The Swee(t)Art Drawing Gallery at The Compound Gallery,
6602 San Pablo Ave. Oakland, California
"As a painter, I have found Drawing defined as what happens before or under a painting; I also recognize whatever media a particular artist works with requires some fundamental understanding of the drawing process as a vehicle of immediacy. Ultimately, a drawing is any art piece made with the simple and expressed intent of being immediately apprehended as a drawing. It is self-reflexive, intuitive."
-Obi Kaufmann
The Compound Gallery, with curator Obi Kaufmann, is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit space called the Swee(t)art Drawing Gallery. This new gallery will occupy the space at the Compound previously known as the Side Gallery.
The space will focus exclusively on the exhibition of drawing from featured local, regional, national and international artists across disciplines and carreer stages. The Swee(t)art Drawing Gallery is conceived of as a space where concise, determined issues can be brought to exhibition by the most direct and immediate of all media: the deceptively simple mark of the human hand. In a warm and intimate space, Swee(t)art Drawing Gallery aims to host a stylish forum for this at once emerging and most ancient of all art forms/styles.
Curator and artist Obi Kaufmann is handpicking a roster of provocative group shows highlighting specific themes relevant across the spectrum of contemporary art. Obi is the publisher of the long running magazine Swee(t)art: Oakland California Visual Art, the facilitator the 40th Street Corridor Art Quest, the Art Director of Nest Home Design and the curator of Zza’s Wine Bar Gallery; his blog can be found at http://www.oaklandsweetart.info.
Show schedule
Show #1: “The Modern Chimera"
Artists (click on the name of the artist below to link to artist's website)
Aug.7-Sep 9.09, Reception Aug 7th, 6-9pm
Abstract: The first of four shows at Sweetart Drawing Gallery, The Modern Chimera is a group show that represents a bestiary of malformed and hybrid creatures from an imagined world. Exhibited drawings include themes which revolve around a sense of nature violated and a world ecology disrupted.
Show #2: “The Bright Darkness” artists TBA.
Sep 11-Oct 7.09, Reception Sep 11th, 6-9pm
Abstract: The Bright Darkness is the treatise of a reaction common to many contemporary artists and that is the imminent sense of an almost supernatural violence. An artistic violence born in what many may classify as dark imagery, although it is not a violence that destroys but a revealing mask of dissatisfaction and ultimately, hope. This show intentionally opens on the 8th anniversary of 9-11.
Show #3: “The Worship of Water” artists TBA. Oct 9-Nov 4.09
Reception Oct 9th, 6-9pm
Abstract: The Worship of Water is the cleaning force of world: that which circulates, floods, moves through, carries away, brings closer. Water is the origin of life, where dreams may come from and in the future, may be the most precious stuff on the planet.
Press Contact:
Obi Kaufmann
Phone: 925-951-7501
Email: obikaufmann@msn.com