SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Frey Norris Gallery presents “Stories for Bad Children,” a horrifyingly beautiful and intricate 21^st century examination of the notion of “bad” in the mind of a child a la the historical Brothers Grimm. “Stories For Bad Children” is a collection of paintings that constitutes an orgiastic explosion of child-like disorientation and panic. If read in varying sequence, the paintings seem to constitute a traditional linear narrative, while read alone they are confusing, beautiful and grotesque, reflecting what adults might consider fantastical non-sequiturs and toddlers might call (if they could) simply “perception.” On exhibition through October 18, 2007.

Firstly, to clear up the ever present syntactic confusion implicit in the moniker Kate Eric, Kate Eric are indeed two people, Kate Tedman and Eric Siemens, and they operate exclusively as would the tightest knit creative team. They mostly paint together, and occasionally produce sculptural objects, such as massive floor to ceiling segmented legs, or molecule shaped groupings of interconnected “little people” on the floor. This exhibition is their first foray into printmaking.

Stories for Bad Children is not only intended to scare kids straight, but hopefully Kate Eric’s fanciful ruminations will resonate with many people’s adulthood fears of the unknown. Who wouldn’t be terrified of octopi and flesh eating muscular protrusions with flower petal appendages and screaming rooster heads? Kate Eric are happiest when engulfed by paint fumes and toxic oil based varnishes, uninterrupted by nagging obligations and able to spend two or three days working out detailed areas with unbent paperclips, good wine and some rags for smudging layers of color – this show is the result of much such happiness.

Kate Eric’s previous exhibitions have garnered them appearances on several San Francisco television programs, a review in ARTnews and reproductions or reviews in a dozen other local and national periodicals. They have exhibited in London and at fairs in Los Angeles, Miami and New York.

About the Art

Large-scale paintings such as “Failure of the Fathers,” narrate the good-willed but ultimately futile attempts of parents to restrain or simply explain away our terrifying and highly animate world (good to eat? trying to eat me?). To the left of the painting, a small baby rests tranquilly in the digestive tract of an almost endlessly looping green snake. The animal and vegetal combine against a dark background, implying night and dreams, and each aspect of the larger composition stretches and pulls in every direction.

“Playtime for the Various Terrors” displays the same dynamism against a brightly lit background where the human element is conspicuously absent and a shifting Terror is being strangled by the meandering coils of a long red Anaconda. Muscular polychrome pupae burst, extrude ligaments and interconnect while birthing rooster heads that cough forth flower-like petals, much in the manner of Salvador Dali’s 1944 painting “One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate.”

Other canvases such as “The Tongue of Terror” and “The Replacement” focus on rocketing elements of muscular looking intestine or other large-jawed grotesquery. “Future Flesh” actually evokes the viscous surface of a fresh placenta covered in an exquisitely rendered grass-like fur. In many paintings, people or monsters seem to merge or split in the manner of colorful giant amoebas.

The serigraphic posters, measuring approximately five by three feet each (two images, each in an edition of 10) are large scale graphic meditations on “acting out.” If the parent were to perceive their prohibitions through a child’s logic, these posters are what violating such prohibitions would look like; these posters are “NoNos” (as in “no, don’t do that”) being “bad.”

About Frey Norris Gallery

Focusing on important Bay Area artists and internationally recognized artists from Asia, Frey Norris Gallery provides one of San Francisco's most welcoming and dynamic venues for experiencing and purchasing contemporary art. Frey Norris Gallery exhibits paintings, works on paper (including drawings, pastels and watercolors), collage, sculpture, manufactured conceptual work and photographic media.

Frey Norris Gallery - 456 Geary Street - San Francisco, CA 94102 - T: 415.346.7812 - www.freynorris.com