
Courtesy Gerald Peters Project
Patrick Dean Hubbell’s “You Give Me Hope in Dark Times,” part of his 'Synthesis' show at Gerald Peters Projects—one of five opening this weekend.
There's a charm to the cramped-house aesthetic of numerous iconic Canyon Road galleries, to be sure, but there's also much to be said for the sprawling contemporary-museum atmosphere of Gerald Peters Projects. You can't miss the space—it takes up nearly a city block on Paseo de Peralta near Acequia Madre—and, frankly, director Mark Del Vecchio has been killing over the three-year run of his tenure so far.
There are many shows running at Gerald Peters Projects; most notable at present is Karen Lamonte's Embodied Beauty (through Aug. 17), a multimedia figurative sculpture series that finds glass, ceramics and even iron taking on the forms of life-sized clothing items such as dresses, kimonos et al; while empty, they convey subtle figures inside—the shadow of a navel or the curve of a breast.
For the immediate future, however, GPP has five concurrent openings this Friday June 21, and each hits hard and fast.
Just inside the door, find Speaking to the Imagination: The Contemporary Artist's Book, a small but powerful collection of handmade papers and books curated by the gallery's book store director John Maker. Imagination takes the concept of books and turns it on its head, making use of handmade
paper, illustration, format-busting paper folding and fine artistry. Dale Harris' Book of Cranes is particularly stunning, a large-scale collaborative effort between illustrators, painters and poets.
Elsewhere, painter Patrick Dean Hubbell's Synthesiswows in a mid-sized room just off the front lobby. Hubbell, a member of the famed Diné weaving family, helped with the install himself, adding a narrative element within the order of the paintings akin to progressing seasons. Hubbell draws from his family's weaving designs, implementing zig-zag imagery and small crosses among subtle and mysterious backgrounds of oil, acrylic and handmade earth pigments beneath foregrounds of abstraction and floral representation.
"I like to use the reference of the textiles and the geometric patterns not just from weaving, but throughout Indigenous art forms," Hubbel tells SFR. "Some of those were literal translations for me, but it kind of became the generalization of the movement of nature."
Roses are commonplace in Synthesis and, in the center of the room, painted baskets convey a cycle of day and night. On one end, lighter pastel colors conjure bright images of sun, springtime and renewal; at opposite, darker colors and varying paint consistencies feel like nighttime. At the center, a minimal sand installation represents the colors of the earth Hubbell uses in crafting paints of his own.
"It grounds the entire exhibition to that one center point," he explains. "It's representative of the ceremonial, traditional use of paint and pigments from our Navajo cultural side."
Deeper still in the gallery, photographer Nicole Cudzilo's The Edge impresses beyond measure with magically real self-portraiture shot throughout New Mexico and California's Pacific Coast Highway.
"They're sweeping, beautiful landscapes, of course," Del Vecchio says, "but this character, with the wig you know is a wig and dressed mid-century, like, '50s and '60s, really ties them in."
Think Wyeth's "Christina's World," though real life; Cudzilo sitting among a sea of flowers or scanning the horizon from some seaside cliff. Find lush forests as well, an abandoned rodeo ground, a long stretch of highway.
"She's taking them herself," Del Vecchio adds. "She's got her remote, and I'm sure she takes practice shots, but she's also composing each shot in her head while she's doing it."
Find as well painter Lorraine Shemesh's The Space Between Us, a jaw-dropping series that marries life-sized figure work with colorful expressionism and geometric wonders. Shemesh hides rewards for the careful viewer; study the pieces. Shemesh also works in ceramics, crafting vessels that recall something as familiar as the world around us to the fantastical universe above. "Double Flange Vessel," from 2015, stands out particularly, recalling the rings of Saturn for this arts appreciator—but also earth tones and, perhaps, a powerful drill bit.
Lastly, the ceramics group show Fresh Blood pulls both from Del Vecchio's
desire to represent up-and-comers (all the artists are under age 35) and from his background in ceramics curation. Make special note of Patrick Kingshill's sparse contributions, which strip away artifice for earthen tones and pleasing shapes; and of Korean artist Yoonjee Kwak, whose painstaking methods recall weaving or knitting with smart use of negative space.
Exhibitions at Gerald Peters Projects
5 pm Friday June 21. Free.
Gerald Peters Projects,
1011 Paseo de Peralta,
954-5700