JOAN VAUPEN: “Retrospective”

December 27, 2009 11:00 AM

Downtown // events // EDIT

LA Artcore is proud to announce a retrospective exhibition of Southern Californian artist Joan Vaupen. Vaupen finished her graduate degree in painting from California State University, Los Angeles almost forty years ago. Since then, she has pursued several discreet bodies of work. This retrospective, covering her oeuvre since the 1970s, includes examples of work from eight different series. Many of them address her progressive political concerns while others investigate color and form. Vaupen interest in Plexiglas had begun in the early 1990s, when she initiated a series of Small Houses rounded Plexiglas boxes that she filled with objects and images to construct commentaries about issues that troubled her, and us. One of her Houses looks at the atom bomb and includes a vintage photograph of an American admiral and his non-military female companion cutting into a celebratory cake. The cake is shaped like a mushroom cloud. Another of Vaupens Houses compares a depiction of three Barbie dolls dancing with the lithe bodies in Bottecellis Three Graces and the bodacious ones in a Rubens painting. In her most recent works, Vaupen has been experimenting with dropping and pouring paint, and pushing it around on a paper surface using her fingers. With these Moving Paint series, the handsome contrast of liquid pigment recalls the mature work of Helen Frankenthaler.

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