Lim Gallery Proudly Presents Dynamic Color Exhibition, a New, All-Woman Group Show Focusing on Emerging FLOW Movement of Bay Area Artists

On view through June 30th, 2013, the show is titled Dynamic Color and will feature the work of three San Francisco-based women artists including April Hankins and Sandra McPherson. Curated by independent artist Patter Hellstrom with Lim Gallery Director Chris Lim, the exhibition features approximately 15 major paintings and represents the most comprehensive presentation to date of work by these remarkable FLOW artists.

FLOW is a term coined in 2003 by the American art historian Peter Frank, when he referred to a handful of Californian artists indicating a new direction in art. “With the reemergence of abstract painting,” writes Peter Frank, “artists are again exploiting the tendency of (thinned) paint to seep and to gush, to pool and to surge. We see a growing number of artists going with the flow, as it were.” Frank continues, “Until now, Southern California has not been a hotbed of gestural abstraction like this. But if we regard flow painting as a kind of process art, as an examination of what materials and substances do when placed in the context of visual experimentation, such painting falls right in with the region’s artistic tradition of investigating what stuff does.”

The lead artist is Patter Hellstrom, whose work’s calligraphic brushstrokes and daring use of color will have a natural dialogue with the chance element of the flow painters. With a recent solo show at the San Francisco Zen Center, SOMA-based Patter Hellstrom is recognized for her powerful bright colors frozen in motion and abstraction. April Hankins will also be featured in the Dynamic Color show. She describes her work as being “loosely improvisational… strong in color, gesture and brush mark, characterized by action and response.” She often says that she “will work on a painting until information no longer comes, the movement and the painting complete.”

Finally, the powerful work of San Francisco painter Sandra McPherson will also be showcased. Her Trace paintings were inspired by her daily urban walks where she found marks unintentionally made by the human hand: skateboard, spills, tire marks. The Trace paintings are a glance at a life, or an urban wall, in any given moment, a snapshot of that narrative captured in time – as are the marks left inadvertently in the urban landscape. According to McPherson, “What’s left is Trace: a narrative of marks, lives, left behind.”

“We are pleased to host this first group exhibition informed by the FLOW movement,” notes Gallery Director Chris Lim. “The Lim Gallery is an ideal location for this scholarly assessment, as we are located at the intersection of design and technology.”