ThEN is Now: The 10 year Anniversary Exhibit
When: September 6 – October 26, 2013
Opening Reception: First Friday, September 6th 6-9 pm Where: Joyce Gordon Gallery
406 14th St (12th St. Bart Exit)
Oakland, Ca. 94612
(510) 465-8928
www.joycegordongallery.com
Stevens Jay Carter, Squeak Carnwath, Enrique Chagoya, Chukes, Dewey Crumpler, Mildred Howard, Hung Liu, Richard Mayhew, Mel Ramos, David Ruth
For more information please contact
Curators: Joyce Gordon and Eric Murphy – info@joycegordongallery.com Gallery: 510.465.8928
Joyce Gordon Gallery presents “ThEN is Now,” a look at ten years of artistic merit from one of the longest running fine art gallery establishments in the city of Oakland, California. The ten specially featured artists reflect the gallery’s past, present and permanence in today’s art market.
Joyce Gordon Gallery, located at 406 14th Street in downtown Oakland, is a lifelong dream of its founder and namesake. The African American owned commercial gallery has been home to artists from various backgrounds, established and emerging, as well as local and international. The gallery embodies the essence of Oakland and the Bay Area. Its cultural and ethnic diversity, innovation, not to mention, one of the nation’s highest concentration of artists per capita are encoded into ten years of exhibition programming; an art repatriation of sorts. This predecessor to Oakland’s First Friday’s art walk is currently a proud member of the nationally recognized Oakland Art Murmur.
Establishing a commercial gallery requires one to know what their niche is and to target their market accordingly. What has made Joyce Gordon Gallery uniquely successful over the years is its fusion of community support, museum quality exhibitions and high caliber of art from its exhibiting and guest artists. How often has one desired to walk into a museum exhibit and say, “I would like to purchase that work of art, please”? Joyce Gordon Gallery embodies that idea in this exhibit with its final selection of ten prestigious artists whose works have frequented galleries and museums around the world. However the theme is not fame or glory but longevity. Surviving in an industry, whose ever-changing market is as unpredictable as fashion trends, requires one to set their own trend and become a trailblazer in order to remain relevant both then and now.
Such trailblazers include Sacramento native and Oakland resident painter Mel Ramos, who is constantly reinventing his pop art renderings of comic book classics and commercially nude iconic beauties, which continue to receive international recognition to this present day; a toast to a contributor of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Marrying the past and the present can be best seen in the works of Chinese-born American painter, Hung Liu. Liu distinctively sets the tone for reconstructing historical images from her past to address current emigration and immigration issues that seem disinclined to solutions. Mildred Howard also explores historical imagery and personal memory through the mediums of collage, assemblage and sculpture. Perhaps the greatest reflection of Joyce Gordon Gallery’s endurance can be seen in two of its long term exhibiting artists and sculptors, Stevens Jay Carter and Chukes.
“I am not the same artist I was ten years ago nor am I the same artist I was yesterday. Life for me is about change and that is what makes the creative process so wonderful. I cannot go back to the past I can only reflect on it. I leave it up to the viewer to see if my work has changed.” – Chukes
In the gallery’s September 2003, Inaugural Exhibit, long time friend, actor, producer, director and philanthropist, Robert Redford was present to give a special tribute and had this to say about the owner, “Not only is Joyce Gordon realizing her dream, but in doing so, she is also giving voice to artists, inspiration to audience and new energy to the Oakland community through this creative endeavor.” The Inaugural Exhibit, curated by Winston Branch, a University of California, Berkeley art professor, included 79 artistic works by ten men and seven women ages 26 to 62 years old. The artists were from Africa, England, Germany, Iran and the Philippines have studied in the Bay Area and made it their home.
"We wanted this inaugural exhibition to represent the best part of us in Oakland and the caliber of the work in this show does just that," said Branch. Joyce Gordon in her 2003 inaugural speech stated, “I would like the space to become home to a versatile array of cultural activity, including book signings and lectures as well as spoken word recital and, of course, always more art exhibitions.” Well, that was then and it is definitely still happening now and I am proud to be a part of this 10th anniversary celebration at Joyce Gordon Gallery – Eric Murphy, Gallery Curator
Joyce Gordon Gallery is a commercial fine art gallery located in the downtown district of Oakland California. It exhibits art that reflects the social and cultural diversity of the Bay Area and international artists. The aim of the gallery is to respect the creative pursuits of the individual and seeks to make such work accessible to a broad audience.
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