Santa Fe, NM – Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art announces two solo shows running concurrently from September 17 – October 21, 2009: Daniel Brice’s, Stereo and Siddiq Khan’s, Topography. The opening reception for the artists is Thursday, September 17 from 5 to 7 pm. (Special note: Thursday opening instead Friday.)
Daniel Brice: New Work
California based artist Daniel Brice’s mixed media canvases and works on paper are a study in the use of line to convey, through simple gestural movements, a complex world of ideas. Subtly intricate, Brice’s work is the result of painstaking attention to detail that involves a combination of dark, curvilinear line work with hard-edged planes appearing almost as collage elements in each piece. Brice’s use of color is also subtle but he makes greater use of it than may at first appear. His monotypes and canvases appear to be about the interplay of color and line used sparingly but effectively to convey a sense of balance and imbalance. Where the dark lines converge, as they sometimes do, they become blurred as though disturbed by a momentary convergence. Ending abruptly when bisected by either the hard-edge of a rectangular plane within the work or by the outer edge of the work itself, the lines require us to complete them or connect them, to see beyond what is there to what is not there.
This will be Brice’s second solo exhibition at Chiaroscuro. Based in Los Angeles, Brice has shown his work extensively in California and New York. In his art, Brice captures all of the grace and discordance that characterize music and, possibly, human interaction: crossed paths, coming together, merging, and then separating.
Siddiq Khan: Topography
Siddiq Khan merges philosophical notions of artistic intention and the process of art making as a journey, by taking visual inspiration from maps. The Path series explores the idea of a circular journey, that, wherever you are, you are at the center of your own story. Spiral forms in bold colors that subtly blend with a map-like, patchwork visual field suggest that the journey takes precedence over place, incorporating the idea of place into the larger idea of the search for completeness. The linear spirals emanate outward from a center but can be thought of as extending beyond the edge of the picture frame. By building up layers of acrylic paint over collaged drawings and maps of areas around Abiquiu, New Mexico and Carson National Forrest, Khan creates a surface for the application of oil paints that are then scraped off and re-applied in a process that makes each layer transparent to the layer underneath it. The result is a surface balanced between tension and harmony, abstracted yet informed by figurative sources.
Born in Guyana, South America, Khan was educated in London and now lives in New Mexico and has been showing at Chiaroscuro since 2007. He has developed a distinct visual style that transcends the use of different mediums.
