McClain Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition Celestial, featuring works by Larry Bell, Christian Eckart, Robert Rauschenberg and James Rosenquist. The exhibition will be open to the public on Saturday, June 1 and on view through July 3, 2013. Rosenquist's Television or the Cat's Cradle Supports Electronic Picture, a 20' wide horizontal canvas is the centerpiece of the exhibition. The painting captures both the verve and vibrancy of his works of the late 80s and early 90s which feature flora, fauna and vistas of faces, and also incorporates themes of space, light and relativity, which he continues to explore in recent work. Spliced images of smiling female faces, a bright pink lattice-pattern, and purple passion flowers hover above star clusters swirling among a rich, inky sky. In true Rosenquist form, the large-scale work brings together seemingly disparate imagery to weave intriguing relationships between forms.
Rauschenberg's Shuttle Buttle/ROCI USA (Wax Fire Works) was created on highly polished, reflective steel. Using hot wax, enamel and acrylic, Rauschenberg painted and transferred images onto the surface, creating dynamic interactions among double-images of a space shuttle, signage text, expressive brushstrokes and a found wheelbarrow. The ROCI series as a whole implies a sense of space travel, along with reoccuring images of movement and ascent, both of which are clearly seen in the subject matter of Shuttle Buttle and the artist's handling of the reflective material.
A Larry Bell cube and a shadow box provide examples of the artist's most iconic work, in which he carves out distinct volumes in glass to engage the viewer's perception of space and vision. Christian Eckart's Intersecting Frustra, a hyper-realized painting-object, is made of aluminum and hand-polished automobile lacquer which hints at space-bound vessels.