Val Britton | Transmissions

March 16, 2016 - San Francisco - For Bay Area artist Val Britton's second solo exhibition with Gallery Wendi Norris, Transmissions, she will present a series of new, large-scale painted collages, a suspended column-shaped paper installation, and her first ever free-standing sculptures. The two-dimensional works are boldly hued and tightly composed, with large, flat swaths of color and intricately cut-out sections. The free standing sculptures are delicately constructed of hand-painted paper in shapes that recall space-age industrial towers of the 20th century.  Using both hand-cutting and a laser machine, she employs a technique that uses careful painting and layering to give unusual depth to two-dimensional components.

Britton's work suggests elements of both the celestial and terrestrial domains within the universe, bridging the terrain between the two. Abstract forms that recall satellite-esque structures and planetary orbs coexist with shapes that resemble outlines of undiscovered lands and unincorporated townships. Her work at once suggests that which is of this world, and that which moves beyond, into the empyrean.

The artist's first book, Val Britton Reverberations, will be published in conjunction with the opening. It will feature an essay by Jens Hoffmann, curator and deputy director of The Jewish Museum, New York, and a conversation with Val by artist and writer Trevor Paglen.