E6 Gallery / Robert Berman Gallery Presents
“Behold the cartoons in Go Fish: there is no more savage yet brilliant wit than that possessed by Mr. Fish, who will never compromise on his deep artistic insight or the outrageous honesty of his social commentary. In a sellout culture he is that rare witness for unfettered truth.” - Robert Scheer, Editor in Chief, truthdig and author of The Great American Stickup.
ROBERT BERMAN GALLERY is pleased to present the original drawings and unique multiples of Dwayne Booth aka Mr. Fish - political cartoonist and author of GO FISH (how to win contempt and influence people.)
In the appendix of his book, Mr. Fish dissects the journalistic responsibility he faces as a cartoonist to make it make sense. It being his raw emotional output in response to a given stimuli (government, society, et al) manifesting itself via pen on paper without regard to the cleverly pointed punchline that will accompany and ultimately define it. In his inaugural gallery show, he eschews that responsibility; the political cartoons hanging vulnerably on the walls in their original illustrated state, stripped of any captioning and absolute clarity. If the objective of a political cartoonist is to speak clearly than the goal of this exhibition is to express freely. The drawings are a celebration of the technical mastery and unbridled emotional truth of Dwayne Booth – the Clark Kent to Superman’s Mr. Fish.
Mr. Fish has been a freelance writer and cartoonist for eighteen years, publishing under both his real name (Dwayne Booth) and the penname of Mr. Fish with many of the nation’s most reputable and prestigious magazines, journals, and newspapers. In addition to his weekly cartoon for Harper’s and daily contributions to Truthdig, he has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the LA Weekly, the Atlantic, the Huffington Post, The Nation, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, the Advocate, Z Magazine, the Utne Reader, Slate.com, MSNBC.com, and others. He has also worked for National Public Radio. In May 2008 he was presented with a first place award by the Los Angeles Press Club for editorial cartooning. In May 2010 he was awarded the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Editorial Cartooning from the Society of Professional Journalists and most recently won the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Award in May of 2011. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and twin daughters.
Recent Press:
Interview with Mr. Fish on TruthDig.com
LA WEEKLY: Events
ARTWEEK.LA: Go Fish, Mr. Fish
HUFFINGTON POST: Finding Common Ground Through Art
NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS
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For additional press information, interviews and images please contact:
E6 Gallery Director
Ashley Lauren Saks
ashleyseye@gmail.com
Please join us for the closing reception for
Nathan Richard Pehlps Inside-Out & Through with guest DJ Jason Kendig from The Honey Soundsystem
Monday, January 30, 2012, 7-10pm
Show runs through February 4, 2012
E6 Gallery / Robert Berman Gallery Presents
Rob Setrakian
ELEVEN
November 11th - December 31st, 2011
Opening Reception: 11/11/11 from 6-9pm
With Special Musical Performance by Sofi Rox from 7-9pm
OCTOBER 2011, SAN FRANCISCO, CA. — The temporal has an illusive, magical quality in art, relating to everything from the amount of time it takes to make a particular work to the sense of time that work creates in a viewer. Pure gestures born of the relationship between painter and materials, Rob Setrakian’s paintings possess timeless characteristics, yet he’s often invoked the momentary in the titles of his solo exhibitions, such as Chronologies, Current Destinations and last year’s show at Robert Berman/E6 Gallery, Present Tense.
In ELEVEN. Setrakian’s art reaches a new intensity and specificity in terms of time. “Sometimes as you walk down the path you look straight ahead and take in the moment and the future,” he says. “Then you look back and take in the moment and the past, on all levels. That is how it has felt in the studio this last go-round.” Through three collections of eleven (eleven oils on paper, eleven oils on canvas, and eleven monotypes) Setrakian brings his formidable skills as a painter to bear upon darkness and illumination, vitality and mortality. The result adds to a still-relevant tradition of Californian abstract expressionist painting while relating visually to the revived presence of poetry, particularly lyrical poetry, within the Bay Area.
While ELEVEN. marks a day when the calendar lines up a series of numerical ones — signaling beginnings — the show also collects paintings created by Setrakian since the death of significant loved ones, including his mentor Nathan Oliveira, who had a “profound” impact on his development from the point that they first worked together in Italy in 1986. Fittingly, ELEVEN. arrives in the immediate wake of an acclaimed exhibition of Oliveira’s last canvases (at John Berggruen Gallery), demonstrating that his spirit and influence remains alive. In life and on canvas, his fellow painter Setrakian passes through fatal scenes to develop character and a vivid sense of past, present, and future experience.
Vivid experiences are guaranteed at ELEVEN..’s opening reception, a momentous family affair where the unveiling of Setrakian’s art will be matched with an album-release performance by his daughter, the ukulele-based folk and pop singer-songwriter Sofi Rox. Many of the themes present in Setrakian’s paintings take melodic form in Sofi Rox’s music, which harkens back to Woody Guthrie while incorporating the sort of soulful, expressive vocalization normally found in torch songs. ELEVEN. doesn’t avoid what Setrakian calls the “death scenes” of painting, nor those of daily life. But it passes through them to discover opportunity and scenes of energetic activity. Join the artist and his daughter at a dynamic opening event on Friday, November 11th, or meditate upon his command of matter and light during the quieter weeks that follow
