Sharon Ellis and Veronika Kellndorfer

Sharon Ellis will exhibit a body of recent paintings for her upcoming show, entitled California, at Christopher Grimes Gallery. Her first show with the gallery in five years, Ellis utilizes recurring themes in this new work, such as palm trees, sunsets, and seascapes, to interpret California as the exotic, focusing on the theme of the Golden State as a sensual experience, a place of imagination and pleasure.

Ellis’ work tends to follow in the tradition of Romanticism, showing a deepened appreciation for the beauty of nature and exaltation for the senses. Dave Hickey once wrote that, “By embracing abstraction and representation, composition and pattern, temporality and narrative, death and beauty, Ellis’ paintings hold out the possibility of being recognized as objects that exceed our grasp without demeaning our longing – objects toward which our understanding might aspire, that we may love and respect even as we await the good, solemn eternal reasons for doing so.”

Sharon Ellis lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She was recently included in the group exhibition POPulence, curated by David Pagel, which traveled throughout the United States. The Long Beach Museum of Art organized a ten-year survey of Ellis’ work in 2002 entitled Evocations which traveled to the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and San Jose Museums of Art. Ellis was also included in Flower Power at Le Consortium, Centre d’art contemporain in Lille, France.

The South Gallery will feature Veronika Kellndorfer’s first show with Christopher Grimes Gallery. German artist Kellndorfer reinterprets California architectural themes utilizing photography rendered on glass panels. Inspired by such architects as Charles Eames, Rudolf Schindler, and Frank Lloyd Wright, Kellndorfer appropriates architectural vernacular to render iconic images as relics of the modernist ideal.

Veronika Kellndorfer lives and works in Germany. She has exhibited at various institutions including a solo show at the Berlinische Galerie, most recently at the Hamburg Bahnhof in Berlin, as well as several museum exhibitions in Moscow, the United Kingdom and throughout Europe. She has received entrance into international residencies such as Villa Massimo in Rome and the coveted Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.

Sharon Ellis and Veronika Kellndorfer