FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Rhea Carmi, "A Light in the Dark"
March 21 - April 22, 2008
Opening Reception: March 30, 6:30 - 9:30pm
A Light in the Dark, 2007, Mixed media on panel, 60" x 96".
Frank Pictures Gallery is privileged to present A Light In The Dark by Jerusalem born artist Rhea Carmi. To grow up in Israel is to experience the world both as an upheaval and as a sanctuary. Rhea Carmi, in these vivid abstract compositions captures both the anguish and the peace of her own experience, and that of her husband Meir, a Holocaust survivor. Her paintings are prayers. Carmi utilizes a variety of media: oils, sand, water, treated paper, canvas and wood; which she layers, smooths and sculpts to create an intimate landscape that demands a tactile as well as visual response. Her work, recently acquired by the Museum of Tolerance and exhibited at the Riverside and Torrance Art Museums, speaks eloquently of both what it is to endure, and that what we must endure. "In response to war Carmi's palette and her formal vocabulary changed", writes renowned curator and critic Peter Frank, "becoming simpler, more sober, more contemplative, turning inward. Some pieces took on the foreboding gloom of war. Into a few of these Carmi introduced soft, even three-dimensional shapes, as if to insist on the reality of human frailty but to also to celebrate somehow the defiant persistence of human sensuality. Such an existential gesture, a positing of the human against the void, suits Rhea Carmi's style. Carmi insists that we still live with the constant threat of annihilation and that the human spirit cannot and will not be stifled by the threat. Simple or complex, agitated or calm, but always poised and luminous, these paintings argue that, even in the face of death, humanity triumphs."
Top: L.V.D.S-XXIII, 2006, Mixed media, foil on panel, 48" x 90".
Bottom: L.V.D.S-XXIV, 2006, Mixed media, wire on panel, 48" x 92".
For more on Rhea Carmi,
http://frankpicturesgallery.com/rheacarmi
Frank Pictures Gallery
Begamot Station A-5
2525 Michigan Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90404
310. 828-0211 / 323 839-6166 cell
E-mail, Laurie@frankpicturesgallery.com
Web site, http://www.frankpicturesgallery.com
Patricia Terrell-O'Neal Press Release, http://frankpicturesgallery.com/patriciaterrelloneal/PatriciaTerrellONeal.pdf
Gallery hours, Tuesday – Saturday, 11:30am-6:30pm
