June, 2002

Current Exhibit

Kaleidoscope-- Color in Painting Systems

exhibition: May 4th to May 25th

Opening: Saturday, May 4, 7-10 pm

Artists:

Suzanne Adelman (link)

Brigette Burns (link)

Bert Herrington (link)

Joan Kahn (link)

Alexander Panov (link)

Eric Zammitt (link)

Combining logical systems with intuitive interactions of color and composition these artists seek to meld the two approaches to form a shifting of the possibilities of meaning towards a more fluid and open arena.

Robert Mellor - New Paintings

(link)

In the North Gallery

Introducing Robert Mellor, a newly graduated MFA from Claremont, in his first solo showing in Los Angeles.

In the Project Room:

Per Huttner --Raid Projects International Artist-In-Residence.

White Trash (link)

Curatorial Statement

In keeping with one of Raid Project's curatorial approaches this exhibition is an attempt to allow similar works of art to find inter-relationships between them that expand on a theme. Not as a justification of the curators concept but as an exploration of their divergencies. These artists share several immediate points of reference- their love of color, a systematic approach and a refusal to allow the work to sink into a singular, logic bound definition of meaning.

There are references here to the modernist grid with all its ramifications, to the work of Stella, Halley and Mondriaan and others, while still finding new avenues for the content to play itself against. Although this seeming drive to order is apparent it is balanced by the need to also relate to a more open-ended flux of potentialities. A touch of the Utopian and a healthy accommodation of pure visual pleasures is combined with a conceptual free-spirited playfulness, in the sense of play as an exploration of possibilities.

They have a taxonomical assembling of knowledge that engages with the materials themselves while seeking a dichotomy-less relationship to content. A content which ferments an unpredetermined shifting of boundaries and new meanderings of thought. The implication here is of the boundless extension of associational linkages within already formed systems of logic.

These works are beautiful, yes, but more importantly they attempt a perfection, with undisguised Hope, a truly Californian ideal (although they are not all CA natives), accepting both the historical limitations of the methodology and refuting these by way of an implanted Uncertainty Principle of understanding, hidden beneath the carefully wrought surfaces.

Max Presneill

Director/Curator