Continuing through May 28, 2014
“Atmospheres” takes us on visual journeys through Justin Margitich’s distorted terrains of abstracted landscapes; these are countered by patterned works that are at once organic and geometric done by Christopher Iseri. Both Northern California artists work largely in dry mediums — Margitich creates large-scale works in graphite on paper; Iseri works in mixed-media collage. The overall impact of the show is a sense of being immersed in abstracted dreamscapes. The intricate detail found in large-scale drawings like "Landscape Cache II" and “Landscape Cache III" can’t help but evoke the twisted perspectives of MC Escher, but Margitich is not an artist to relegate to a familiar niche. The sheer size of works like "Disassembling Landscape I" and “Disassembling Landscape II" takes the viewer headlong into Romantic visions of imaginary vistas viewed from impossible perspectives, as if in flight overlooking a chaotic scene. These works capture the essence of the sublime. In seeming opposition to the vastness of these drawings, Iseri's layered swirling geometric patterns lead the eye across a franticly active surface, which intermittent bits of an obscured background bleed through. Hints of urban decay shrouded in mists are blocked, barricaded or perhaps censored by the patterns of endlessly repeated rectangles, leaving the viewer to sort out the details.
