Gusher: Pearl C. Hsiung, Selected Work 2003-2011
Large Gallery
September 16 to December 16, 2011
Opening Reception: Sept. 17, 6 to 8 p.m.
Los Angeles-based artist Pearl C. Hsiung’s diverse practice in painting, sculpture and video is being featured in a large-scale solo show. Gusher will include more than 40 works produced between 2003 and the present, and is the largest survey, to date, of the artist’s oeuvre.
Hsiung’s strikingly colorful paintings are infused with a popular culture aesthetic ranging from sci-fi movies and television shows to album covers and even 1960s psychedelia. Many of her meticulously rendered works blur the boundary between landscape and portraiture; in her paintings, sculpture and video, it is common to see lips and teeth on mountaintops or clouds, and cacti wearing scarves or bandanas. The artist transforms what for most are seemingly straightforward scenes of nature: a skyline, a desert vista, or a volcano, into dense, nonsensical, comical, and provocative images of the outdoors. A full-color brochure with essay by Catherine Taft accompanies the show.
'Saint Perpetuum', 2007; oil-based enamel on canvas, 96 x 72 inches; courtesy of the artist and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles