristic Paintings of Suburbia

Preview: Kent Williams’s “How Human of You” at 101/Exhibit

The Disquieting, Wide-Reaching Paintings of Margaret Curtis

José Luis López Galván’s Surreal Oil Paintings Utilize Techniques of Old Masters

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