FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wabi Ranch: Paintings by Jake Longstreth
December 15 – January 27, 2007
Artist Reception: Thursday, January 4, 5:30-7:30 PM
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:30-5:30 PM
Email: info@gregorylindgallery

San Francisco-based artist Jake Longstreth’s new exhibition, Wabi Ranch, presents paintings inspired by ubiquitous, commercial settings. “Wabi Ranch” is a poetic expression that, like a painting, has no established meaning. It is derived from the Japanese word “wabi,” an untranslatable term related to simplicity, quietness, and understated elegance. In contrast, the term “ranch” implies a specific landscape. Contemporary associations with “ranch,” however, demonstrate that meaning, like a landscape, changes over time. The once grand idea of the open, western ranch tended by cowboys has shifted to more commonly refer to ranch houses and “ranch”-flavored Doritos. The landscapes Longstreth depicts are the legacy of this transformation-a world having more in common with branded franchises than the open range. These flat, light-filled works engage the landscape not in an idealized or censorious way-but rather, with a conscious acceptance of the unremarkable nature of the subject matter.

Longstreth’s work reveals commonplace beauty in pieces such as “Idaho Falls.” In this painting, viewers are presented with the boxy exterior of a building. The only indication revealing its identity is the Toys R Us giraffe logo that peers coyly from behind the branches of a tree plotted in the pavement. Similarly, in the piece “Lake Chambers,” nearly all commercial signifiers are stripped away. Viewers are clued into the edifice’s commercial reality only by the monolithic Subway logo emblazoned across it. In eliminating almost all external markings of commercial and public existence, Longstreth’s representations achieve a spare, quiet meaning. With the pictures reduced to their most basic content, a neutrality of depiction is achieved, allowing the paintings to simultaneously undercut and celebrate their respective subjects.

Jake Longstreth was born in 1977 in Connecticut, and lives and works in San Francisco. His selected exhibitions include Gallery of Urban Art, Emeryville, CA, 2006; Benicia Arts Center, Benicia, CA, 2005; Adobe Bookshop, San Francisco, 2005; and the Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship Awards, San Francisco Arts Commission, 2004. Longstreth received his MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2005.

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