Artist: Clare Rojas
Exhibition title: Here We Go
Venue: Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, US
Date: May 4 – 22, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Jessica Silverman is delighted to present “Here We Go,” a solo show by Clare Rojas, the California artist best known for her magic realist and otherworldly abstract paintings.
“Here We Go” is the gallery’s first in-real-life exhibition in over a year; it marks the soft opening of an almost completely renovated, new gallery space at 621 Grant Avenue (between Sacramento and California Street).
Here We Go also happens to be the title of the painting above, an emblematic manifesto that depicts the dance of four corvids, highly intelligent birds capable of using tools and recognizing human faces. The acrylic-on-panel work bears witness to Rojas’s superstitious Peruvian heritage, her interest in animal neuroscience, and her deep concern for the environment. This complex choreography of black birds around a yawning red void and blue moon suggests coupling and copulation, sickness and health, snares and freedom, death and re-birth.
Below are two recently completed, small canvases that reveal Rojas as a dazzling colorist, who is not afraid of narrative, even in the ancient classical form of a journey. My Dream Home winks warmly at the California landscapes of Wayne Thiebaud and David Hockney, while Rainbow Path reflects the fact that the yellow brick road of San Francisco is queerly multi-color.
“Here We Go,” the show, is a virtuoso display of Rojas’s formal and spiritual evolution in oil on linen and acrylic on panel. Her distinct style of high-folk, figurative-abstract art enlivens art history and elevates popular culture.
Clare Rojas (b. 1976, Columbus, OH) has a BFA in printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in painting from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been awarded grants and residencies from Artadia, Eureka Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. She has enjoyed solo exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; IKON Gallery, Birmingham, England; Museum Het Domein, Netherlands; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA; Savannah College of Art and Design, GA; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; Knoxville Museum of Art, TN; Belkin Satellite, Vancouver, BC; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA. Her work is in the permanent collections of MoMA New York, NY; SFMOMA, CA; Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens, Greece; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain; Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; and the Smart Museum, University of Chicago, IL. Rojas lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2021, exhibition view, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco
Clare Rojas, My Dream Home, 2021, Oil on linen, 16 x 15 inches / 40.6 x 38.1 cm
Clare Rojas, Rainbow Path, 2021, Oil on linen, 12 x 9 inches / 30.5 x 22.9 cm
Clare Rojas, Rainbow Path, 2021, Oil on linen, 12 x 9 inches / 30.5 x 22.9 cm
Clare Rojas, Here We Go, 2020, Acrylic on panel, 56 x 64 inches / 142.2 x 162.6 cm
Clare Rojas, Boulders In My Way, 2020, Oil on linen, 51 1/2 x 41 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches / 130.8 x 105.4 x 6.3 cm
Clare Rojas, Waiting Room, 2020, Oil on linen, 56 x 70 inches / 142.2 x 177.8 cm
Clare Rojas, Black Bird, White Owl, 2020, Acrylic on panel, 58 x 66 x 2 1/2 inches / 147.3 x 167.6 x 6.3 cm
Clare Rojas, My Pet Black Widow, 2020, Oil on panel, 30 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches / 77.5 x 62.2 cm
Clare Rojas, Goddess of the Void, 2020, Oil on linen, 50 x 40 x 1 1/2 inches / 127 x 101.6 x 3.8 cm
Clare Rojas, Harnessing the Energy Light, 2020, Oil on linen, 13 1/4 x 10 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches / 33.7 x 26 x 3.8 cm
Clare Rojas, Waiting, 2020, Acrylic on panel, 48 x 48 inches / 121.9 x 121.9 cm
Clare Rojas, Amulet of the Universe, 2020, Oil on linen, 24 x 30 x 1 1/2 inches / 61 x 76.2 x 3.8 cm
Clare Rojas, Heavy With Rain, 2020, Oil on linen, 41 1/2 x 51 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches / 105.4 x 130.8 x 6.3 cm
Clare Rojas, Ominous Nature of Fog, 2020, Oil on linen, 40 x 50 inches / 101.6 x 127 cm
Clare Rojas, Exhausted, 2020, Oil on linen, 44 3/4 x 61 3/4 x 2 1/2 inches / 113.7 x 156.8 x 6.3 cm
