Our February Show: Good Intentions: Paintings by Laura Wacha

Laura Wacha, Good Intentions, Acrylic on canvas, 32 x 54”

There's something slightly familiar, maybe alarming, and vastly entertaining about Laura Wacha's paintings. She offers up a cast of characters that seem completely fanciful and off the wall, until you suddenly realize that you know this person, or maybe you even are this person, this stretched, lurid, and magnificently exhausted individual. And that one sort of reminds me of my neighbor... And oh jeez, this guy is just like my dad...

Laura brings to vivid life the mundane, everyday indignities we all have to ignore now and again just to keep our heads in the game. And she does it with packed compositions, kaleidoscope colors, and brushstrokes that are so complete and self-assured that you don't even know that they're there.

Combine all of that with her, ummm...unconventional embroideries, and polymer clay figurines--action figures for the apocalypse--and what we are given promises to be one of the most delightful, surprising, and sardonic shows you will encounter this year.

Exhibition dates: February 1 – March 1
First Friday Artscrawl Reception: February 1, 5 – 8:00 PM
Gallery Talk by Laura Wacha: Saturday, February 23, 1 – 2 PM

Laura Wacha, Vernal Violation, Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 32"

Gallery Talk next Saturday, January 19th. Don't Miss David Koch!

image: David Koch, Warm (detail), acrylic on canvas, 20 x 18"

David Koch's cool, mildly self-deprecating paintings are like Victorian still-lifes blown into pieces and piled back together atop fields of suggestive and subtle color. The treatments are precise and elegant, while the subjects and concoctions are immediate and laughably sharp.

David Koch will discuss his recent work and the world of contemporary Pop Art. 1:00 PM on Saturday, the 19th of January, right here at Matrix Fine Art. The talk is free and the general public is not only welcome, but is the very target audience. Come!

image: David Koch, Good, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 18"

Aaron Karp and Kuzana Ogg in upcoming shows

The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History will be showing Aaron Karp's "Bemis Grids," works that he completed while a resident artist at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, from February 10-April 20th of this year. The paintings, uncharacteristically small for Karp, still utilize his bold palette and almost gestural optics. This promises to be a racy exhibition. We all look forward to it!
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In other Martrix artists' news, Kuzana Ogg's piece Mangoes in the Morning has been accepted into Erasing Borders: Passport to Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora.

From their website: "The exhibition, Erasing Borders: Passport to Contemporary Indian Art of the Diaspora explores the contributions of artists whose origins can be traced to the Indian Subcontinent...The artists in this exhibition will meld Indian and Western colors and forms in many media, namely painting, sculpture, and photography. They will also grapple with diverse subject matter, including: AIDS, poverty, identity as a South Asian living in the post-9/11 world, in addition to their religious, sexual, and ethnic identities.
The exhibition will travel in California and throughout the greater NYC area, from February to October, 2008.