Felix Kulpa Gallery is pleased to present Pictures of Things I may Have Forgotten, our fourth solo exhibition with artist Blaise Rosenthal. This show features Rosenthal’s most recent series of nonobjective mixed media paintings. The exhibition will run August 5th-28th with an opening reception on Friday August 5th from 6-9pm.
Working with Acrylic and Charcoal on Canvas, Rosenthal creates paintings that focus heavily on drawing while also celebrating the physicality of the media he uses. In true postmodern form, Blaise utilizes the seemingly opposing aesthetic vocabularies of both minimalism and abstract expressionism, appropriating these visual dialects of high modernism to create works that fearlessly address beauty and harmony as ideals worthy of sincere pursuit.
“My first memories are of drawing with my mother. I drew faces over and over again. The drawings were always “my” face, as though my awakening human consciousness was wrestling with the question of identity. Over 30 years later, identity continues to provide an alluring though elusive and problematic subject. As a painter I have developed a deep aesthetic appreciation of the materials I use and the phenomena that occurs when they are subjected to nature’s forces. My work therefore tends toward a non-objective approach combining an intuitive exploration of media and an intentional expression of self as it is discovered through the context of art making. Immediate certainty on both points generally proves to be fleeting however, and it is only over time that I have been able to see where reoccurring consistencies reveal aspects of a dynamic self through my evolving body of work. “
-Blaise Rosenthal
Blaise Rosenthal currently lives and works in Santa Cruz, Ca
Felix Kulpa Gallery is located at 107 Elm Street, Santa Cruz, and is open Thursday – Sunday, 12-6 pm. The August 5th opening reception (6-9 pm) coincides with the Santa Cruz First Friday event and is free and open to the public.
