Gale Antokal, We are so Lightly Here
Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco
September 9 - October 14, 2004
Patricia Sweetow Gallery presents the exhibition of Gale Antokal, We are so Lightly Here, drawings in pastel, flour and ash. This is Gale Antokal's third solo exhibition at PSG. A fully illustrated 36-page catalogue accompanies this exhibition.
Bay Area artist GALE ANTOKAL took a 3 1/2 year hiatus to develop a body of work vastly different from her formal, still-life compositions that were the subject of her drawings for two decades. The new body of work differs in palette, monochrome v. color; in subject, human v. object; and detail, soft-focus v. hard-focus. Prior to beginning the current body of drawings, Gale Antokal synthesized an approach to her subject that obviates identification of person, time and place, yet delivers a haunting vision of displacement, and loss. Her queries are eloquently posed through the drawings, "What do we leave behind to prove we have ever existed? What is left after all is taken away?"
"Unorthodox and meaningful materials allow Antokal to give the work a considered gravity without resorting to heavy-handed imagery. They allow each drawing to remain historically nonspecific, and to invoke responses from within each viewer’s personal experience. While some works reveal clues—the boxy suitcase, the dated hemline—to place and location, the physical fragility of the work, (one brush against the paper and the image vanishes) reminds how quickly the lessons of history can be forgotten". (1) Gale Antokal's choice of images is extensive, milk pouring down a flight of stairs, groups of people walking with baggage in hand, monumental mountains shrouded in snow, sledders disappearing down a hill, billowing smoke, footprints in snow, a lone skater gliding across a field of ice, birds in chaotic flight, all the drawings reverberate with ghostly evanescence and collective foreboding. The fugitive nature of the media gives poignancy and immediacy to images that intentionally dissolve into oblique memories.
A fully illustrated 36-page catalogue accompanies this exhibition. Included are essays written by Laura Richard Janku, Editor of Artweek, We are so Lightly Here: The Fate of People and Places, and Craig Buckwald, PhD, Principal Editor at the University of California, Berkeley, Approaching Life: Vision and Technique in Gale Antokal's We are so Lightly Here.
GALE ANTOKAL was born in New York, New York, and received her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 1984. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art & Design at San Jose State University, California. Gale Antokal held several visiting artist positions and teaching positions including the San Francisco Art Institute, Instructor of Art History at the Lehrhaus Institute, and the American College in Jerusalem. In 1992 Gale Antokal received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is included in both public and private collections
(1) Laura Richard Janku, We are so Lightly Here, catalogue essay
PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY
49 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108
