ON THE ROAD WITH DEWITT CHENG:

CAL STATE STANISLAUS

02.03.11



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California State University Stanislaus Gallery, Turlock, CA: Gina Werfel- Persistence of Vision; Hearne Pardee - Dislocations.

Review and images by DeWitt Cheng: Yes, there is contemporary art in the Valley! California State University Stanislaus at Turlock has a gallery that shows mid-career artists and even publishes color catalogues-- a great perk for local art students, even if few of us city kids will brave the two-hour drive over freeways 580, 120, 5, 205, and 99 to get there. (Nice industrial architecture for Becher wannabes, though.)

Werfel and Pardee are East-Coast transplants who have taught at UC Davis for a decade or so; both were trained in landscape painting, and both are now exploring abstraction. Werfel improvises atmospheric/gestural compositions from random sources like studio knickknacks and her son's old boyhood drawings rather than working plein-air, as in the past; Pardee renders California architecture in a graphic style that seems derived from Expressionism/Fauvism, but he overlays the images intuitively with collaged abstract bars of color that play with our readings of color (per the Bezold Effect) and spatial relationships.

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