"Sight Readings," Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery, Santa Monica College

Photos: Top - Opening Reception
Center - Outdoor Banner
Bottom - Inked block for "Pythia" on the press bed

A special "Big Up" to Curator Gordon Fuglie for always believing in my work & being the prompt I so often need to keep my tools sharp & my blocks at the ready. His lecture last night was thoughtful & a verbal translation of what I do on paper visually.

The review below is from the Santa Monica Mirror. The exhibition runs until 10/11/14, & I'm doing a printing demo on Weds., 9/24, from 3 - 4 PM in room 126 of the Art Department on the Main Campus.

SMC Exhibit "Sight Readings" From Artist Roxanne Sexauer Opens Tuesday

POSTED SEP. 1, 2014, 9:17 AM

MIRROR STAFF

The Santa Monica College Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery is presenting “Sight Readings: A 35-Year Survey of Work by Roxanne Sexauer,” an exhibition of original works by the printmaker renowned in the contemporary printmaking community as an artist whose aesthetic of abstraction references nature. Sexauer’s work recognizes a long tradition built in the distinctive qualities and processes of hand-pulled prints.

The show will be open to the public from Tuesday, Sep. 2, to Saturday, Oct. 11, with an exhibit reception on Saturday, Sep. 13, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

A gallery talk by exhibit curator Gordon Fuglie, Director/Head of Curatorial Affairs at the Central California Museum of Art, will be held on Saturday, Sep. 13, at 5 p.m. in The Edye (adjacent to the gallery).

Sexauer, who teaches in the Printmaking and Art History Disciplines, School of Art, at California State University, Long Beach, will hold a print demonstration on Wednesday, Sep. 24, at 3 p.m. in Art 126.

As a young art student in 1973, Sexauer fantasized about studying with the last surviving German Expressionist woodcut master, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976). Her earliest woodcut prints crackle with the dark angularities of classic German Expressionism.

By the 1980s, Sexauer embraced postmodernism, developing a hybrid, multi-layered approach that mixes botanical and zoological forms with ideas and images from the history of science, printmaking, and mythology. This direction continues to inform her images, which in recent years combine lithography, silkscreen, and collagraphy.

“I have seen her imagery progress for two decades,” said Fuglie. “Roxanne’s art is distinctive because it is complex, vibrant, and always recognizable for its adroit use of technique with multiple images bearing layers of meaning. Connoisseurs regard her as one of the best woodcut artists in the region.”

The show presents the first career survey of Sexauer’s work, beginning with a 1973 self-portrait in the German Expressionist style, and concluding with works completed this past summer.

SMC’s Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery is located at the SMC Performing Arts Center on Santa Monica Boulevard at 11th Street, Santa Monica. Due to construction in progress, enter the building from 11th Street. Exhibits, gallery talks, artist demonstrations, and opening receptions are free.

Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. For more information, call 310.434.3434.

Original Copy - Printmaking Exhibition

Just a bit hard to fathom a print room with wall to wall carpeting...Kinko's with Charles Brand Presses! Clean hands! Ah, the wonders of Photoshop.

So, here's the poster & directions for my upcoming exhibition @ Cypress College. The opening on Thursday 2/23, from 6 - 8 PM, promises to be well...a youthful blast. Chris Natrop will be screenprinting his work on T-Shirts, DJ Neil Schield from Origami Vinyl will be spinning discs, & it will be catered. I doubt that Neil Schield will be playing any of my Bollywood favs ("Tunak, Tunak Tunak"; "Ha La La La"; or "Pappu Can't Dance") but a gal can wish upon a Bhangra star!

While I'm representing the woodcut end of things, Wayne Kimball's incredible tour de force lithographic color prints will also be on display. Chris Natrop's holding down the screenprinting court & Zoltan Janvary's intaglio prints cover that medium. At least 2 of us should be about, along with curator Carleton Christie. Rumor has it that Wayne might be there?

Happy Belated Valentine's Day & year of the Black H20 dragon (my year)!

(I'm now on twitter @ RoxSexauer, should you wish to follow my terse 140 character posts).

RS

Hope to see at least a few folks "in the house"...as they say.

The Lightness of Hyper-Segregation: A Review of Henry Taylor's Exhibition at Blum & Poe

Review by Maximillian Piras

Photos by Roxanne Sexauer

There is really no way to reconcile the arrangements Henry Taylor made inside the Blum & Poe gallery. If they seem displaced, confused, and thrown together it is because they have no option to be otherwise. They have been forced into a fixed space that lacks viable resources for enlightenment. To spell it out: they are oppressed. This is of course not speaking literally of Taylor’s physical pieces, but his subjects. For those that might not feel the imposing hopelessness projected by his massive canvases and array of faceless black sculptures, then you might want to study further into hyper-segregation.

Taylor’s voyeuristic eye has been looking into the urban landscapes which have caged its inhabitants, those who lack resources to escape – or more plainly put: to go on vacation. His subjects are those who were born into the inner city, and who will die in the inner city. Although it is not necessarily a quick read, coinciding with Taylor’s own statements regarding his work. He mentions that it isn’t his goal to beat anyone over the head with a message; he holds no strong political agenda. At most he should be classified as a social observer. Which might be why his paintings are so enjoyable.

If Taylor has one gift emerging above his others, it is his grace in portraying the lightness of his subjects. Who knows why, but his subjects generally appear content. If he is speaking of the tragedies in hyper-segregation, then perhaps his subjects are unaware of their own encapsulation… or just do not care. Of course to consider Taylor’s paintings in this single scope would be to completely undermine his artistic existence. He does not solely existence to enlighten us on this occurrence, but he is damn good at it.

Inside the subtle nuances the darkness appears. Slight portrayals of the shortcomings in education, oppression by authority figures, and worship of marketable idols as escapism transcend throughout. The most prominent for me rose from his painting That’s My Baby Sister, where one subject sports a sweatshirt reading “Califirnia”. It’s also an easy guess to see his sculptures, which are essentially arrangements of detritus painted black, in this light. One area looks like a shrine to Michael Jackson, as his poster hangs above an arrangement of chairs broken apart and incorrectly reconstructed.

Thus far Taylor’s exhibit is one of the best I’ve seen this year. It could easily be considered outsider art, but perhaps only as a beneficial classification. This is the type of art that holds its own visual language and database, which can be utilized free from preconceived contexts often dwelled upon in the art world. In that respect it is more humanitarian and accessible to any outside the aristocracy and bourgeois. Fittingly so, since the latter are the ones likely to see it, it could contain the power to turn any quick to dub it outsider into the outcasts themselves. Because to regard this art as irrelevant echoes dangerously close to saying: there is no solution, for there is no problem.

For more writing from this author visit MPiras.com or Mpiras.tumblr.com.