Present Figures – Curated by Laura Malone

Clockwise from left: Nina Katz, Heidi Brueckner, Cindy Craig, Shannon Rae Fincke, Laura Malone

Present Figures brings together five California painters whose works exist within the figurative language of portraiture, simultaneously expanding and disrupting it. Centered around themes of intimacy, boundaries, and embodied emotion, each artist takes an individual approach to media, scale, and the capacity of the human form to be both a site of identity and a vessel of metaphor. Engaging in profound considerations of what it is to be human—our physicality, sense of self, relationships, consciousness, and creativity, these artists invite us to engage with these shifting, eternal questions and reflect on our own experiences—be they practical, peaceful, disturbing, humorous, fragmented, spiritual, or otherworldly. As individuals, choices that begin with who and what to portray later manifest in stylistic and material communiquès that boldly and poetically reveal themselves to the world. Collectively, the psychologically charged spectrum of the group reminds us of the myriad ways our sentience can be narrated. Like Anais Nin said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Bio:
With Present Figures, Laura Malone expands her practice to curation. Malone invited four artists to show alongside her, chosen for their unique and diverse approaches to representing the figure: two Southern California artists — Cindy Craig and Shannon Rae Fincke — and two from the Bay Area — Nina Katz and Heidi Brueckner. Collectively their work has been shown across the globe in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Malone’s artwork was featured in The Crocker Kingsley National Art Competition and included in “Disrupted Realism,” juried by John Seed, who wrote the book of the same name. Malone currently resides in Oakland, CA and has been a member of Mercury 20 since 2023.

Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 12, 3 – 5 pm
Artist Talks: Saturday, October 10, 3 – 5 pm
Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: October 2, 5 – 9 pm