News

Park Life Gallery is pleased to present Metric: a two-person art show featuring the work of Dana Hemenway and Anthony Ryan.

Metric: Dana Hemenway & Anthony Ryan
May 20 – June 26, 2011
Opening reception: May 20, 6-9pm
Curated by Jessica Brier

Not unlike the way two old friends can finish each other’s sentences, Metric brings
together the work of two artists who each pick up and extend the ideas and
concerns of the other. Dana Hemenway and Anthony Ryan, both emerging Bay Area
artists with outstanding technical skill, share formal and material concerns that
effectively push forward the dialogue around fine art, design and craft. The work on
view occupies a liminal space between utility and abstraction.

Underpinned by the notion that framing and context imbue every-day objects with
meaning, Dana Hemenway’s sculptural work repurposes found objects to construct
formal installations stripped of context. She also flips this relationship by replicating
every-day objects used for framing or installation, rendered useless as art objects
on display. Her work is carefully hand crafted, putting her practice in dialogue with
contemporary craft as much as Minimalism.

Trained as a printmaker, Anthony Ryan’s most recent work pushes his material
interest in paper a step further by using it as a sculptural material. Ryan collects
massive amounts of cast-off paper strips from industrial printers and weaves them
together, using the test patterns on the paper scraps as formal blueprints. Each is
composed according to its own internal logic.

Aptly using ParkLife as its frame, this exhibition calls attention to the often-blurry
distinction between art and design. Both artists make work that points to various
stages of commerce, using discarded consumer materials to create finished works of
art. Metric points toward the shared interests of Dana Hemenway and Anthony Ryan
around the supremacy of formalist geometry; repurposing discarded consumer
by-products; and the roles of design and craft in art. Metric refers to the precise
measurement shared by each work on view and installation of these works together
in the gallery.

Please send press inquires to info@parklifestore.com.

Park Life
220 Clement St
SF CA 94118
415.386.7275