Oolong Gallery is honored to present a painting & sculpture exhibition featuring Austrian contemporary master, Markus Bacher, and rising star sculptor Claire Chambless of CalArts. The opening reception is Saturday, February 25th from 6-9pm. The artists will be present. Please contact the gallery for an exclusive preview by appointment: [email protected] 

Claire Chambless is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist originally from Houston, TX and Atlanta, GA. "I use a diverse range of media and strategies including sculpture, installation, new media, and collage," the artist states. "I completed my MFA in Art at the California Institute of the Arts (2020), and received my BA from Davidson College (2012). I recently exhibited at Sargent's Daughters (Los Angeles); Wonzimer (Los Angeles); Office Space (Los Angeles); Center for the Arts Eagle Rock (Los Angeles), The New Arts Foundation, Spring/Break (Los Angeles), Culture LabLIC/Flux Factory (New York), MAK Center for Art & Architecture Mackey Apartments (Los Angeles), La MaMa Gallery (New York), M. David & Co. (New York), the New Wight Biennial at the University of California Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (Atlanta). I have been supported by the City of Atlanta, Fulton County Arts and Culture Council, the Walthall Fellowship, and the Lillian Disney Scholarship, among others."

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Oolong owner Eric Laine first discovered artist Markus Bacher (Tirol, Austria) and his large scale paintings in 2016 at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, on the Museum Island built by David Chipperfield. In the past few years, Bacher developed an entire new body of work rooted in the alluring Santa Barbara region of California. Bacher’s oeuvre, which seems at first to be completely abstract, in fact teeters on the edge of representation, abstraction, and figuration, blurring the need for distinctions between these categories.

Veit Loers from 'After Eight' CFA Berlin, published by Snoeck 2013:



According to the magazine Provocateur, Markus Bacher’s paintings are "vivid, colorful, informal and above all, massive.” One thinks of banking institutions, spacious foyers and lofts, in which the paintings might hang with great effect. The attribute informal shows itself here from its best side. Almost as though the typically informal Fifties had actually not undergone a conceptual hiatus and merely continued uninterrupted in the painting of the 1980s and beyond to the present – as it were, informal as an established value or entity that transcends a specific temporal context, rather like Meissen porcelain or Chanel perfume. Be that as it may, does Bacher’s seemingly abstract painting actually have the qualities of informal? Is it not more gesturally abstract or abstractly expressive or, indeed, perhaps not really abstract at all?

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Markus Bacher, (b. 1983, Kitzbühel, Austria) studied painting at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He has had solo exhibitions at Palais Schwarzenberg, Austria (invite image); Ceysson Gallery, Wandhaff, Luxembourg; Gallery Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen, Denmark; Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany; Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles; Museum Stiegenhaus, Langenlois, Austria; Forum Alpbach, Galerie Schmidt, Reith im Alpbachtal, Austria. Group exhibitions include Kunst Leben Leidenschaft, Museum Angerlehner, Austria; the Biennale Giovani Monza, Serrone della Villa Reale Monza, Italy; Museum Kitzbühel, Sammlung Alfons Walde, Tiroler Landesmuseum, Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck, Austria; Red Bull Hangar-7, Salzburg and the Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria.

www.markusbacher.art

www.clairechambless.com

www.oolongallery.com