Bruno David Gallery's Opening Reception for Thomas Sleet:Traces December 7, 2007

Bruno David Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibit Thomas Sleet: Traces in the Main Gallery, featuring large wall relief sculptures composed of cement, natural and synthetic fiber, recycled materials, acrylic, and earth pigments. Sleet utilizes tortured distressed surfaces to create a unique merging of shape and texture, positive and negative, color and space, uniting as a remarkably unique composition. His work is enigmatic as it weaves themes of organic structure, migration, infinite multiples, and primitive culture with systems of individual marks. Sleet engages a new vernacular of style by combining the purification of form with the merging of organic structure and geometry. Thomas Sleet attended Columbus College of Art and Design and Washington University in St. Louis – Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, where he received his BFA.

In the Project Room, German artist Ingo Baumgarten shows small paintings, which comment, often ironically, on banal aspects of everyday life by representing them as motives of his art. He is interested in demonstrating his individual view of the world around him without glorifying or condemning it. He would consider his work as a painter successful if it enables the spectator to adopt a more complex and altered perception of his surroundings afterwards. Baumgarten uses paint rather than photographs to portray these objects and details because it “provides a better medium for formulating an individual point of view.” This point of view, created by the artist’s hand, has a personal and human quality about it that intimately connects with the spectator. In addition to his show here in St. Louis, he is working on his upcoming exhibition at the Kao Yuan Art center in Kaosiung, Taiwan.

In the New Media Room, video artist Ella Gant presents a series of short videos centered on the principle that, in her words, "awareness of our own experience can inspire social consciousness, political responsibility, cultural interaction and changed behavior." Her knowledge of history and theory combine with her long-standing relationship with photography, video, performance, electronic arts, and digital media to result in works that address the identity, sexuality, subjectivity, reality, and ephemerality. Gant, who is chair of the art department and an associate professor of photography at Hamilton College, New York, has had her work featured in solo and group exhibitions nationwide.

In the Print Room, the gallery is showing a selection of prints from the Island Press, which was established by Professor Peter Marcus in 1977 at Washington University in St. Louis – Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. In 1978 Joan Hall joined the faculty and in 1991 also began to work as the master papermaker for Island Press. Tom Reed is currently the master printer. Island Press is known for its large and complex works that combine the efforts of its master printers, faculty, and students from the University and for fostering an experimental process that pushes and exceeds the boundaries of printmaking. The selection includes works by Frida Baranek, James Barsness, Chakaia Booker, James Drake, Shimon Okshteyn, Juan Sanchez, T.L. Solein and others.

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