Featuring works by CONNIE SAMARAS, AMELIA BAUER, and LAURA PLAGEMAN

Opening night: Saturday, June 9, 2012, 5pm to 8pm

Aran Cravey Gallery is pleased to present “Natural Fiction,” a group exhibition of photographs guest curated by Shelley De Soto of De Soto Gallery, featuring Connie Samaras, and introducing Amelia Bauer and Laura Plageman. “Natural Fiction” brings together three artists depicting landscapes that fluctuate between the real world and fiction, where the natural order of things is interrupted by the intrusion of something alien or unexplained.

 In this age of ubiquitous mediascapes when documentary looks like the stuff of science fiction and it is difficult to distinguish news from entertainment, the boundary between fact and fiction can seem flexible and even subjective. The look of the digital world has crossed over into the urban landscape, with our physical (and psychological) space drawing more and more from the virtual realm. Through the filter of technology and with the aesthetic distance inherent in stories rehashed, we arrive at an experience that can be both hyperreal and artificial at the same time. The artists in “Natural Fiction” interpret the schism between the original source and its eventual perception, considering the landscape through the prism of contemporary life. 

Connie Samaras is a Professor in the Department of Studio Art at UC Irvine. She has exhibited and lectured on her work extensively at numerous institutions in the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including most recently the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant (2012) and Creative Capital Visual Arts Grant (2012). A major survey of her work entitled “Tales of Tomorrow” will be exhibited at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena in 2013.  

Amelia Bauer has had recent solo shows in New York and Seattle and been included in numerous group shows across the country since 2003. Work from her series “Extra Terrestrial” is currently on view at Philips De Pury & Company. Her work is in the permanent collections at the San Francisco MoMA and the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. She lives and works in New York City. 

Laura Plageman has held academic appointments at California College of the Arts in Oakland, California and Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut. Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. She lives and works in Oakland, California.

(IMAGE ABOVE: Laura Plageman, Response Print to Trees and Fog, 2011, C-print)