Grant Irish's cast and fabricated bronze sculptures reveal his penchant for combining surreal and figurative styles. He is more curious about the relationship between instinctual, imaginative thought, and learned, analytical thought and how these 2 forces disconnect our minds from our bodies. Irish has explored the power of nature in piece's like 1998's Babystomper, but he is drawn to functional, quirky humor as well, which can be seen in his car-couch piece during this show.
Craig LaRotonda is a painter who culls styles from different periods. One is struck by a certain nostalgia-perhaps for the 15th century-particularly painters such as Hubert, Jan van Eyck or van Weyden. His kinship with the quasi-photo realism of that period is especially felt in pieces like The Meat Eaters and I Become a Tool.
Kevin Peterson's paintings were termed "grotesque expressionism," by a critic reviewing his recent San Diego show. With a lineage that extends to pop art and graphic novel, both mainstream and more bizarre marginal types, they often contain characters that seem damaged by some accident of DNA, or cataclysm that leaves them looking Keane-eyes at the viewer, imploring for help. But unlike Keane, no act of charity will deliver these characters from the dilemmas they face.
