After an eight-year absence from publicly exhibiting her work, San Francisco- based artist Mary Button Durell will be showing her most recent body of work, Flash, at La Boutique. Building on her signature sculptural technique of layering tracing paper with a wheat paste adhesive for structural reinforcement, the artist’s translucent and organic forms will inhabit a new dimension by interacting with the properties of color—primarily neon orange—for the first time. Executed in both two and three-dimensions, Flash will comprise a body of works that incorporates sculptures and bas-relief hangings on a scaled- spectrum of intricately small to impressively large.

In Flash: New Works by Mary Button Durell, the artist pushes her art practice into new territory by introducing fresh elements such as bright colors rendered inacrylic paint and foils as well as adding low relief wall hangings to explore the way in which her material can be translated into two dimensions. Durell has traditionally approached her practice through a point of departure that is stripped down and laid bare, using only tracing paper and wheat paste to create space- inhabiting sculptures that transmit light. The resulting objects are often multi- faceted and translucent recalling the infinite organic fabrics that make up the natural world from the ethereal and cosmic (constellations, galaxies, asteroids) to the microcosmic (cellular fibers, molecular structures).

The works in Flash interface with light in myriad ways. At times the delicate nature of Durell’s paper conducts light allowing the viewer to look through and absorb what is on the other side of the artwork. At other times, so many paper sheaths are layered that parts of the object’s surface become opaque and the texture and quality of the paper come to the fore. These binary elements— translucence and opacity—make up the tension in Durell’s work. The duality is responsible for the pulsing, organic qualities that reference the delicate and tenuous nature of life itself. Punctuated with crisp and vibrant wisps of neon orange, or anchored with a backlit blue, the carefully mediated color placement seeks to enhance the way a flash of light can be cast back into space or absorbed by the viewer’s eye.

OPENING EVENTS

A free reception open to the public will be held at La Boutique on Friday, June 8, 2012 from 6pm to 8pm. Please RSVP at info@laboutique-galerie.com or by clicking here 

Mary Button Durell is a San Francisco-based artist and sculptor working primarily with tracing paper and wheat paste. Durell’s work is medium-centric and process-oriented allowing for unique shapes and forms to emerge out of a temporal engagement with her materials. Her work has been exhibited at The Headlands Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, San Francisco Arts Commission and Limn Gallery. She studied at both San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts.

All photos are by Julie Michelle

A very special thank to SOLERNO for providing a delicious cocktail for the evening!

• June 8th: 6PM to 8PM: Opening Reception - Mary Button Durrell

• May 10th: About-Face fundraiser. For additional information and to purchase ticket please click here
• May 17th: Open-Show SF Bay Area #37. Learn more about Open-Show here

For additional information on any of these events, or if you wish to rent La Boutique for a private function, please feel free to email us at info@laboutique-galerie.com

See the pics of our Opening Reception and of Chloé’s work here

We are now also selling the beautifully packaged Kusmi teas, featuring a wide variety of blends such as Saint Petersburg (black tea, citrus and summer fruits and caramel), Detox (blend of mate, green tea flavored with lemon and lemongrass) and several Green Teas.

Our tea salon takes its design inspiration from Swiss Modernist tradition of form and function paired with a rustic quality that evokes cool cafes and cozy chalets. West Coast-based designer , Jude Gabbard y Muñoz sourced all of the vintage furnishings for the tea salon within California, scouring every corner for just the right pieces, including bentwood chairs by Radomsko ZMG, one of the oldest bentwood chair manufacturers in Europe. Upholstered in an an exclusive purple and gray damask the newly restored chairs perfectly echo the colors of dried lavender while complimenting the deep wood and smokey glass tops of the mid-century lounge tables. Monumental 1930s plaster lamps from the Parisian atelier of Giacometti lend an air of light hearted sophistication. Together, the furnishings pay homage to the Franco-Swiss traditions of sophisticated craft and handwork, mirroring La Boutique’s luxurious aesthetic of Art & Fashion.

Continuous and Still marks the continued expansion of Amy Vazquez’s body of meditative abstracts. Balancing organic forms with geometric rigidity, Vazquez’s work is in a constant state of flux. An ethereal flower-like form is counteracted by an imposing vertical rectangle. Flourishing black and white shapes are interrupted by punctuated bursts of color. With materials including but not limited to acrylic, gouache, india ink, graphite and prismacolor pencils, Vazquez creates overall shapes made up of an intricate world of microcosmic sub-shapes suspended in a void of white expanse. These works are cut from a unique and personal visual language that implies a point, counter-point conversation of vying elements making the forms appear to constantly contract and expand. They almost seem to breathe.

Amy Vazquez is a Miami-born San Francisco-based artist. Her work aims to create new landscapes that exist in the threshold of the familiar and the unknown. She received her BA in Studio Art from Scripps College, Claremont, CA.