Gregory Eltringham: Something For Everyone
March 16 – April 7, 2012
Opens March 16, 7-10pm
S A T E L L I T E 6 6
66 6th Street
SF, CA 94107
For his first solo West coast show, Savannah-based painter Gregory Eltringham presents an array of imagery that serve as tiny windows into a psychological and provocative realm. With a fearless use of rich colors and earnest brushwork, Eltringham juxtaposes all-American paraphernalia with perverse character portraits, all seeming to inhabit the same ominous dream. The figures are spot-lit apparition emerging from Eltringham’s imagination. Young, vulnerable adults restrained, with faces hidden by farmyard animal masks, give Eltringham’s vision a sinister maturity: these are images that only an experienced mind could fetishize. His oeuvre of portraits also includes houses and buildings that share the same aesthetic, each adorned with iconic accessories and composed of simple forms, which thrusts the viewer into a child-like mindset in which inanimate objects take on distinct personalities of their own. The luster of saccharine vintage nostalgia breaks down through the articulation of an invisible menace, which seems to surround his beautifully rendered forms.
The exhibition is comprised of three large-format paintings that share a palette of dark greens and blues. Juxtaposing these is a series of small canvasses in a warm palette of reds and pinks. The artist displays a network of actions and conversations which reveal bits of information, that turn into individual stories, scenarios, and dramas relating back to the viewer’s own experiences. Tenderness is created through the spatial intimacy of these smaller canvases; the portraits are Eltringham’s keepsakes, clustered together in dialogue with each other, in the way one’s memories are eternally interwoven.
Gregory Eltringham (b. Hartford, Connecticut, resides in Savannah, Georgia) graduated from the Art Institute of Boston, received a BA from Northeastern University, and an MFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art & Design. He taught in Florida and Missouri for fifteen years before moving back to Savannah where he is currently professor of painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He travels extensively during the year, conducting research for his studio and teaching practice, and tours in support of his sound-based collaborative project The Tenderloin Trio. His paintings have been exhibited in numerous solo, two-person and group exhibitions throughout the United States. His work has been reviewed in the Kansas City Star and Art Papers, and he was selected for publication in New American Paintings Midwest Competition in 2001. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition at Union College, Arts Atrium Gallery / Visual Arts Department, in Schenectady NY; Horsepower, a two-person show with Brooklyn artist Matt Blackwell at Gallery See, Savannah College of Art and Design, Atlanta, GA; and the traveling group exhibition, Why Go Anywhere Else?, which toured seven venues in Montenegro and Serbia including the Center of Contemporary Art, Podgorica, Montenegro; Cvijeta Zuzoric Pavilion of the National Association of Fine Artists, Belgrade, Serbia; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Novi Sad, Serbia.
Satellite66 is the newest gallery in San Francisco’s Central Market District, seeking to enrich the neighborhood with regular art exhibitions, and dedicated to showcasing emerging contemporary artists with a focus on craftsmanship, concept, and aesthetic. FOR GALLANTRY.
