EXHIBITIONS: Mel Prest - Alignments
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mel Prest - Alignments
April 4-29, 2006
Reception: Thursday, 4 April 2006, 5:30-7:30 PM
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10:30-5:30 PM
Email: info@gregorylindgallery.com
San Francisco artist Mel Prest combines hues and marks to form simple color patterns which constitute a multi-dimensional architecture based on physical landscapes and rhythmic vibrations. Prest’s hand-painted lines pulsate against her effortless grid planes, creating a synesthesia of perspective. The viewer must focus and re-focus the eye to apprehend undulating lines that distend and contract, shifting in both connotation and appearance in a single gaze. Her paintings are optical quandaries that act as visual metaphors for three-dimensional form.
Prest’s invented landscapes are meticulously constructed by the rhythmic use of lines that recede and advance, creating the impression of a wave of motion sweeping across the spectator’s field of vision. The lines increase in density in certain areas of Prest’s three-dimensional panels, activating a visual space that is both contemplative and visually disorienting in its quivery energy. Pieces such as the luminous and meditative “Twin Rainbow,” an oceanic backdrop of pale lines and colors, share space with “The Things that are Missing,” a bold panorama of labyrinthine shapes that suggests the meandering order of rumination and perception. In Prest’s latest work, she utilizes shadows cast by her multiple panel compositions to expand the space of each piece; lines and colors magically converge against the wall, which becomes an interpretive backdrop connecting the disparate panels so that they appear to be one painting.
Mel Prest’s recent exhibitions include Contemporary Perspectives at the MOCA, Santa Rosa, California, 2005; The Line Up, San Francisco Art Institute, 2004; Bowerhaus, the Bower, San Antonio, Texas, 2003; and Open Line, a solo show at the Gregory Lind Gallery, 2003. Prest received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Mills College and presently lives and works in San Francisco. She was Artist in Residence at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2004 and an Affiliate Artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts from 2002 to 2005.