Archived Exhibition
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MMGalleries (formerly Michael Martin Galleries) introduces:
SHELL CARDON: Hear with your Eyes – Visual Rock ‘n Roll
September 6 - October 13, 2007
Reception Thursday, September 6, 5:00 to 7:00pm

SAN FRANCISCO, CA. MMGalleries is pleased to present a solo show by painter Shell Cardon: Hear with your Eyes – Visual Rock ‘n Roll, featuring acrylic paintings on canvas.

With a very bright palette of yellow and turquoise, tangerine, pink, and rich brown, Cardon builds abstract landscapes, grids, and patterns that literally pop out of the canvas.

In a very untraditional method of painting, a gestural technique that involves no brushes at all, Cardon uses an array of odd tools and paraphernalia to drip and pour sizable drops of latex paint on the flat canvas, layer after layer.  As a result, the paint builds up very thickly, and her canvasses become very textured and heavy with the medium. 
 
Some pieces seem to start from an orderly grid-like series of paint dots; the grid is then disrupted by a random pattern of different color dots applied on top of it, in colors that remind us of the spectrum of the late 70s and early 80s.

Vice versa, other pieces start from a seeming cacophony of poured paint, and are then reorganized in a colorful pattern and controlled by the physical limitations of the canvas edges and the superimposition of subsequent layers of paint.  The juxtaposition of all the layers, colors and dots creates a sort of a musical rhythm to the canvasses, which radiate an uncommon vitality and verve.

In her work, Cardon plays with notions of overt/disguised, and what you can see—or better, what the artist lets you see—is merely a fraction of what she has done to the paintings.  Under the deep accretions, barely glimpsing from below, she tells another story, just waiting to be revealed.

Don’t miss this artist’s reception on Thursday, September 6, 5:00 to 7:00pm