Exhibition Calendar

Kin

Frey Norris Gallery is proud to present the debut solo exhibition for San Francisco based artist, Dana Harel.

Over the past year, Harel has patiently constructed ten new graphite drawings, utilizing the precise draftsmanship learned in her architectural training, begun in her native Tel Aviv. These drawings stray from the normally rectilinear visual language of architecture by combining human hands with various animals, inventing a series of fresh and unique hybrids. The positioning of the hands clearly references traditional shadow-puppetry, without the use of light or shadow.

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species; these scientific categories serve as a springboard for an exploration of our kinship with the natural world, our intimacy, apprehensions, and even disgust, when faced with organic processes and examinations of how humanity is both separated from and integrated into nature. Each animal is rendered at the scale of the true creature; hence a huge drawing of two hands in the shape of an elephant’s head, one thumb transformed into an actual tusk, in Elephas Maximus. Other subjects include an elk, a python and a Nile crocodile, the elk consuming foliage, python swallowing a rabbit and the crocodile midway through choking down a whole mallard, head first.

Israeli born and raised, Harel settled in California during her under graduate studies at the California College of the Arts, receiving her degree in architecture in 2000. Her work has been selected and exhibited through various juried competitions at Southern Exposure and Gen Art.

In March, Harel is one of five artists contributing to the exhibition “Herstory,” curated by Rick Deragon at the Napa Valley Museum of Art.

A 20-page catalogue, with an essay by celebrated architect Paul Woolford, is available through the gallery.