RETROSPECTIVE, David Maxim May 5, 2012

Exhibition dates: May 3rd- 31st, 2012; Opening reception: Saturday, May 5th, 3:00 - 5:30 pm

Sandra Lee Gallery is pleased to present a retrospective selection of works by San Francisco artist, David Maxim. Maxim has worked in a variety of media, methods and styles for more than forty years, and is truly an artist of great complexity and breadth. He has shown both nationally and internationally and he is represented in numerous museum collections in the United States, as well as in Europe. Maxim's tornado drawings inspired a show currently on display at the Montgomery Museum of Art, Alabama, and a major work will be featured this spring in "Abstract Expressionism: Past and Present," at the Flint Institute of Art, Michigan.

Maxim set his early career in motion with a series of large-scale, photo-derived mountain paintings. These pictures established themes which Maxim would continue to explore throughout his career: the theatrical, the emotionally romantic, and the play of cosmic forces. In the 1980s Maxim began to work abstractly by way of crude painting implements which he left attached to the works after their execution. As physical structuring in and on the canvases was paramount, Maxim reversed the stretcher bars back to front, thus presenting the work as stage flat as though seen from the actor's entry view before the audience. In this sense he investigated the workings beyond what is normally seen. A sense of private revelation beyond surface effect is present throughout his work, whether it be in his drawing and sculpture, figure tableaux, abstract constructions, or later paintings and dioramas.

Nearly all periods and phases of Maxim's art will be present in the Retrospective exhibition at Sandra Lee Gallery, offering viewers new to Maxim's work a rare opportunity to get an overview of his explorations. To those who know Maxim's work, the exhibition will offer some unfamiliar and surprising corners of this tireless, creative artist.

Official Website: http://sandraleegallery.com