Bay Area Currents (2009)
Bay Area Currents 2009
June 23 - July 24, 2009
Pro Arts Gallery
Oakland, CA
A juried exhibition featuring work by Bert Bergen, Adam Friedman, Daniel Healey, Donna Anderson Kam, John Patrick McKenzie, Stephanie Metz, billy ocallaghan, Joan Osato, Elizabeth Pedinotti, Alex Potts, and Annie Vought
Bay Area Currents, a juried exhibition open to artists from the nine counties touching the San Francisco Bay, is an annual survey of work highlighting a depth and multitude of practices, aesthetics, and media in the region. This exhibition of 11 artists was narrowed down from an initial pool of 286 submissions and 26 subsequent studio visits, and collectively embody four main areas of exploration: the relationship between nature and humanity and the unanticipated results of this fusion; the prevalence and consequences of a predominant consumer culture; the manifestation of identity and personality through the increasingly dying medium of handwritten text; and the world individually depicted through portraiture.
These artists utilize traditional media in new, inventive ways, and stake out fresh territory with resourceful and novel means of image and art production. We are extremely fortunate to have such a vibrant, creative, and consistently inquisitive community of artists in the Bay Area, whose work asks us to see daily life with reinvigorated perspective and solicits both an emotional and intellectual response to broad issues and concerns affecting all of us.