Jamie Felton • Lauren Quin • Craig Calderwood • Oliver Hawk Holden
Jamie Felton and Lauren Quin
Craig Calderwood
Oliver Hawk Holden
Opening Reception: Saturday August 24th, 6 – 9pm
Jamie Felton & Lauren Quin
Helianthus
Opening Reception: Saturday August 24th, 6 – 9pm
Exhibition Dates: August 24th – September 21st, 2019
I have two sun flowers that sit in my back pocket
Their Stems poke through the holes of my weathered jeans and tickle my ankles as I walk
These Two prickly furred pipe cleaners bellow and touch the floor with their toes
Two heads mingle around my back shoulders like wirey demon children that take their coffee black and eat hot fries all day
Each claiming a butt cheek of their own Each having a mind of their own
Each taking over an eye of mine
Each claiming a booster seat in my car
I see through sunflower eyes now
Everything has a red glare that halos over the sky.
- Jamie Felton
Guerrero Gallery is pleased to present Helianthus, a two person exhibition by Los Angeles based artists and friends Jamie Felton & Lauren Quin.
Helianthus is the latin name for sunflowers, those beautifully tough stalks topped with a brilliant yellow and brown flower, following the repetitious arcs of the sun, day after day. Within Helianthus, both artists through varying means ruminate on this majestic plant–Felton constructing a ragtag family of playfully sinister ceramic sunflower seedlings bedecked in melting patches of variegated glazes, while Quin’s gestural paintings speak more loosely to the repeated acts of this sun-hungry species–weaving the echoes of voluminous shapes and angular incised drawings into compositions that wholly reject an easy reading.
Craig Calderwood
Too Gay to Live, Too Gay to Die
In the second half of the main space, Guerrero Gallery will present Too Gay to Live, Too Gay to Die, a solo exhibition by San Francisco based artist Craig Calderwood. This selection of drawings and paintings pull from two bodies of work. One being a continuation of drawings done between 2011-2013, focusing on how one negotiates shame and desire around the body. The other being a newer body of work that looks at how one mitigates reality and explores identity through roleplaying. These two together compliment each other as at their core they are about managing life through somatic and psychic acts. Both sets of works (one rendered in ink and the other in crafting paints on fabric) express their narratives through mild gestures and dense ornamentation continuing the artist’s habit of coding work with both personal and historical symbols and patterns. These images, while some are sexually graphic, express a kind of Love and way of being that only exists when one begins to let their shame slough off, where for a moment the body becomes lightsome and the strain of reality loosens.
Oliver Hawk Holden
Secret Evil
Concurrently showing in our upstairs gallery, Secret Evil, Oliver Hawk Holden dives into the endless depths of American cold-case crimes and holds them up alongside conspiracy theories, mysterious powerful characters, and contemporary social issues. From Ronald Reagan and secret alien overlords to factory farming and environmental destruction, Hawk Holden conjures imagery which illustrates the fractured American psyche and our often-paradoxical reactions to collective overwhelm.