6 September – 8 October

ARNGUNNUR YR
Les Barricades Mystérieuses

At the most apparent level, Arngunnur Yr paints landscapes evocative of her native
Iceland. Actually, they are more skyscape; the horizon line is near the bottom of the
paintings, and the land is, at most, a bump of mountain in the distance. The effect is
one of atmosphere and mood, rather than a description of place.

And our place as viewers is put into question. It is unclear whether we are situated
on solid ground or a boat at sea. The churning clouds above seductively anticipate a
glimpse of the celestial. But they could just as easily threaten an oncoming storm.
The unsettling, ambiguous, and contradictory nature of this work invites comparison
to the interior emotional landscapes we each inhabit.

The title of the exhibition, which translated means Mysterious Barriers, comes from a
musical composition by François Couperin (1668-1733) written for the harpsichord.
The Baroque qualities of Couperin’s music are echoed in Yr’s vast and exultant skies.
The enigmatic aura of the work is alluring, but ultimately hinders full comprehension
or definitive answers.


CRYSTAL LIU
You’re Invited
Recent San Francisco Art Institute graduate Crystal Liu shows whimsical, slightly omi-
nous drawings from two bodies of work. The first, “My House is Dead… it’s my birth-
day,” is a series of stylized cakes in various stages of transmutation. Portrayed at a
point sometime beyond their purest state, the individual cakes are subject to entro-
pic forces that cause them to sink into decay, or to rearrange their sugary atoms into
something else entirely, such as trees, flowers, stars, or everyday objects.

In the second series, titled “My Butter Cream Clouds,” the cake frosting has floated
off and turned into clouds. Here a narrative progression emerges and clouds, rain,
and stars take on a life of their own. In Liu’s anthropomorphic, metamorphic world,
everything is extraordinary and anything is possible.
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Les Barricades Mystérieuses 1, 2005
 
My House is Dead...it's my birthday (cake
drawings), Black Forest Cake, 2004