LANESPLITTER
4799 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA
RECEPTION MARCH 23RD, 7-10 PM
Statement for the show:
Brian Strang lives in East Oakland and teaches English composition at San Francisco State University and Merritt College. He is the author of INCRETION (Sputyen Duyvil) and MACHINATIONS (a free Duration ebook) and several chapbooks. His poems, reviews, essays and translations have appeared in many journals including New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, The Denver Quarterly and Ur-Vox. Recently, his poetry appeared in translation in the Portuguese journal DiVersos.
His paintings represent “an attempt to be guided visually and artistically by the imagination’s interaction with natural forms and nature itself: the perilous context, the most permeating materiality, the system of interrelated forces so complex, so enormous and so minute, so internal and external, that it extends far beyond the limitations of imagination and is, therefore, marvelous. Poetry is encoded within the forms of the world, within Whitman’s “spear of summer grass”—one only has to look closely to see it.”
This is his third solo show.
“Strang’s work... suggests a more romantic pleasure in and response to visual phenomena. [It] betrays a rhythmic sensibility not unlike that found in a sketch by Matisse.”
Garrett Caples
SF Bay Guardian 6/13/07
