GRSF Magnetic Anomalies – Leslie Winchester, Nick Arciaga, Jesse Balmer, and Jesse Fillingham 11/13/10 – 12/1/10

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Art Show Magnetic Anomalies

Giant Robot SF
618 Shrader Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
gr-sf.com
415-876-4773

Giant Robot is proud to host Magnetic Anomalies, a group art show featuring new work by Leslie Winchester, Nick Arciaga, Jesse Balmer, and Jesse Fillingham.

Leslie Winchester applies her hyper realistic illustration skills to make classic portraiture with touches of H.R. Giger as well as still life images of alien forms with vaguely organic shapes. The Bay Area artist’s work, which is most often in black and white, expertly and skillfully mixes concrete forms with surreal shapes to create odd discomfort, unusual tension, and pure visual stimulation.

Nick Arciaga acts as curator and creator of his own natural history museum. His work documents the intersection of science and magic in otherworldly landscapes, records impossible scenarios in alternate histories, diagrams alien lifecycles, and describes occult rituals using graphite and paint. His art draws inspiration from vintage scientific diagrams, early photography, cryptozoology, and science fiction, then reconstitutes it into an alternate dimension whose inhabitants remain insolent in the face of entropy.

Jesse Balmer channels the acid-soaked detail of underground comix and psychedelic expansiveness of black-light posters to imbue his universe of furrowed-browed, remotely human, and naked bipeds with a vintage sci-fi feel that predates Star Wars. His work ranges from (but is not limited to) crisp black-and-white illustrations to florescent watercolors to art-damaged photography.

In his works, Jesse Fillingham pits man against beast, legend against reality, and brush strokes against paper to create epic-yet-earthly images that both recall and deconstruct classic imagery. His mostly earthy palette gives an equally historic and urgent feel to depictions of creatures and warriors that might be seen on an ancient urn as well as musicians and actors on the covers of modern newsstands.

Giant Robot was born as a Los Angeles-based magazine about Asian, Asian-American, and new hybrid culture in 1994, but has evolved into a full-service pop culture provider with shops and galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as an online equivalent.

An opening reception for many of the artists will take place on 6:30 – 10:00 on Saturday, November 13. For more information about the artists, GRSF, or Giant Robot magazine, please contact: Eric Nakamura Giant Robot Owner/Publisher eric@giantrobot.com (310) 479-7311 ###