In the Flat Field
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASELocal 123
2049 San Pablo Avenue
Berkeley, CA
www.local123gallery.com
www.local123cafe.com
“The Flat Field”
Bonnie Begusch
February 13 - April 11, 2010
Reception: Saturday, February 13, 6-8pm
Berkeley, CA December 11, 2009 -- Interested in issues surrounding legibility and perception, Bonnie Begusch uses video, photography, and text to investigate how information can be obstructed, lost, or recombined, and how the viewer may negotiate a position within sense-making systems.
In, The Flat Field, Begusch presents a new series of work that takes on the language of formal abstraction and the illusionistic strategies of trompe l’oeil as a means for examining pictorial space. These collages play with the idea of doubled figures, layering photographs with the actual objects they represent. Overlapping color fields, reminiscent of test strips used in the traditional color darkroom, begin to resemble a type of mottled pop-camouflage pattern. The representation and the original (itself a reproduction) are flattened beneath glass, creating a compressed, homogenous surface. The distinction between the collaged elements and their photographic surroundings becomes blurred and indeterminate, presenting a type of puzzle for the eye, and soliciting the scrutiny of the viewer. Propped on shelves, like specimens in a cabinet of curiosities, these photo-collages capture multiple image layers being dragged down towards the second dimension, on the brink of the image plane.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Bonnie Begusch (b.1981) is currently a second year MFA candidate in the department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, where she focuses primarily on time-based work. She is the recipient of this year’s Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts, and has recently received a grant from the UC Berkeley Arts Research Center. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Humboldt University, Berlin. Her graduate thesis show will be on view at the Berkeley Art Museum in May.
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR JPEGS CONTACT:
Emma Spertus, Curator , Local 123
Phone: 510.717.3359
Email: curator@local123cafe.com
Web: www.local123gallery.com