Uwishunu.com

The two artists on display throughout the fall at Pentimenti Gallery seek to express inclusion and alienation from contemporary urban life, although both approach the topic from two distinct artistic worlds.

In Urban Compression and Ruse of Transparency, Tyler School of Art MFA grad and international exhibitor Steven Baris explores the idea of a disorienting exurban space, as well as the transparency (or lack thereof) of public life in two concurrent installations within the gallery. Baris employs highly interpretational blocks of color on canvas to reveal the contradictory and mysterious qualities inherent in the layouts and architectural methods employed to create America’s urban, suburban and exurban physical and psychological framework.

In the on-site Annex Gallery, Kim Beck’s carefully cut and multi-layered works on paper comprise they paved paradise, which brings focus to the untrimmed and unnoticed fragments that litter an urban vista: the overgrown lots, unruly vegetation, cracked sidewalks and the like that fester underneath the commercial panorama of billboards and advertisements. In Beck’s words, “By drawing attention to these peripheral moments, my work brings the banal and everyday into focus, renders the overlooked, stepped on, and unseen parts of our world”" visible.”

Go check out the exhibits, on display through December 19th.

Solo Exhibitions at Pentimenti Gallery
Steven Baris: Urban Compression and Ruse of Transparency
Through December 19, 2008

Pentimenti Gallery
145 North Second Street, Philadelphia PA 19106
(215) 625-9990
www.pentimenti.com