AB/NORMAL: 3 Bay Area Emerging Artists

AB/NORMAL: 3 Bay Area Emerging Artists

Dates:

March 9, 2013 - April 14, 2013

Reception:

Reception: March 9, 5-7 pm

The Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, California, will present AB/NORMAL, an exhibition featuring the work of emerging artists Dan Herrera, Paula Moran, and Aron Meynell, who skew the idea of normalcy through surreal and nostalgic narratives. Together the work conveys the fragile nature of “normal” and how reality's narrow confines are easily upset. Dan Herrera's photographic series Vaudeville uses a combination of 19th Century printing techniques and digital photography to create tableaus of enigmatic science-fiction characters. Aron Meynell's paintings and delicate charcoal drawings are populated with isolated figures in post-apocalyptic surroundings. Paula Moran's detailed and realistic ceramic objects create a life-size replica of the family room from her youth, complete with ceramic couch, beer bottles and burnt cigarettes. Collectively the artists of AB/NORMAL explore the disorientating twists of this uncertain world with impressive skill and a deft mastery of mood. Dan Herrera wields an extensive vocabulary of photographic process that merges 19th century photography with contemporary digital imaging. As an actively showing artist, his exhibition record includes shows in New York, Los Angeles, and numerous Bay Area venues including the deYoung Museum in San Francisco. He has produced award-winning work in the Annual Tech Art show held in Massachusetts, and most recently his work is featured on the cover of the book No Alternatives: Contemporary Handcrafted Photographs. Hererra currently teaches art and design at American River College and The Art Institute of California, Sacramento - specializing in Alternative Process Photography, and Advanced Image Manipulation. Aron Meynell was born in Birmingham, England but was a longtime resident of Detroit before making his way to the Bay Area in order to attend graduate school at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. He graduated in 2008 and currently teaches classical figurative painting and drawing in their MFA program. He has had recent solo shows at John Pence Gallery, White Walls Gallery, Shooting Gallery and SafeHouse in San Francisco. The eerie abandoned buildings and snow filled winters environments created in his work relate indirectly to the landscapes that surrounded him while in Detroit. Paula Moran holds a BA and MFA from San Francisco State University. Her recent exhibitions have included group shows at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, Martin Wong Gallery, 111 Minna, and SFMOMA Artists Gallery at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The eye-deceiving objects she creates transcend their everyday nature and becomes uncanny witnesses of a memory that is at once made real and surreal. The objects are the unspoken catalyst to story-telling, allowing passage to the past. In her work viewers must question for a moment "what is truly real?" and "what is truly normal?".

AB/NORMAL: 3 Bay Area Emerging Artists

Dates:

March 9, 2013 - April 14, 2013

Reception:

Reception: March 9, 5-7 pm