“When you first see a new picture you are very careful because you may be staring at van Gogh’s ear.”
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery is excited to present Keep It Cherried, a two-person exhibition featuring artists Michelle Guintu and Joe Roberts. The show marks these San Francisco artists’ first exhibition at the Backroom Gallery, brought together based on their shared impulse to create through their own obsessions. Based on inherently introverted personal infatuations, the artists will show painting, drawing, and low-budget assemblage.
Michelle Guintu combines facets of cultural identification and transcendent personal expression, without polish or refinement. Everyday cultural detritus (R. Kelly, McDonalds, Sonic The Hedgehog, canon of Abstraction) realize new potentials in their transformations. The collusion of the discarded distills a Lynchian consciousness, rendering a surreal and nightmarish craft.
“Joe Roberts is a stoney-eyed, scrapped out genius and he’s done art for some of my favorite records in recent memory besides. I can’t exactly say he throws wild parties, yet somehow I’m always at his house when they happen. He’s not allowed inside any bar that I’ve ever tried to meet him at. Yet somehow he’s like the giggly heart of it all, speaking out of the side of his mouth like “you need to be IN on this shit”, like somehow halfway through a pudding-pack he just figured out the connection between Hanna-Barbera and the JFK assassination.” -Matt Jones
Making something out of nothing is the prime artistic act. The conjunction of various media is an integral element in the work of Joe Roberts. Likewise, Michelle Guintu’s various abstractions push up against her more explicitly themed work. Neither harbor pretensions about their work or the impetus that pushes them to create. They sophisticate their work into scale – their sense of scale is innate, from Joe’s assembled dioramas to Michelle’s paintings on paper.
“The most impressive work is not the specially-constructed-for-exhibition pieces that look, frankly, headshop. Bomb style packages itself.”
-Rene Ricard, The Radiant Child, ARTFORUM Magazine 1981
October 22 – November 12, 2011
Opening reception: Saturday, October 22, 7-10pm
w/ a Special Musical Guest TBA
Curated by Daniella Fernandez Murphy
