FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Leigh Wells

REMAINS


March 21 – April 28, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 7, 3 - 5 PM
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00-5:30 PM
Email: info@gregorylindgallery

Gregory Lind Gallery is pleased to present, REMAINS, new collage/drawings and sculptural constructions by San Francisco-based artist Leigh Wells. This is the artist’s first show with the gallery.

Employing intricate references to cultural history, science, religion, and other social phenomena, Wells engages in a dialogue with the unknowable by reinterpreting source material culled from the past. These works—which hinge on scaling, cutting, and sculptural placement of disparate elements—emphasize the boundaries of what is knowable and definable, pointing out the mysterious and multi-perspectival nature of truth, reality and fiction.

Wells’ sculptural constructions explore both the textural and philosophical tensions between what we accept as fact and what is deliberately hidden from view. Bisecting planes and objects, vivid globules of painted surfaces, and clusters of shapes that approximate abstract geometries coagulate to form ironic monuments to the act of representation and the desire to make sense of our surroundings. In her works on collage, Wells presents objects and concepts connected with the scavenger hunt that comprises our inherited concepts of the past. She fastidiously examines figures and objects in the reproductions of photographs of sculptures, as well as stains found on scraps of paper, to mine the sometimes accidental artifacts of human experience.

In her works, the concept of self-knowledge is obfuscated by the evident schism between the mind and body. Viewers are challenged to consider the differences between flesh and stone, imprisonment and freedom, and the sometimes uncomfortable proximity of mystery to the circumscribed space of human relationships and identity.

Leigh Wells holds a BFA from the University of San Francisco, with further study at the San Francisco Art Institute, Crown Point Press, and Parsons/New School in New York. Exhibitions include a recent solo show at Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco and group shows at ZieherSmith Gallery, NY; and Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco.