Luna Rienne Gallery is pleased to present The Line Up, a joint show featuring San Francisco-based artists, t.w.five and Kelly Ording. The inspiration for The Line Up comes from a mutual admiration the artists have for each other’s artwork and process. While these artists create in completely different media, they share a commonality in the subsequent appearance of quasi-mechanical perfection, playing with perception and illusion. The careful placement of line, stripes, colors and geometric combinations bring three-dimensionality to the two-dimensional works, as abstract forms seem to alter the space around them. Kelly Ording explains:
“We originally talked about doing a show together because we saw similarities in the work and, just as importantly, in the process. All the work places a high importance on repetition, line-work, shapes and patterns. I thought it would be interesting to show work together that has similarities in the process, but has results so drastically different. Also, the mediums are so different that I hope it will set up an interesting dichotomy and conversation.”
In The Line Up, t.w.five will show a unique body of work that departs from the duo’s ongoing inquiry into subjects of culture shock and cultural isolation, by creating work that focuses much more on their unique and technical process of image making. These works are influenced by the Bauhaus school and grapple with formalist traits of line, color and space. Each piece meticulously incorporates these elements to create abstract and dimensional work, leading the eye into, and around, the spatial elements of the composition. Though generally abstract, these works hint at architectural allusion with the simple use of line to convey the pillar of a building, the corner of a room or the poles of a telephone wire.
Rendered in just one material – vinyl – t.w.five’s work is largely about process. All shapes are hand-cut to size from large rolls of solid color vinyl, and then carefully applied to the surface of the work. Often, these vinyl pieces are little more than a sliver in size. Each work is made up of intricately repeating patterns, which require hours of rigorous work. The finished product is not only a reflection of, in this case, traditional Bauhaus principles, but also a labor of love, weaved and realized by two sets of skillful hands.
Kelly Ording’s works on paper and canvas employ natural and geometric shapes with lines, pairing the intuition with mathematical mark-making. She questions the singular object and its amplification through massive repetition, resulting in vivid ethereal landscapes. Ording begins each piece by dying the paper or canvas, allowing for natural mark-making to occur during this process. These natural marks then inform the way Ording approaches the composition and, ultimately, the final piece. Her work strives to find balance between the artist’s hand and the uncontrollable occurrences and results inherent to the mediums she uses.
About t.w.five
Born and raised in Sweden and Brazil, respectively, t.w.five is an international art duo based in San Francisco, California. Each artist holds a Masters of Fine Art from San Jose State University and have enjoyed numerous solo exhibitions in the Bay Area and abroad, including: The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Canāda College Art Gallery, Palo Alto, CA; and Babel Gallery, Trondheim, Norway. In addition, t.w.five has been included in multiple group shows at: White Walls Gallery, San Francisco, CA; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA; and California State University East Bay, Hayward, CA. The duo has completed several public art commissions throughout the city of San Francisco and in Silicon Valley, as well as receiving two nominations for The Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA Award in 2012. Currently, t.w.five is participating in an artist residency at The Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA and finished two additional residencies in 2013 at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder, Trondheim, Norway and Sula Fyr, Sula, Norway.
About Kelly Ording
A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Ording has been living and working in the Bay Area for close to twenty years. In addition to her studio work, she has completed several large-scale murals in San Francisco and for companies such as Facebook and Genentech. Her work is included in several collections, including: Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, Alameda County and San Francisco Arts Commission, to name a few. Ording is currently an Artist in Residence at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley and is working on a large-scale public project at Unity Plaza located on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco, CA in association with the San Francisco Arts Commission, DPW and MTA.
About Luna Rienne Gallery
Luna Rienne features visual artists working in contemporary mediums who integrate elements of urban culture with traditional techniques. Started as an online clothing boutique called fabric8 in 1995, the gallery opened their current location in 2006 and shifted focus toward the multitude of talented visual artists working in contemporary mediums.
Gallery Location and Hours
3318 22nd Street, San Francisco CA 94110
Marco Polo, Kelly Ording, acrylic on dyed canvas, 32 x 42 in.