FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BRITISH ARTIST JANE HARRIS - PAINTINGS

BAY AREA ARTIST WESTON TERUYA - WORKS ON PAPER

The Patricia Sweetow Gallery is pleased to welcome British artist Jane Harris in her first solo exhibition at PSG - along with Bay Area artist Weston Teruya who also debut's in his first solo exhibition. Exhibition dates are October 31 - December 16, 2006. The artists' reception is Thursday, November 2, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Engrailed, invecked: it would be easier to talk about Jane Harris's painting if we all knew the language of heraldry, and especially the names that heraldry give to various kinds of edge.

Tom Lubbock, The Independent, May 2, 2005

The oil paintings of Jane Harris are a dazzaling collision of brushed geometriic shape floating on a ground of contrasted color, the collision of formal construct and sensous indulgence. The elliptical shape is meticulously brushed with a continuous vertical or horizontal stroke until the entire ellipse is saturated with a single rich hue. Surrounding the ellipse is a scalloped edge of sinuous brushwork, which upon inspection defiies a beginning or ending mark. In a Harris painting light becomes the catalyst which activates the metallic paint, shifting the ellipse into undulating mollusks in a sea of color. The backgound color also has a defined brush direction, also painted wet on wet, with no less than 5 layers of oil. Jane Harris selects a pallette based on the impressions of observed phenomena, a car passing, colors in a sign, an advertisement. The 5 paintings in this exhibition derive from "catching a glimpse of the metallic flash of two cars driving past each other".

Jane Harris has taught at Goldsmiths College, London since 1992. Recent exhibitions include the Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Ridgefield, Ct.; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK; Hales Gallery, London; Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Collections include Arthur Andersen Art Collection; Arts Council of England, Haywared Gallery; Birmingham Museum, UK; The Boise Collection, University of London; Brighton University; LAAC Musee des Beaux Arts, France. Recent reviews and articles include Modern Painters; The Independent, London; Contemporary Magazine, UK; International Herald Tribune, UK.

Weston Teruya drawings are the crevassed psychological space of nightmares. His beauty forms unbalanced columnar symbols, chaotically poised for collapse. The surface of Teruya's drawings are sourced from his own drawings, cut and collaged in a new composition. The reconfiguration of symbols interacts to create unexpected new meanings. His ideas were drawn from the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall nested in the midst of Los Amigos Golf Course, where Weston worked with juveniles in detention for various offenses. Teruya observed that the protected status of a juvenile population is in direct contrast to the invisibility of this same population to public oversight. Teruya's drawings describe the issues of power, invisibility, and protection.

"I am interested in collecting and collapsing the signals and objects of exclusion, separation and leisure. These images typically define and reinforce spaces of privilege through the creation of sites of control. The work is a speculative exercise of sorts. I am particularly interested in suggesting new fictive configurations which imagine new social possibilities or frustrate present political realities."

Weston Teruya received his MFA from California College of the Arts in 2006. He is in his second year of the Visual Criticism program at CCA to be completed in 2007. He has received the Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship Award from the San Francisco Foundation, and the Yesland Prize Exhibit Award from Magic Theatre, San Francisco. His work was recently reviewed in Art Forum, Critic's Picks, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Artweek, and San Francisco Weekly. Teruya has a solo exhibition scheduled at PSG Oct/Nov 2006.

For further information and press materials please contact Patricia Sweetow at 415-788-5126. Gallery hours: Tuesday through Friday 11:00 - 5:30 pm, Saturday 11 - 5.