San Francisco Arts: Maybaum Gallery Presents Summerscapes

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Category: Art, Museums, Galleries

Published on Tuesday, 01 August 2023 12:34

Written by Janet Walker

Summerscapes is a curated collection of works by Kirsten Tradowsky, Nick McPhail, and Stephen Ormandy representing the joys of summer. Pool scenes, rainbow infused sculpture remind us to slow down, have fun, and enjoy the moment.

Nick McPhail

Combining elements from sculpture and functional objects, McPhail’s work offers a contemporary perspective on a range of subjects including landscape and architecture as well as themes of light and access. Based on snapshots and glances taken from ordinary moments, McPhail positions himself as a voyeur, playing with impossible views and that which lies just out of reach.

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A fascination with the ordinary—that is, with the unremarkable rather than the rare—stands out in contemporary art for its earnestness, it’s almost strange absence of irony or sarcasm. This is not to say that McPhail’s works are uncomplicated, or even all that ordinary—merely that their success, irrespective of contemporary art’s fickle tastes and finicky appetite, does not depend on being read as such." -Contemporary Art Review.

Nick McPhail was born in Laingsburg, MI. He studied painting and ceramics at Michigan State University, graduating in 2006. Most recently he has held solo exhibitions at Ochi Projects in Los Angeles (2020), Untitled_1983 in Geneva, Switzerland (2019), and Holiday in Los Angeles (2018). He has completed residencies at Untitled_1983 in Geneva (2019), Ochi Gallery in Ketchum, ID (2019), 100 West Corsicana in Corsicana, TX (2018), and in 2017 he was awarded a grant to attend a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. His work has been exhibited and collected throughout the United States and Europe.

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Kirsten Tradowsky

"In my recent paintings, I sifted through my collection of vintage poolside photos and selected imagery that depicts lazy, seemingly perfect moments of people gathering. I chose to make some of the paintings more vibrant and acidic, emphasizing colors similar to the Kodachrome photography of the past. Others are more monochromatic, mimicking the fading of time and revealing the veil between the past and the present.

There is a vacancy between you as the viewer and these settings. The pool sides seem artificial in our contemporary world. In painting these scenes, I wish to convey a haunting polarity between somewhere tactile and familiar and somewhere uncharted. They become surreal spaces that launch the viewer's eye into a journey of fluctuation. Based on the tradition of wading by the poolside and unwinding with friends, I wish for the viewer to be able to swim in and out of these places of simplicity and mystery."

Kirsten's work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including at The de Young Museum and Maybaum Gallery in San Francisco. Her paintings have been reviewed in The Los Angeles Times and on the blog Lenscratch. She earned a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. She lives and works in Minneapolis, MN.

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Stephen Ormandy

Stephen Ormandy is an Australian artist whose paintings and sculptures combine geometric and lyrical forms. His graphic planes of color primarily operating as purely abstract schemas while occasionally bordering on recognizable iconography and figuration. He is inspired by the natural world and informed by a strong design aesthetic based on color and form. There is a discernible dialogue between his large-scale oil paintings and sculptural work, with line, shape and surface each informing the other.

Born in Melbourne, Stephen Ormandy graduated from The City Art Institute (now known as UNSW Art and Design) in Sydney in 1985. During his time at the college, he met Louise Olsen and Liane Rossler and in their final year of study they established the design company Dinosaur Designs. Ormandy was a finalist in the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2015. In 2016 Stephen Ormandy and Louise Olsen published The Art of Dinosaur Design that coincided with a traveling exhibition which has shown at Bega Regional Gallery and Hazelhurst Art Gallery. His work is in public collections across Australia including Artbank, The Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, The Powerhouse Museum, The National Gallery of Victoria and The Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Maybaum Gallery is open Tuesday - Saturday 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM
We kindly ask visitors to schedule an appointment for private viewings of the exhibition or a selection of artworks.

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Maybaum Gallery | 49 Geary Street, Suite 416
San Francisco, CA 94108
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Art direction courtesy of Janet Walker