Gallery Route One Annex
11101 Highway One
Pt. Reyes Station, CA 94956
Reception Sunday December 18th 3-5pm
Artist Salon and closing January 22nd
Press Release: GRO is pleased to present She Said She Said, a solo exhibition by San Francisco based artist and West Marin native Isis Hockenos. These six oil paintings depict female or androgynous forms in acts of task or in repose but doing each with an air of resignation or complacency. Also included in the show are hundreds of miniature female figures installed on the ceiling of the gallery and reflected up to the viewer by mirrors installed on the gallery floor. The viewer gazes down into myriad tiny faces staring up.
She Said She Said combines physical reality with an illusory world that exists only within the perception of the viewer. The reflected figures seen in the mirrors echo the figures depicted in the paintings; the silent, unacknowledged, incidental work of being present. In one painting a figure balanced on a boat sitting in a placid river reaches up to tend a net or shroud. In another, three figures go about seemingly innocent yard work although the title, Bury the Body, hints at a grimmer narrative. Modernity is strung between the ubiquitous technology sector and a revived interest in handwork. She Said She Said asks us if, in the future, might “work” be performed only by machines while humans perform “labor” as a form of leisure? Will craftsmanship be valued only for its aesthetic qualities and not for its usefulness?
Isis Hockenos (American, b. 1986) received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, NY and studied printmaking at Fondazione Il Bisonte in Florence, Italy. Hockenos is currently a Young Artist Fellow at Gallery Route One, Pt. Reyes Station and a Resident Artist at The Midway, San Francisco. Hockenos has exhibited locally and internationally including at Vorres Gallery, San Francisco, Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco, Sagan Piechota Architecture, San Francisco, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, and at Galleri Oxholm, Copenhagen, DK.