February 27 - April 3, 2021
Exhibition Statement
Poetry Milks the Unconscious — Anne Sexton This exhibition brings together four women, Kim Keown, Blair Peters, Sandra Ramos, and Colette Standish, currently in the MFA program at the San Francisco Art Institute, who reference the female body via landscape, abstraction, and figuration within their work. Each artist uses the body to communicate their stories. Stories built over time and experience, told through the wisdom of age and expressed politically, metaphysically, and physiology. The eroticized body as a portal into other worlds seen through glass and mirror, the healing body, physically and mentally etched into painted abstract forms, the body as a metaphorical landscape in pre-film animation, and the body as a political tool in black and white photographs. All four Artists work both introspectively and socially simultaneously, making their work very unique. — Colette Standish, Curator
Catalog design: Michael Yochum Arc Gallery © 2021
Participating Artists Kim Keown Blair Peters Sandra Ramos Colette Standish
Online Zoom Artist Talk: Tuesday, March 9th, 7-8pm
Kim Keown Reinvention of the Wheel Failure #1 - 4 series for songbirds and pollinators is about the failure of the human race to coexist with what came before us. I examine the idea that we can improve on nature as futile and egocentric resulting in the caging of our natural world and destruction of life itself. A Canary in a Coal Mine is a portend of fatality due to unsafe conditions in the mine. 100,000’s of songbirds recently fell dead out of the sky on their migrations. They died of longterm starvation. They were insectivores and berry eaters. Pollinator insects are in decline due to chemical agriculture. I am the Canary because I am chemically and emotionally sensitive and have long foreseen that these techniques could cause our demise. My devastation on reading the news of these songbirds inspired me to create this work using techniques from the past while continuing to explore our relationship to our natural environment. By going back to using pre-film animation and using found objects and waste in the construction of these objects where possible, I endeavor to create the illusion of motion without contributing to climate catastrophe.
website: kimkeown.blogspot.com email: kimkeown@gmail.com
I am the Canary (detail) mixed media kinesthetic object 18" x 10" $2500
Kim Keown
‌but also, they seek (detail) mixed media kinesthetic object 9" x 9" $1800
Moments here collaged photograph on canvas 13" x 13" $1500
Kim Keown
Canary in a Coal Mine collaged photograph on canvas 12" x 15" $1200
Blair Peters
This series of paintings explore the ephemeral nature of human form, specifically the female body. The rough textural surface and the soft fleshy tones create a dynamic that speaks to the vulnerability of the body faced with aging and decay. Like a shedding of skin, at a certain age a woman has the opportunity to relinquish her identity. No longer a prisoner of attraction, she has the freedom to express herself on neutral ground. These paintings intimate a certain relationship between physical and psychological space, and become a memory surface where passage of time, aging and remembering take form. Each piece suggests a singular experience from life’s endless cycles of growth and decay. These interpretations come together to form psychic and topographical worlds of time and space.
website: www.blairtylerpeters.com email: blairtylerpeters@mac.com
Untitled 1 acrylic on canvas 50" x 50" $2100
Blair Peters
The Sun then Moon acrylic on panel 28" x 28" $1200
Untitled 2 mixed media on panel 20" x 20" $1200
Blair Peters
Untitled 3 acrylic on panel 28" x 28" $1200
Sandra Ramos
The Anatomy of the Melancholy series shows my 10-year-old niece in the uniform of the Cuban primary school, in reference to the alter ego of the girl I have used in my work since 1992. The pioneer girl is the symbol of a new, pre-built generation, indoctrinated in the false hope of a utopian future, which in Cuba is repeated as an unmovable slogan. The engravings and maps superimposed on the image are quoted from the illustrations in the anatomy books of Vesalius and the Dore prints for Dante's works: Hell, Paradise and Purgatory. The composition of the body and the scene also establishes references to archetypal gestures of the representation of the female martyrdom in religion and the history of art such as Santa Ana, Ofelia and Beatriz among others. The pieces dialog on the current social and political moment in a world in which we feel hopeless and insecure. They are symbolic parables about the circles of life and death, the recurrences of history and the concern about how the new generations will inherit all this uncertainty.
website: https://www.sandraramosart.com email: sandramosl@yahoo.es
Cuba photography image 8" x 10"; framed 11" x 16" $ 1200 edition 1/10
Sandra Ramos
Double Face photography image 8" x 10"; framed 11" x 16" $ 1200 edition 1/10
Spine photography image 8" x 10"; framed 11" x 16" $ 1200 edition 1/10
Sandra Ramos
Heart photography image 8" x 10"; framed 11" x 16" $ 1200 edition 1/10
Kidney photography image 8" x 10"; framed 11" x 16" $ 1200 edition 1/10
Sandra Ramos
Alien photography image 8" x 10"; framed 11" x 16" $ 1200 edition 1/10
Colette Standish I am a multi-media artist, and my mediums range from painting, drawing, photography, and video. My art centers around eroticism, surrealism, and sensuality within the realm of the human psyche. My recent work explores the use of glass and mirrors (mirrored paint and film) within the context of my art and questioning how these experiments fit in with my ideas and philosophies. The main factor in the work is engagement. I use aspects of the mirror and the erotic imagery to draw and seduce the viewer into my work. Once captivated, the viewer becomes part of the dance, the journey into other worlds, for example, the realms of the imagination and the subconscious. The mirrored and glass aspects of the work represent the present – ‘Real-time, whereas the photography evokes the past i.e., memories. – ‘Past Time. The drawing and painting connect both time elements and helps the viewer engage within the same frame/realm, thus creating a very human experience. I use the body, particularly the eroticized body, as a reference point in connecting both the conscious and sub-conscience worlds. The body acts as a portal to an internal, surreal landscape, whereby form, thoughts, and gestures are yet to be fully developed, where past incarnations exist simultaneously, like ghosts, alongside other manifestations. These artworks represent what the subconscious is to the conscious mind.
website: www.colettestandish.com/ email: colette@colettestandish.com
Halo mirrored film and paint on glass 16" x 20" $2500
Colette Standish
After Leo mirrored film and paint on glass 16" x 20" $2500
Portal mirrored film and paint on glass 16" x 20" $2500
Colette Standish
Inside Out mirrored film and paint on glass 16" x 20" $2500
Outside In mirrored film and paint on glass 16" x 20" $2500
http://arc-sf.com http://arcfinearts-sf.com 1246 Folsom St. San Francisco, CA
arcgallerysf@gmail.com 415-298-7969