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Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to exhibit new paintings by San Diego based artist Kelsey Brookes. The exhibition, BIGGER, BRIGHTER, BOLDER will be on view from November 20th through January 16th, 2010. This will be the artists first solo exhibition with Quint Contemporary Art. An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 20th from 6 to 8 PM and will include musical performances by The Dabbers and Lion Cut.

San Diego based artist, Kelsey Brookes, presents a fresh body of work that displays a strong and unique interplay with figure, abstract forms and text. Brookes’ new work increases the sense of awe and wonder found in his signature style by demonstrating a “loosening” of the figure – where once the female forms had sharply defined contours and rendered details, they are now symbolic canvases for his seemingly limitless constellation of brightly colored micro scenes and characters. The work presents a captivating aura – from afar the small characters, shapes and patterns read as a more or less abstract swirl of color. Up close, the characters engage in all sorts of activity rewarding the careful viewer with a clear sense of joy.

Energy is a kind of tangible intangible in painting. You know it when you feel it.

It’s as crucial to a minimal work, like a Robert Ryman white painting, as to a maximal one, such as a Ryan McGinness image filled with pictographic images and decorative motifs. The manifestations of energy in art are many — from the way a surface shimmers to the way forms relate to one another to the way paint covers a canvas. Art historian B.H. Friedman’s called his biography of Jackson Pollock “Energy Made Visible” for good reason.

So, when an artist’s work seems to possess this ingredient, attention should be paid. And the paintings in San Diego artist Kelsey Brookes’ new exhibition at Quint Contemporary Art fit the bill. “Bigger, Brighter, Bolder” is its title, which seems about right.

QUINT: Three Decades of Contemporary Art

at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum

August 15 – December 31, 2009

Special preview Saturday, August 15th from 6 – 9PM

340 N. Escondido Blvd.
Escondido, CA 92025
www.artcenter.org

Cocktails, hors d’ oeuvres, entertainment & live music.
$10 per person for non-members, free to Center Members.

RSVP to (760) 839-4120

The California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum is pleased to present Quint: Three Decades of Contemporary Art. The exhibition, based on the program of one of San Diego County’s most influential galleries, will open on August 15th and continue through December 31st, 2009. Works in the exhibition, the majority of which have been borrowed from Southern California museums and private collections, present an extraordinary survey of the range of regional, national, and international artists supported and promoted by Quint Gallery over nearly thirty years.

Since opening his first gallery in La Jolla in 1981, Mark Quint adopted a unique, almost nomadic approach to the business of contemporary art. Rather than establishing itself in a permanent location and then expanding over time, Quint Gallery would more often adapt its spaces and program according to the needs of the artists it was interested in presenting. From formal gallery and raw open spaces in downtown San Diego, to large industrial workspaces for artists near Miramar Naval Air Base, to unexpected (and often elegant) spaces secluded in back alleys in Hillcrest or La Jolla, Quint Gallery has maintained the flexibility to represent artists employing a wide variety of practices, mediums, and formats.

The work of San Diego’s top tier contemporary artists hasn’t been seen in the same place at the same time since 1985, when the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art presented  “A San Diego Exhibition: Forty-Two Emerging Artists.”  

Quint Contemporary Art brings this long drought to an end with HOMING IN: An Exhibition of 50 San Diego Artists. The show presents paintings, photographs, video and sculpture; features abstraction and representation; and offers moods ranging from hot to cool – all in formats less than 24” wide due to the limited space available.  

Some of the exhibition’s artists are in their fifties, sixties and older; and were part of the La Jolla Museum’s survey nearly a quarter century ago.  The exhibition’s younger artists, those in their twenties, thirties, and forties may have no recollection whatsoever of that earlier survey.   

This exhibition is organized by gallery director Ben Strauss-Malcolm and in a move that’s unusual in the competitive world of contemporary art galleries he invited many artists affiliated with other local galleries to participate in order to make the exhibition more reflective of the full gamut of work coming out of studios in the San Diego region.