Three Gorgons by Chris Shaw & Chuck Sperry
Temporally Bound (Three Gorgons): An installation by Chris Shaw & Chuck Sperry
June 2012
Acrylic on 3 sections of 6 articulated hard-panels.
Each section measures 6’8″ x 12′ installed. (6’8″ h x 18′ flat.)
Chris Shaw and Chuck Sperry have been close friends for many years, but have only worked in tandem creating art on a handful of occasions. Both artists have both incorporated and appropriated concepts and imagery from a myriad of sources in their designs for Rock Posters and paintings.
“Temporally Bound” marks this collaboration by the two artists not only as an event, but also in the form and subject of the artwork. The work’s form is derived from an asian “accordion” book, while the subject, “Three Gorgons” reflects the artists’ western influences. The free intertwining of Eastern and Western references is not only evocative of the modern technological world, but also of San Francisco, a cultural melting pot on the Pacific Rim.
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Madonna Fukushima by Chris Shaw
March – June, 2011
Acrylic on canvas
9′ x 11′
I watched the Japan earthquake and Tsunami live on television March 11, 2011. Like many, I was completely awestruck by the utter destruction I witnessed, but for some reason could not turn away. I’ll never forget the images of the tsunami hitting the Japanese mainland and entire towns being washed away. It was certainly Nature’s fury at its worst. I was extremely saddened and felt awful for all the people whose lives were affected or lost.
Then came the news of an incident at the Fukushima nuclear plant. At once I realized that there was something extremely wrong and scary happening there. Over the next days I again watched in horror as 3 of the reactors exploded and melted down, with a 4th in peril. I actually heard some “expert” say that the reactor buildings were designed to explode… “Don’t Worry”. There were massive radiation releases, but again the world was told that there was no problem, nothing was out of control. To me the situation looked very much out of control. As of this writing , Fukushima remains far from being stable or under control, it is a monumental catastrophe for Japan, the environment, and the world as a whole.
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June 11, 2011 – January 12, 2012
Bay Area rock poster art contemporaries Chris Shaw, Chuck Sperry, and Ron Donovan stand out amongst their predecessors in the Bay Area tradition of poster making that spans nearly 50 years. Through their prolific bodies of work, the masterful artists have brought innovation, invention, and new meaning to this art form. Each distinctively fuses propaganda, imagery, text, and historical art references with Pop and rock-poster art sensibilities to create accessible, relatable imagery that is at once empowering and undeniably populist.
Minna Street windows
A collaborative art work involving three individually created window installations, Donovan, Shaw, and Sperry layer silkscreen, painting, collage, and mixed media to transform two-dimensional imagery into three-dimensional expression. Showing reverence for man’s communicative nature, they reference the renewal of the idea that art has a purpose.
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