Opening Reception: Into the Woods/Game Room

Into the Woods
Featuring artists: TaVee McAllister Lee, Eileen Starr Moderbacher, Jamie Treacy, Christine Ferrouge, Mittie Cuetara,
Joni Marie Theodorsen, Linda Ellinwood, Jules Campbell, Harry Clewans

Game Room
Rachel Major

GearBox Gallery celebrates its 10th anniversary on the Oakland Art Scene with “Into the Woods,” featuring work by member artists Jules Campbell, Harry Clewans, Mittie Cuetara, Linda Ellinwood, Christine Ferrouge, TaVee McAllister Lee, Eileen Starr Moderbacher, Joni Marie Theodorsen and Jamie Treacy, along with “Game Room,” a special installation of work by Rachel Major in the Inner Room of the gallery.
“Into the Woods” is a theme that evokes a powerful intersection between nature and imagination, drawing on the rich symbolism of the forest as a place of both exploration and wildness. Lush landscapes, dramatic lighting, and intricate details highlight the diversity of the forest in many of the works. Some speak directly to the tranquility and renewal of nature while others reflect on its atmosphere of ambiguity, where the woods become the backdrop for adventure, filled with mystery, danger, and enchantment. Conscious to the viewer or not, the forest often symbolizes a transformative space teeming with lessons about courage, morality, and the unknown. This narrative layer allows viewers and audiences to consider their own narratives — what lies within their metaphorical woods, and how do they traverse the challenges they encounter? In this way, “Into the Woods” serves not only as an artistic theme but also as an exploration of the human experience.
Ranging from representational landscape to narrative and abstraction, works in the show include paintings, complex assembled wood cuts, mixed media pieces, free form paper installations, and sculpture. Media include oil and acrylic paint, prints, seed pods, branches and leaves with techniques ranging from abrasion, tearing and cutting and broad gestural paint application to intensive and keenly focused processes.

Also showing, Rachel Major’s special installation “Game Room” will be on view in the intimate Inner Room space at GearBox. Filled with unexpectedly luscious and plush representations of meat, “Game Room” brings together a series of pieces Major developed while examining the conflict between will and appetite through the lens of western ideas of feminine beauty and the disordered eating that might come with trying to attain them. Focusing on gender roles and complex relationships with food, her work in this series juxtaposes images of meat, often associated with the power and mythology of the masculine as hunters and providers, with techniques of the feminine, such as domestic sewing and needle work, quite literally resulting in stuffed fabric cuts of meats, as we might be stuffed into various versions of the meat bodies we inhabit.
All are welcome to join us for the Opening Reception celebrating a decade of presenting contemporary art in Oakland. Stop in anytime Saturday, January 25th, 1-4pm to greet the artists and enjoy the light refreshments. Free street parking in the nearby neighborhood.

770 West Grand Ave, Oakland, CA 94612
Contact: [email protected]

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Gallery Hours: Thursdays-Saturdays, 12-5 pm and First Fridays, 5-8 pm