Silvia Poloto

Ballet (from the Optical Collisions Series), 2012

photomontage & crayon on board with sanded resin surface

20 x 20

SILVIA POLOTO: Silvia Poloto is a brazilian-born San Francisco artist working in multi-media formats that combine photography, painting, print-making, wood boxes, resin and fiberglass applications to create romantic, mysterious,and sometimes surreal imagery. She has exhibited across Europe, and was honored to have a solo exhibition at the Triton Museum of Art in 2012. Other 2012 exhibitions included solo shows at Julie Nester Gallery (Park City) and Butters Gallery (Portland) as well as group shows at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, and at spaces in Boston, Sonoma, and Santa Barbara. 

ANDRZEJ MICHAEL KARWACKI: Andrzej Michael Karwacki is a Czech-born artist living and working in Berkeley. His abstract paintings on panel, many of which are covered with a high-gloss resin, attempt to capture states of being, stillness, and equanimity, while delving into a rich sensory experience. He exhibits both nationally and internationally, with a particularly strong representation at galleries and art fairs in the UK. 

RICHARD KOCI HERNANDEZ: Richard Koci Hernandez has been practicing street photography for decades, favoring low-tech media such as pin-hole cameras, Holgas, and, more recently, the iPhone, to create mysterious images of the urban landscape and people on the move. His black and white work has a distinctly film noir flavor, evoking modernist photography of the 1930s, which often balanced formal compositions with gritty textures and human narratives. Using one of his signature motifs, Koci Hernandez likes to capture people in profile or silhouette, identifying them by the simple form of a hat, umbrella, or heels set in the anonymous cities, corridors, train stations, and airports of our global world. While the black and white images feel real, surreal, and timeless all at once, the color work is more contemporary, glamorous, and cosmopolitan in tone. Koci’s iPhone photography has been exhibited internationally and published in numerous books. He lives in Oakland, but travels the globe in search of powerful images.

MAYA KABAT: Maya Kabat’s abstract oil paintings reference the urban landscape of Northern California, exploring relationships between architectural elements, California light, and the balance of color, line, plane, and space. While her compositions relate closely to Diebenkorn’s, the surfaces are what makes these intensely physical works stand on their own. Kabat applies her paints straight from the tube, mixing the colors directly on the canvas as she builds up the image using drywall tools. Working within a limited amount of time while the paint is still malleable, Kabat achieves a result that represents both empty space and solid forms, and perfectly balances spontaneity with structure. Kabat lives and works in Berkeley and has had recent exhibits at the SFMOMA Café Museo, Claude Lane Gallery (SF), Mercury 20 gallery (Oakland), B. Rogers Gallery (Portland), and the Dairy Center for the Arts (Boulder). 

CAROL LADEWIG: In the last two years, Carol Ladewig has been making large-scale painting installations that render an abstract concept (time and its measurement) visual and literal. In these smaller paintings on canvas, each of which represents a week, she translates a day's personal experiences and mood into a single color, and divides the passage into color and black according to the percentage of the moon that was in shadow on that date, thus creating an eloquent balance between the personal and universal, and between aesthetics and a conceptual practice. Carol has a studio in Oakland, teaches at Diablo Valley College, has exhibited on both coasts, and shows regularly at Kala Art Institute and at other venues in the Bay Area. 

DANIELLA WOOLF: Daniella Woolf is a multi-media artist living and working in Santa Cruz. For this exhibition we have selected delicate three-dimensional work made with wax and paper that has been sewn, cut, written and drawn on. The forms feature pattern and repetition, often taking on references to textile fabrication, while challenging the viewer with passages that are both obvious and occluded. Many of her source materials are repurposed recording and communication media such as library cards, checks, and post cards, that have been recently replaced with digital counterparts. With a nostalgic nod to the past, she preserves these documents in encaustic medium before transforming them into colorful multi-media sculptures. Daniella has exhibited in South Korea and Europe, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Craft and Folk Art Museum (LA), and in dozens of shows across the United States. She is the author of several books on Encaustic art.

VIVI HARDER: Vivi Harder's paintings are abstract in two ways: physically, in that they foreground their material working of the paint itself;  and metaphysically, in that they wish to resonate in the life of the beholder beyond themselves, hence their tentative even delicately extreme balance. The subtle formal arrangements of her work are informed by many years of graphic design experience, and their spacious content by her absorbing of the New Mexico desert where she used to live. Vivi studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and has lived in New York and Paris. She currently lives in Canada where she has exhibited in several galleries.

ALICIA WOODS: Alicia Woods’ tiny baskets are made with hand-spun discarded cassette and reel-to-reel tape that is wrapped around scavenged fiber optic cable using traditional basket-making forms and techniques from Phoenician, Greek, and African cultures. They are decorated with parts taken from discarded office printers, VHS tapes, and circuit boards. They bring the past and present together, although the modern “high tech” materials Woods uses are themselves already obsolete, worthless in a world where the technology of communication advances at lightning speed. Woods has shown at the Olive Hyde Gallery, Pro Arts Gallery, at the Textile Center in Minneapolis, and at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.

SLATE contemporary is proud to launch 2013 with an exhibition introducing six new gallery artists and two guest artists. 

Silvia Poloto

Couple (from the Optical Collisions Series), 2012

photomontage & crayon on board with sanded resin surface

20 x 20

Silvia Poloto

Sprout, Button, and Shoot (from the Bud Series), 2013

print, paint, collage and resin on board

3 pieces, 48 x 5 each,
48 x 18 overall

Silvia Poloto

Flowers Blossoming Grid, 2013

prints on rice paper in fiberglass in resin

9 pieces, 9 x 9 each

Richard Koci Hernandez

Journeys, 2011

photograph printed on aluminum

30 x 30

Richard Koci Hernandez

Balance, 2012

chromogenic print

15 x 15 matted and framed to 28.5 x 25

Richard Koci Hernandez

Lost and Found, 2011

photograph printed on aluminum

30 x 30

Richard Koci Hernandez

Haste, 2012

chromogenic print

15 x 15 matted & framed to 28.5 x 25

Carol Ladewig

Three Weeks and Four Weeks, 2012

Acrylic on canvas, mounted on plex base

36 x 12 and 48 x 12

Maya Kabat

Urban Lab No. 6, 2012

oil on canvas

36 x 48

Maya Kabat

Urban Lab No. 7, 2012

oil on canvas

30 x 24

Maya Kabat

Invisible Cities, 2009

oil on canvas

24 x 24

Maya Kabat

Invisible Cities #2, 2007

oil on canvas

24 x 24

Daniella Woolf

Wish You Were Here, 2012

encaustic, collaged, and sewn postcard strips

70 x 60 set of twenty strips

Andrzej Michael Karwacki

EQ2012-12, 2012

acrylic and resin on birch panel

48 x 48

Andrzej Michael Karwacki

Still Water 2012-12-3, 2012

acrylic, resin, and metallic paint on birch panel

30 x 60 x 2.5

Andrzej Michael Karwacki

EQ488-102-106, 2012

acrylic and resin on birch panel

48 x 4 each

Daniella Woolf

Nomad - Library Envy 2011

Encaustic sewn library cards

96 x 18 strips or 96 x 72 entire set

Daniella Woolf

Nomad - Biz - Ochre, 2012

Encaustic, sewn & collaged business cards

various sizes

Vivi Harder

Attached to Nothing, 2011

acrylic and gel medium on canvas

15 x 15

Vivi Harder

Between You and Me, 2011

acrylic and gel medium on canvas

15 x 15

Alicia Woods

L to R: Four, Three, and Catch a Red Eye (from the Waste Baskets Series), 2011

cassette tape, signal wire, capacitors, elements from circuit board, rollers from VCR cases, bead, and printer parts made into coiled basketry

various sizes

Daniella Woolf

Untitled, 2013

Encaustic, sewn and collaged currency

10 x 6

Daniella Woolf

Checkmate, 2012

encaustic, sewn & collaged cancelled checks

14.25 x 10.5 boxed

OTHER WORKS IN THE SHOW

Silvia Poloto

Rose, 2012

print on rice paper embedded in fiberglass and resin

36 x 36

Silvia Poloto

Thread, 2012

print on rice paper embedded in fiberglass and resin

36 x 36

Andrzej Michael Karwacki

Still Water Series 04-04, 2012

acrylic and resin on birch panel

24 x 24

Andrzej Michael Karwacki

EQ 1, 2, 3, 2012

acrylic and resin on birch panel

24 x 6 each, 24 x 24 overall

Andrzej Michael Karwacki

Still Water 805, 802, 704, 903, 2012

acrylic and resin on birch panel

12 x 12 each