Bruno David Gallery: Opening Reception April 25, 2008

ALEX COUWENBERG: Working Space (Main gallery)
SHAWN BURKARD: Over and over and over (Front room)
JILL DOWNEN: Cornerstone (New Media room)

Opening Reception: Friday, April 25th, from 6 to 9 pm

Bruno David Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles based painter Alex Couwenberg. For several years, Couwenberg has forged a unique reputation in California by producing a distinctive body of work that is a product of his obsession with the process of painting.

Born and raised in Los Angeles and Orange County, Alex Couwenberg was exposed to many of the visual elements that create the So Cal terrain. The subject matter in his work comes from a deep appreciation of the aesthetic associated with the Southern California culture. The paint, pin striping, and finish associated with hot rod and custom car culture all show up as influences in his work. Mid-century design, furniture, and architecture, surf and skateboard culture, color and graphics, geometric and hard-edge abstraction, and the love of craft and technique all fuel the work. Applying paint to a surface and the experiences that occur while creating an image are the purest form of his motivation. The paintings themselves diagram the process of paint application and the interpretation of how these influences manifest themselves in the form of shape, color, texture, and space. Each of his painting becomes an experience of constantly juxtaposing elements and forms within a composition attempting to arrive at a relationship between balance, tension, and harmony.

Alex Couwenberg: Working Space, is his first exhibition in St. Louis. The exhibition includes 10 paintings all done in 2008. A fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Peter Frank accompanies this exhibition.

In the Project Room, Shawn Burkard, a young artist from St. Louis is showing his recent work in an exhibition titled “Over and over and over”. Burkard's work has been variously described as Pop Art, because of its source from functional objects and incorporation of commercial and industrial materials; and as Minimal Art, because of its geometric forms and solid presence.

In the New Media Room, multidisciplinary artist Jill Downen premieres a short video titled “Cornerstone”. Downen, known for her white on white wall installations of abstracted bodily forms emerging from architecture, continues to draw on the idea that the human body shares an interdependent relationship to buildings. The three-minute video zooms in on a stack of real bricks on the artistes own body. The simple act of breathing, under the weight of building materials, captures a moment of time that is humorous, visceral, and vulnerable. The subtle and rhythmic sensibility Downen brings to video poses metaphoric possibilities about gravity, support and the protection of human fragility within the frame of architecture. While Downen’s art is rooted in site-responsive installation, “Cornerstone” is a recent video project characteristic of her interdisciplinary approach to uncover new aspects of established boundaries.

Official Website: http://www.brunodavidgallery.com