Gearbox Gallery
Contemporary Art
PROXIMITY: 2
Joni Marie Theodorsen and Brandon Larson
May 30 to June 29
Artists’ reception: Saturday, June 1, 1-4pm
First Friday: June 7, 5-8pm
Artists’ Talk: Saturday, June 22, 2pm
Joni Marie Theodorsen, ‘San Francisco Chronicle, Ocean Beach’ oil, graphite & newspaper on panel, 48 inches, 2023
Brandon Larson, ‘Confectionary Compendium’, oil on linen over panel, 18×24 inches, 2024
Proximity: 2 features paintings by Gearbox Gallery artist Joni Marie Theodorsen and guest artist Brandon Larson. Painting in proximity for over 25 years, this exhibition of new work created in their shared Oakland studio highlights a dialogue that speaks of a mutual interest in process-based abstraction, and formal investigations, yet delves into their own respective painting languages.
Having met during their artistic formative years, these artists have relied on each other’s opinions, experience and mutual respect throughout their painting careers. While not strictly artistic collaborators, neither are their practices completely separate.
Both artists are concerned with line, surface and mark making, while taking different approaches.Theodorsen is interested in accumulation and calligraphic line assembled in more historical landscape constructs. Larson’s color-drenched paintings contain a more narrative line, creating personal iconographic compositions.
Proximity: 2 continues a conversation in painting last held in public 10 years ago at the now-defunct Fountain Art Space in Brooklyn, NY.
Artists Brandon Larson & Joni Marie Theodorsen in their Oakland studio
Joni Marie Theodorsen, ‘The Sunset Ends at Ocean Beach’, oil, graphite & newspaper on 2 panels, 60×48 inches, 2024
About Joni Marie Theodorsen
Joni Marie Theodorsen is a process-based abstract painter. Growing up in the Bay Area and central coast, she has been creating horizon dominated paintings and constructions for the last 15 years. Her work is created through accumulation of line, yet rooted in a reductive process. Theodorsen works cyclically, creating newspaper font oil paintings, black watercolors, and 3-D landscape models, each informing the next. Interested in open spaces and atmosphere, Theodorsen considers her work landscapes.
Brandon Larson, ‘Revised Hallucination’, oil on linen 12×18 inches, 2021
About Brandon Larson
Brandon Larson is an Oakland based painter working in oil & watercolor, in modes both abstract and representational. In this body of work, Larson looks to the visual languages of archaic art and ancient forms, both human and natural, to establish his own painting dialect. Larson uses these sources and an examination of the process of improvisation to develop paintings that reveal a pictorial language idiosyncratic and personal, with the paintings approaching a narrative character despite their roots in abstraction.