Aqua Winwood - Miami - December 4-9

The Randall Scott Gallery will be exhibiting at the Miami art fair, as part of ART BASEL.



December 4th- 9th
Aqua Wynwood
Booth # 29
42 NE 25th Street, Miami Wynwood District



Come join the madness, we will be showing the work of:

Julia Fullerton-Batten
Cara Ober
Nick Walker
Etsuko Ichikawa
Amy Stein
Ryoko Suzuki
Sarah Wilmer
Alejandra Laviada

For more info, visit aquaart.com or www.randallscottgallery.com



This year Aqua Art Miami will take place in two locations simultaneously, including an exciting new event located in a warehouse in the Wynwood gallery district, just a few blocks from the Rubell Collection, and close to other important venues such as the Margulies Collection and the MOCA Goldman warehouse, and a number of other satellite fairs including NADA, Pulse, Scope Miami, Art Miami, Photo Miami, and The Photography Show.

Aqua Wynwood will feature approximately 45 galleries, including many who made their debut with us at the Aqua Hotel in the past. Based on the west coast, fair organizers have made it their mission to promote innovative programming in their region as well as the greater USA, with a particular interest in supporting young dealers and galleries with strong emerging artist programs. Approximately a third of the galleries are from Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with the remainder being from a wide range of other cities in the US and abroad.


a red dot! thanks, randall & cheri!

for more details and pics, go to the randall scott gallery blog. fun stuff. www.randallscottgallery.com.

Current Exhibitions - November/December 2007

"Metaphors of Nature"
Artizen Fine Arts
1215 Dragon Street / Dallas, TX 75207
November 2 - 30, 2007
www.artizenfinearts.com





"Group Hug"
Lump gallery/projects
505 South Blount St. Raleigh, NC 27601
919.821.9999
lumps1@bellsouth.net
December 1 - 31, 2007
www.lumpgallery.com



"Celebrating 40 Years/ Showcasing 40 Artists"
Maryland State Arts Council James Backus Gallery
September 28 - December 19
Curated by Oletha DeVane
www.msac.org

"Pyramid and Prints" on the Potomac
Sponsored by Pyramid Atlantic
Old Potomac Boathouse, Georgetown
November 20, 2007
A Pyramid Atlantic Reception featuring Mary Bartow, Director of Prints and Drawings, Sotheby’s New York, speaking about print collecting Tuesday, November 20, 2007 6:30-8:00 pm 6:30-7:00 pm. Wine and hors d’oeuvres 7:00-7:30 pm. Talk by Mary Bartow 7:30-8:00 pm. Discussion and allocation of prints Tickets: $100 Our gift to you, an original print to add to your collection from one of the artists listed. For tickets*, please call 301.608.9101
www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org

Cursed Blessings Review in Baltimore CP 9.5.07

Dream Catchers: Cara Ober And Tung Lo's Mixed-Media Works Cull Imagery From Waking Life

Baltimore City Paper / September 5, 2007

Cursed Blessings at Gallery Imperato through Sept. 22
By Deborah McLeod


'All the Same' by Cara Ober

Gallery Imperato's present exhibition Cursed Blessings, is a two-dreamer show. Chinese-born, Paris-based Tung Lo and Baltimorean (and erstwhile City Paper contributor) Cara Ober combine visions to produce a floating world of desire, entanglement, and ambiguity in this fetchingly pastel, ink-marked assemblage of works.

Both artists incorporate printmaking techniques in their mixed-media paintings on stretched canvas, and that alone gives their installation, curated by Imperato director Cheri Landry, an effective measure of theatrical cohesion and affinity. The works possess a delicacy in their facades but are made substantial in their like mounting on thick stretcher forms. Because both artists tend to build up camouflage layers of atmosphere beneath their surface figurations, the box constructions almost feel like storage for the works' early incarnations of region and mood.

Printmaking always carries an aura of mystery, a lingering condition of chance, but also an outside authority that remains within the work after it leaves the studio. Ober and Lo additionally share this contingent quality to get where they wish to go, and where they would want us to accompany them.

Although Tung Lo is Chinese, there is something of a traditional Japanese ukiyo-e sensibility to his portraiture style. It arrives in the confusing intermingling of portrait and mask, the mystery of identity and oblique intention captive in those introverted white faces or their more calligraphic outlines. The iconic countenances that ghost across Lo's elaborate surfaces are central to his work. He might poeticize a painting's atmosphere with dawn mists that move in from an ancient Chinese landscape, but he focuses his primacy on the innocent female face. In someone else's hands these paintings might not be so successful for that. Why only female, too? It's a decision that could dangerously soothe the entire oeuvre. But the artist is just able to surpass sentimentality by a slender but taut line that owes its strength to the humanity, uncertainty, and even occasional omniscience that he manages to invest with the most subliminal nuance in the faces. Not quite as worry-free as a Noh mask, they express evidence of ripening personal experience and disquiet.


Tung Lo

Experience is also an abstract manifestation in the collaged patterns, the tisserae of paper and textile that Lo enfolds around the faces like a silken headpiece or multifaceted aura--or memories--that he alludes to in several of their titles, adding psychological mystique to his subjects. Several of Lo's faces may recall turn-of-last-century French artist Marie Laurencin's fashion of depicting the female in her black-eyed, pursed-lip reverie. Perhaps that is a specter of Lo's more synchronal French inspirations that make their way into the expatriate's technique. Of course, Laurencin's Occidentalized style originated out of Oriental influences.

Cara Ober's nearly square works reverberate with Lo's verticals perfectly. She fills in what is absent in the margins of his and leaves open the nucleic center that compels him. Ober's semiotic scenes are fractured and strewn with inconsistent memorabilia from a variety of disparate cultural periods perhaps beginning with Victoriana and ending maybe the day before yesterday.

Ober has a writer's addiction to words and phrases and appropriates one or two from the dictionary or encyclopedia for each work. They are fulfilled by their definitions, pronunciation, or an illustration. Because one must approach the image somewhere, these phrases might tempt as the starting point for her cryptic pictographic narrative. On the one hand, the net result of her work seems random and jumbled--this and that, here and there like a junk-mail envelope near the phone. But arrangement is really her genius, and use or nonuse of space a discriminating and carefully managed concern. Each composition is suspended in a perfect balance through some visual or psychological mechanism or other, whether it be violence and sweetness, geometry and botany, negative/silhouetted form with line drawing, or the factual rivaling impulse or obsession.


Cara Ober 'Lies are Wishes in Disguise'

The works are also highly active. Ober effectively does not establish a starting or vanishing point or a denouement, but rather gives primacy to every element, even the ones that are almost obliterated--so pale and veiled that you must strain to perceive them. The compositions really compel you to do this, too, in order to gather every clue because, unlike Lo's work where vagueness leaves mental space for the ego to relax and luxuriate, Ober's juxtapositions and literary paraphernalia suggest a possible revelatory outcome. It seems more important to "get" the message in these works, like there is more riding on it.

There is one more quality that the two artists of Cursed Blessings share. It is a brand of acquiescent vulnerability in their conclusions regarding time. Tung Lo may offer an unwrinkled face, but in it there is an understated recognition of the ultimate tragedy of time. Cara Ober may include a menacing pistol or mention of underlying evil, but her work conveys an equivalent sense of sweet, tentative existence and the charms we use to hold it together. That must be where the cursed blessings hide.

Cursed Blessings by Bret McCabe.

Baltimore City Paper. August 22, 2007.



Painters Tung Lo and occasional City Paper contributor Cara Ober make for a curious pairing at Gallery Imperato, even though both use spatial collage in their compositions. The China-born, Paris-based Lo's mixed-media paintings turn to collage in the service of portraiture, as a way of seeing and interpreting the world. Baltimore-based Ober blends ideas, symbols, text, and imagery in her intimate paintings in an exploratory manner, as a way of seeking to navigate the world. Both hang recent work in Gallery Imperato for their two-person show, opening tonight.

from: Weekly Highlights - Friday August 24
Cursed Blessings. Through Sept 22, Gallery Imperato, www.galleryimperato.com

Bethesda Painting Awards reviewed by the DCist

Bethesda Painting Awards @ Fraser Gallery
Written by DCist contributor Lynne Venart.
note: this is just a section from the June 26, 2007 review. read the whole thing on http://dcist.com.

"In contrast, the other work in the show is vastly different from Klos’ traditional style. Two standout artists, Cara Ober, who won 2nd place and received a $2000 prize, and finalist Heidi Fowler, incorporate mixed media in their work.

Ober often works as a printmaker, with one approximately 4’ x 4’ canvas work and four smaller paper pieces in the show. Though Ober’s large painting, Evangelist, incorporates fewer elements than her other work, its large scale distorts the delicateness found in her smaller framed prints, drawing attention to her contrasting depictions of birds in the piece, as well as the script-like painted text. The large painted bird image on the right side is relatively detailed, especially in comparison to the m-shaped childlike representations on the left. The inclusion of these two elements still reference the contrast between innocence and adulthood, but the inner dialog is not as intriguing as those created by the myriad elements portrayed in her smaller work."

comment: i need to say here that i am not a printmaker whatsoever, so this isn't the most accurate review. -co

detail from 'she took the reason'

Current and Upcoming Exhibits

'i will pay for this later on.' mixed media on canvas. 2007.

Cara Ober: Project Room
Opening Reception: May 26
May 24 - June 20
Randall Scott Gallery
Washington, DC
www.randallscottgallery.com

Bethesda Painting Awards Finalist Show
Fraser Gallery, Bethesda, MD
June 7 - July 8
www.frasergallery.com


detail from 'passing notes.' 2005.

Anonymous III
Flashpoint Gallery
Opening Reception: June 7
www.flashpointdc.org

Cursed Blessing: Cara Ober and Tung Lo
Gallery Imperato
Opening Reception: Friday, August 24
August 15 - September 30
www.galleryimperato.com

blue bird, 2006

Second Place in Bethesda Painting Awards - Washington Post Review

In Painting Awards, Unexpected Outcomes
By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 15, 2007; Page WE28

Earlier this month, the three cash-prize winners of the 2007 Bethesda Painting Awards, a juried art competition established in 2005 by businesswoman and arts patron Carol Trawick, were announced at the Fraser Gallery, where their work is on display alongside that of four runners-up. A couple of surprises are in store.

As determined by jurors Brandon Fortune, associate curator of painting and drawing at the National Portrait Gallery, and artists W.C. Richardson and Tanja Softic, the top honor went to Matthew Klos, a not widely known representational painter who took home the $10,000 best-in-show award. The $2,000 second prize went to Cara Ober, with Maggie Michael, a "hot" (i.e., avidly collected) abstractionist with work already in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, coming in a somewhat startling third ($1,000).



Ober and Michael are, in a way, kindred spirits, each using a hodgepodge of mark-making to evoke worlds. The more purely expressionistic of the two, Michael evokes a pretty solid physical universe, if only one made of paint, while Ober's fragmentary collages of random thoughts -- the phrase "maybe you need your pain to accomplish what you do" floats by in "Evangelist" -- suggest states of consciousness more than place.

Michael's third-place finish, along with the awarding of the first prize to Klos (a merely serviceable academic painter of quasi-photo-realist utility sinks and the like) were not the only shockers, by my accounting. That the most arresting and original work in the show -- three sumi-ink drawings on Japanese paper by Richmond artist Fiona Ross -- went un-honored seems an egregious oversight. According to gallery director Catriona Fraser, who serves as the non-voting chairwoman of the awards, that Ross's works are on paper rather than traditional canvas, linen or wood panel (along with her use of ink instead of acrylic or oils) caused the jury to question whether they were, properly speaking, paintings.

I understand that logic, but it seems a shame that Ross's work would be subjected to a hurdle they didn't face to begin with, given that they made it to the finalist stage without penalty flags thrown at their pedigree. To be sure, they look more like drawings than paintings, but having made it to the last round, Ross's pictures deserved to be judged on their merits, not their media.

As a consolation of sorts, Fraser plans to include Ross's work in group show tentatively titled "Committed" in honor of the obsessive-compulsiveness of its meticulous facture. Consisting of hundreds of tiny circles, the artist's black-and-white images can resemble the lining of a uterine wall ("Apotropaia #2") or the cosmos ("Float").

It is also a pleasure to see work included by finalists Phyllis Plattner and Heidi Folwer. Plattner draws upon the visual idioms of two unrelated cultures: Chiapas, Mexico, in the gun-toting dolls fashioned after Zapatista rebels that serve as models for the painter's strange tableaux, and Tuscany, Italy, in the Renaissance-style, gold-leaf-on-panel "altarpiece" that serves as their backdrop. It's work that comments not just on the tradition of painting but on history and storytelling itself.

Fowler's landscapes also exist at the intersection of two worlds: the natural and the man-made. Yet these pictures of the modern word crackle with an unseen energy. Could it be the electricity coursing through the high-tension wires of "No. 051.82.006"? Could it be, as the artist writes, some aspect of the divine? Or could it be the estrangement with which she seems to regard the ordinary?

I was most puzzled, finally, by the inclusion of David Krueger. Like Klos, the artist has an MFA from the University of Maryland (where, coincidentally, juror Richardson teaches), but unlike his fellow alum, Krueger is a surrealist, not a realist. His one painting here, "Alice in Icon Park," features a densely antlered jackalope, a trailer and a naked woman.

His theory of art? That "a good painting has to be interesting for a long time." How disappointing, then, if not entirely unexpected -- especially for something that seems to be trying so hard to get people to look at it -- that the painting is one colossal bore.

BETHESDA PAINTING AWARDS Through July 7. Fraser Gallery, 7700 Wisconsin Ave., Suite E, Bethesda (Metro: Bethesda). 301-718-9651. http://www.thefrasergallery.com. Open Tuesday-Saturday from 11:30 to 6. Free.


no. 2!!!!!!!

Fresh Art at The Karin Sanders Gallery

from: The Independent Newspaper, June 6, 2007
www.indyeastend.com
"In the Gallery" by Joan Baum



May 26 – June 26, 2007: “Fresh Art” at Karin Sanders Fine Art, 126 Main Street, Sag Harbor, NY.

Though only in her second season, Karin Sanders is moving her gallery to a more "progressive and hip" edge, show-casing more emerging and established artists with a "fresh, innovative vision who are working in media that are inventive and unique." By edge, she means "cutting edge, NYC style," SoHo or Chelsea, with no distinction made between photos and painting - "it's all about art."


works by Orly Cogan

(article truncated)

Too unsettling? Try Cara Ober, whose mixed media canvases, like Ms. Cogan's, have serious fun with stereotypes about women and women's work. Describing her pieces as 'narratives,' Ms. Ober uses lettering, paste ons, paint, and ink to create pseudo-primitive views that move from symbols of innocence to experience.


summertime skin

In 'I'd Rather See You in Summertime Skin', a dictionary definition of 'pretty' is painted near a stick-figure honeymoon couple. The eye then travels down the canvas, past a blue bird (of happiness?) and a colorful cliche family beach scene, where black cursive writing scrawls out the picture title. Two smaller works, from Ms. Ober's 'Meshuggeneh Series,' joyfully continue the gentle satire.


untitled from the meshuggeneh series

Fresh Art includes works by Orly Cogan, Richard Alvarez, Jill Corson, Cara Ober, Diane Rollins Feissel and Michael Souter.

Eye to Eye in May Urbanite Issue

Cara Ober
Coupled Up in Bedroom Skin
2006
40 x 40 inches
Mixed media on canvas


So much of what art is, lies in the process of creation, yet we seldom have the opportunity to enter an artist’s mind to get a sense of how a work of art actually develops. I have always found the work that best expresses its process to be the most interesting. Perhaps it is that I can feel the spirit of the artist when I have a sense of her struggle to find that final form that, in a sense, represents the artist’s development.

Cara Ober is a young Baltimore artist who is garnering a great deal of interest both within and beyond this city. We recently had an exchange about her work, and I found her to be especially forthcoming.

Of the painting shown here, Ober says, “This image is a painting I sort of hate but love too much to get rid of. I have been fascinated with shadows and darkness, and the idea that for everything light and good, there is a balance. So I wondered what would happen if I made a really dark, almost black painting ... Paintings need to have a bit of agony in them to be really interesting, a struggle where you push yourself somewhere new and unknown, where you really have no idea what to do next, or where you have to let go of the elements you love best in order for the whole to work.”

—Alex Castro

I Believe opens May 5 at the Patterson

This is a show of 14 painters... Reception is 4-6 pm.

ArtDC

I will have two large drawings on display at the DC Art Fair with the Randall Scott Gallery. Booth 704.

"Randall Scott Gallery also showed well, especially the burned glass abstractions of Etsuko Ichikawa, which are reminiscent of the gunpowder pieces of Cai Guo-Qiang, but Ichikawa is developing her own method involving the use of molten glass that makes Cai's seem like childwork in comparison. Also notable were the imaginary teen worlds of photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten, and the gorgeous mixed media pieces by Cara Ober, which were my wife's favorites in the entire event."

- from Mid Atlantic Art News: F. Lennox Campello's art news, information, gallery openings, commentary, criticism, happenings, opportunities, and everything associated with helping to spread the word about the visual arts scene in and all around the Mid Atlantic region from Philadelphia to the great metropolitan capital of the United States of America.

i love...

wall photo from Baltimore

The Living Room at Randall Scott Gallery

The Living Room: A Marriage of Contemporary Art and Furniture
April 11th—May 19th
Opening Reception Saturday April 14, 6-9


Ruby Osorio

Joe Biel
Julia Fullerton-Batten
Charles LaBelle
Erika Larsen
Cara Ober
Manuel Ocampo
Ruby Osorio
Nick Walker

furniture provided by Contemporaria


Cara Ober

Randall Scott Gallery
1326 14th Street NW Washington,D.C. 20005
202-332-0806 (tel)
www.randallscottgallery.com

Curatorial Statement by Randall Scott:
Somewhere, long ago some art dealer leased a warehouse, a storefront, or an office and proceeded to remove everything inside it. They stripped it bare, exposed the concrete foundation, polished it and when it was ready, painted the walls white. The design echoed and a standard was developed. From galleries to museums, art centers and the corporate station this is how we have become accustomed to looking at art: object, separated from distraction in a clean room.

During construction last October, as I was stripping my gallery space bare, exposing the plywood foundation and eventually painting my walls a pure shade of white, I was thinking of this. Behind the handles of an industrial belt sander, the dust of 100 years of building history lingering in the air, I thought of the space's past. Not that it was once an office, or a Chinese laundry, or a brothel (which I was told it had been), but that it was originally someone's home.


Julia Fullerton-Batten

It was then I decided to do "The Living Room Show." I wanted to show the relationship of visual art and the living space; after all, the living space is generally the desired destination for the artwork a gallery exhibits. It would seem fitting, if just for one show, to return the building to its original function, a place where someone once lived, surrounded by what may have been, his or her art collection.

I had a choice to make, do I design the living room the way people actually live, or do I deck the place out as my dream space. The thought of having well lived in, couch potato compressed sofas and coffee cup stained coffee tables stocked with four separate TV remotes appealed to my rebellious self. The thought of kids toys strewn about, and a gallery cat sleeping wherever it wanted was very inviting. But, the fluidity of an Italian/European design just was too much to get out of my head. I am, in fact in love with modern furniture design, a process involving the concept of creating function and aesthetic, in context with both the history of Modernism and a vision of the future. Modern furniture does require a clean design. But, the end result would be the same, Object, surrounded by objects, working in harmony.


Manuel Ocampo

Since I have never fully recovered from my Ikea phase (which is ironic since I am in love with modern, non-particle board furniture), I contacted Deborah Kalkstein, owner of Contemporaria Georgetown. Deborah is a design goddess. Her sensibility and eye for the finest of furniture and her innovative interior designs I knew would be perfect. She will be designing the space and choosing the furniture from such designers as, Cappelini, MDA, and Minotti to name a few. Furniture both functional and works of art in their own right.

In choosing the artwork to integrate with the furniture design, I wanted artists who both technically work their surfaces, be it paint, graphite or photograph and create dialogue. I did not want work that was about formalistic attraction (that is, safe-pretty), I was looking for a collection of artists that understood formalism, grabbed it by the center of the tube and squeezed till understanding gave way to necessity of telling a story without necessarily "Telling" the story. Their work is not about how well they paint (and they can paint), or draw, or photograph, it is about how they understand and how they relay that understanding. Thus, the work can be entered on a number of levels, emotionally, intellectually and formalistically and can be lived with because it teaches, reveals and entices on a constant basis.

CV / Resume - Cara Ober

Cara Ober
3113 N. Calvert Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
443.622.3542
Website: www.caraober.com
Email: oldbra@yahoo.com


EDUCATION
2005 M.F.A. in Painting. Maryland Institute College of Art.
1998 M.S. in Art Education. Western Maryland College.
1996 B.A. in Fine Art. Phi Beta Kappa. American University.

AWARDS
2007 Second Place. Bethesda Painting Awards. Fraser Gallery. Bethesda, MD.
2006 Individual Artist Grant Recipient for Painting. Maryland State Arts Council.
2006 Best in Show Award. Stretched Tight Juried Painting Exhibit. Target Gallery. Alexandria, VA.
2006 Semi-Finalist. Bethesda Painting Awards. Fraser Gallery. Bethesda, MD.
2005-2002 Surdna Fellowship Recipient. MICA Tuition Scholarship.
2004 Juror’s Choice Award. Circle Gallery. Fall Juried Show. Baltimore, MD.
1996 Ellen Van Swinderen Award for the Outstanding Senior Art Major. American University.

CURATORIAL
2007 The Jolly Cowboy. DC Arts Center. Warhol Grant Curatorial Initiative. Washington, DC. March - April.
2006 Arbitrary Specifics. Sub-Basement Studios. Baltimore, MD. June – July .
2006 Liquid / Solid: New Contemporary Works by Abstract Painters. Rice Gallery. McDaniel College. Westminster, MD. May.
2006 From Sea to Shining Sea. District of Columbia Arts Center. Visual Arts Initiative Curatorial Program. March – April.
2005 Prodigal Summer. G-Spot Audio-Visual Playground. Group show of MICA MFA 2005 Graduates. July 1 – 30.
2004 Inward Gazes: Creating Pieces of the Identity Puzzle. Rosenberg Gallery. Goucher College. Baltimore, MD. November.

SOLO & TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2008 Poempaintings. The Randall Scott Gallery. Washington, DC. February. (upcoming)
2007 Cursed Blessing. Gallery Imperato. Baltimore, MD. August – September 22.
2007 Prayers and Joking: New Works by Cara Ober. Flashpoint Gallery. Washington, DC. January – February.
2006 Moving Sideways. Moxy Studios. New Orleans, LA. December 1 – 30.
2006 An Accumulation of Little Things. Lump Gallery. Raleigh, NC. June 1 – 30.
2005 Passing Notes: A Visual Collaboration by Cara Ober & Julie Benoit. Spare Room. Baltimore. October 15.
2005 To Live Outside the Law… MFA Thesis Exhibition. Meyerhoff Gallery. Maryland Institute College of Art. June 28 – July 8.
2004 Secret Signs: New Paintings and Collaborative Works by Cara Ober and Julie Benoit. G-Spot Audio Visual Playground. Baltimore, MD. February - March.

Juried Exhibitions
2006 Test Patterns. Artscape Public Art Exhibition. Bunting Gallery, MICA.. July 1 – 30.
2006 Stretched Tight. Target Gallery. Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA. February 24 – March 26. Juror: Jack Rasmussen.
2005 MFA Graduate Exhibition. Arlington Arts Center. Arlington, VA. July 19 – August 27.
2005 Systematic. Delaware Center for Contemporary Art. Wilmington, DE. Juror: Kristen Hileman. February – April.
2004 Fall Juried Show. Maryland Federation of Art. Circle Gallery. Baltimore, MD. October 1 - 30. Juror Gerald Ross.
2004 Spring Juried Show. Maryland Federation of Art. Circle Gallery. Baltimore, MD. May 5 - June 1. Juror: Tonia Matthews.
2003 Critic’s Picks: Artist in Residency Program. Maryland Art Place. Baltimore, MD. March 23 - April 17. Curators: Carter Ratcliff and Eugene B.Redmond.
2003 Emerging Artists: Juried Show. Maryland Federation of Art, City Gallery. Baltimore, MD. Juried by Susan Isaacs. March. 2002 Definitions: MAEA. Contemporary Museum. Baltimore, MD. November 9 - December 21. Juror Helen Molesworth.

Group Exhibitions
2007 Fresh Art. Karin Sanders Gallery. Sag Harbor, NY. May 26 – June 20.
2007 The Living Room. The Randall Scott Gallery. Washington, DC. April 11 – May 19.
2007 I Believe. Creative Alliance at the Patterson. Baltimore, MD. Curator: Jordan Faye Block. May.
2007 Fresh Paint. Arlington Arts Center. Arlington, VA. Curator: Carol Lukitch. December – January.
2006 MAP turns 25. Maryland Art Place. Baltimore, MD. Curator: Julie Anne Cavnor. November – December 15.
2006 Femme Effect Part Deux. Gallery Imperato. Baltimore, MD. Curator: Jordan Faye Block. March 1 – 30.
2006 Mostre Rossi (The Red Show).Ferrara, Italy. October 5 – 24. Curator: Rachel Bradley.
2006 Fall Preview. Moxy Studios. New Orleans, LA. September 5 – 30.
2006 New Western Art. Studio Gallery 27. Steamboat Springs, CO. July.
2006 Riviera Triennial. Riviera Gallery. Brooklyn, NY. May 4 – 21.
2006 Here and Now. MSAC Exhibition at MICA’s Meyerhoff & Decker Galleries. Baltimore, MD. May.
2006 Women, War, and Resistance. Pascal Gallery. Anne Arundel Community College. Arnold, MD. March 24 – April 28.
2006 Hopes and Schemes: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints. January 13 – 29. The Riviera Gallery. Brooklyn, NY.
2006 Born to be Wild. Studio Gallery 27. Steamboat Springs, CO. January 21 – 26.
2005 By Invitation Only. Maryland Art Place. Baltimore, MD. November 1- 30.
2005 Faculty Exhibition. Towson University. Cade Gallery. Towson, MD. October 28 – November 30.
2005 Birds of a Feather. Tribes Gallery. 285 East 3rd Street, New York, NY. August 1 – 30.
2005 Under Construction. Current Gallery. Curator Michael Benevento. August 26 – September 11. Baltimore, MD.
2005 Spring Group Show. Cubicle 10. Central Ave, Baltimore, MD. May 1 – June 18.
2005 Picture Window. Sponsored by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts. Baltimore, MD.
2004 Systems, Codes, Chaos. Seed Vector Gallery Space. Baltimore, MD. October 1 - November 1.
2004 a journey. Chela Gallery. Baltimore, MD. March 6 - March 30.
2003 Pods: A Special Multimedia Exhibition. Whole Gallery. Baltimore, MD. Feb 22 - March 15.
2002 Disparate Voices. Rice Gallery. McDaniel College. Westminster, MD. October 21 - December 6.

PRESS
2007. The Baltimore City Paper. "Cursed Blessings" by Bret McCabe. August 22.
2007. The Washington Post. "In Painting Awards, Unexpected Outcomes" by Michael O'Sullivan. June 15.
2007 The Gazette. “Artists Ask Open Questions in Three Area Exhibit” by Claudia Rousseau. March 21.
2007 The Examiner. “Takes on Token: Object of Affection, Aggression, Reflection” by Robin Tierney. March 24.
2007 The Georgetown Voice. “A Local Artist’s Guide to Suburbia” by Madeline Anne Reidy. January 25.
2007 Washington City Paper. “Prayers and Joking” by Kriston Capps. January 24.
2006 Baltimore City Paper. “Great Outdoors” by Bret McCabe. July 26.
2006 Peek Review Volume Five. “Arbitrary Specifics” and “Interview with Curator Cara Ober” by Jack Livingston.
2006 Baltimore City Paper. June 26. “Underworld: Edgy Underground Group Show Well Suited to Gallery Space” by J. Bowers
2006 Baltimore City Paper. March 15. “Femme Effect Part Deux” by J. Bowers.
2006 Baltimore City Paper. March 1. Critics Picks: Femme Effect Part Deux at Gallery Imperato. By Mike Guliano.
2005 Baltimore Sun. November 2. “Daring Exhibits launch new art center at Towson.” By Glen McNatt.
2005 Baltimore City Paper. October 13. Critics Picks: “Passing Notes: A Visual Collaboration” by Bret McCabe.
2005 3rd Floor: A Portable Art Space. September Issue. Artist Bio and Color Reproduction of the oil painting “Carrier.”
2005 Washington Post. “On Exhibit: New Sensations” by Michael O’Sullivan.
2004 Baltimore Sun. December 9. “Intimate and Unsettling.” Review of Inward Gazes by Glen McNatt.
2004 Radar Review. Issue 12, December. “Inward Gazes” by Lauren Bender.
2004 Baltimore City Paper. October 13. “Seeds of Promise.” Review of Seed Vector Show by J. Bowers.
2004 Baltimore City Paper. October 6. “Critics Picks: Art.” Review of Matchbook at Spare Room.
2004 Baltimore City Paper: March 17. “Journey: A Traveling Art Show.” Review by Blake de Pastino.
2004 Baltimore City Paper: February 25. “Secret Signs.” Review by Ned Oldham.
2003 Radar Magazine: Issue 6, 2003. Review of Group Show at City Cafe by Lauren Bender.
2003 Maryland Art Place Critics in Residency Catalogue. “A Critic’s Notes” by Carter Ratcliff.
2003 Maryland Art Place Critics in Residency Catalogue. “Cara Ober” by David Page.
2003 Link Magazine Issue 8: Codex. MAP’s Critics in Residency program.
2003 Baltimore City Paper, March 19. “Critics Picks: Art.” Review of MAP Critics in Residency show.
2003 Radar Magazine: Issue 5, 2003. Preview of MAP Show.

Georgetown Voice Review of Prayers and Joking

"A local artist’s guide to suburbia"
by Madeline Reidy



As I entered Flashpoint, a modest downtown gallery, I sensed I had unwittingly stumbled into someone’s home. At first I assumed it was the warmth of the room, a welcome comfort after braving the January wind. But after pondering a large sepia-toned canvas, I realized the flower at the top left corner bore an uncanny resemblance to the pattern on my mother’s sofa.

“I grew up in a house with a lot of wallpaper,” Baltimore artist Cara Ober recalls of her suburban upbringing. “I like looking at pretty fabric and pretty patterns, and for a while I didn’t think that those things were appropriate for fine art.”

Ober has since abandoned this notion. Her latest exhibit, “Prayers and Joking,” is a narrative series of twenty-one mixed media collages filled with nostalgic imagery, words and playful blotches of paint and ink. Mass-printed images of birds and flowers juxtaposed with scribbled phrases and formal text both obscure and redefine the domestic conventions they evoke. Her works would fit in with the decorative humdrum of Urban Outfitters, were it not for phrases like “our hell is the good life,” and printed words like “tried” and “trifle” that challenge the nature of the household imagery she tears apart and reevaluates.“It’s funny that the things you rebel against find their way into what you’re doing. I had to get to a point where I made peace with where I’m from and who I am,” Ober said.Though her work grapples with modern struggles of identity and conflict in middle-class America, Ober arrives at her universal statements through personal experience. Among her sources of inspiration are children’s dictionaries and stacks of vintage wallpaper, references from her upbringing that she wasn’t always so keen on using.

“I went through a phase where I decided I had to have everything planned out and everything had to be logical and had to make sense, “ Ober explained. “That was sort of part of the interrogation process of grad school … and I found it didn’t work for me. When I finished grad school, I had this epiphany that what I needed to say I could say with birds and flowers and ornamental things that I looked at all the time as a kid.”

The impulsiveness of Ober’s pieces invites a visual quest for meaning that shuns any sort of conventional arrangement. At once charming and ironic, Ober’s layered canvases seem to internally question their own aesthetic nature, a unique quality that warrants a closer look. While not nearly as impenetrable as purely abstract art, her compositions complicate graphic illustrations with hazy, neutral backdrops and layers of ink spills and penciled notes and doodles. Her work is as much about this spontaneous process as it is about the final product.

“I definitely don’t plan everything out…It’s just about putting something down on the canvas and then reacting to that and reacting to that. It has to be a spontaneous thing,” she said.

Contrary to the off-the-cuff nature of her individual pieces, the exhibit is organized in a clean, linear display, a convenient guide as viewers make their way around the perimeter of the room. But logical progression isn’t exactly Ober’s primary concern, “It’s not really a chronological narrative,” Ober said of her collective works. “A word that I like to use is an elliptical narrative. Things circle around and cycle inward and cycle outward.”

Ober’s indirect and often unconscious approach to her work is what makes her art compelling. It speaks of a truth that is not easily defined, one that is in constant flux and inevitably bears reference to a subjective context.

“Prayers and Joking” is currently on display at Flashpoint, 916 G St. through Feb. 10. The gallery is a short walk from the Gallery Place metro stop.

Washington CP Review 2.25.2007.

There’s a great deal of text in Cara Ober’s multimedia drawings, much of it scrawled in that searching, cursive script so familiar to lovelorn diarists. Every piece in the Baltimore artist’s solo show at Flashpoint is fairly dripping with the stuff: snippets of emo-sounding lyrics, half poems, and fey aphorisms. Ober’s also fond of Courier, the “typewriter” typeface—lowercase letters only, of course—that has graced a million twee album covers. The block of free-association serif text (“filled with helpless letters”) that hovers in space in one piece is so saccharine, so conspicuously placed, that there’s no mistaking it for heartfelt expression. In Untitled #5 (the fourth of july), she even includes a typo in one poetic turn of phrase (“water, like light, forms it’s own edge”)—a gentle dig at the self-seriousness of confessional writing. Ober’s definitely being cool but not ironic. The images she paints, prints, and collages onto her canvases—letterbox stamps, illustrated flowers, fleur-de-lis designs, sketched bunnies, sketched hearts, sketched cakes—all draw from the same tween-to-teen iconography. These elements rarely gel in her blocky compositions, which are uniformly characterized by stiff images set adrift against khaki atmospheres. Patches of abstraction don’t give the pieces any motion, either—though Ober does have a way with washes, as evidenced by the Ed Ruscha–esque slice of words in Untitled #1 (priceless). While there’s a degree of arbitrariness to Ober’s execution, the concept itself is sound. She’s not exactly investigating girlhood, womanhood, or the state in between, but rather the artifacts that state inspires—the mark-making itself. Prayers & Joking: New Works by Cara Ober is on view from noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment, to Saturday, Feb. 10, at Flashpoint, 916 G St. NW. Free. (202) 315-1310. (Kriston Capps)

Our Hell is the Good Life

our hell is the good life
2007
mixed media on canvas
60x50

Georgetown Voice Review of Jolly Cowboy

Georgetown Voice - Leisure
March 29, 2007

"I wanna be a cowboy, baby"
by Madeline Reidy



An average, white-bread upbringing wouldn’t be complete without the cowboy dream. It may be as simple as that pair of boots with the spurs you saw at K-Mart, or those horseback riding lessons you took after you watched an old John Wayne film. Or maybe it is, as the exhibit “Jolly Cowboy” suggests, a complex mix of intangible fantasy and commercial delusion that has attracted hearts of all ages across the globe.
Curator Cara Ober’s latest exhibition attempts to demystify the world’s fascination with cowboys. Hosting a collection of work from artists of different backgrounds and ages, the “Jolly Cowboy” is more complicated than its title suggests. The diverse and playful artworks include an animated film montage, candy dots on paper and a pair of cowboy boots from Wal-Mart (retail value $11). All constitute the experiences and memories of individual artists who engage with the legendary icon of the Wild West, though the widely differing images suggest that the cowboy dream eludes clear definition.



Among the more interesting works of the exhibit is Zoë Charlton’s Bang!, a mixed media drawing in which a naked female in cowboy boots aims a gun (her hand) at her elongated shadow. The work, one of the few introspective pieces of the bunch, eroticizes the cowboy fantasy and invites a deeper look. Adding an interactive element to the exhibit is Jack Livingston’s hand-made book, “The True Story of Kit Carson, Jesse James and Me.” Before opening the book, the viewer must don white gloves resembling those out of a cowboy costume kit. Inside, the pages are filled with blurred images and text recounting a typical western battle between an outlaw and the sheriff. Though mundane, the narrative speaks of a nostalgia that pulls the viewer back into the memories of those elaborate cowboy games that almost every child constructs.



None of the work boasts of any innovative technique or stunning artistic ability. Some of it, like the boots, required the minimal effort of rummaging through the children’s section of a cheap department store. Nevertheless, the simplistic elements of each piece drive at an authentic representation of the cowboy. For most, it is a fantasy of youth, one that fades as more realistic goals of becoming a doctor or a lawyer replace the dream of lassoing a wild bull or defeating the Indians. Likewise, for most of the exhibition’s artists, the idea of a cowboy conjures up colorful memories of candy-coated desert-scapes and elaborate games involving Jesse James and the Marlboro Man.

The success of the exhibit lies ironically within its incompleteness. The viewer may spend a great deal of time attempting to decipher meaning from the works, only to remain still confused over what exactly is intended by this strange collection. But the contradictory responses of the artists invite viewers to explore their own subjective experiences, and the mystery of the cowboy proves more intriguing than any singular characterization.

The “Jolly Cowboy” may not fully demystify the strange fixation Americans have with cowboys, but perhaps it is better left ambiguous. Whether the cowboy is a hero, a symbol of violence and cigarettes, propagator of fashionable leather, or all of the above, is up to the viewer to decide.

“Jolly Cowboy” is currently showing at the DC Arts Center, located at 2438 18th Street NW. The exhibit runs through April 8 and admission is free.

BIO

Cara Ober earned her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005 and BA from the American University in Washington, DC.



A painter, teacher, and writer, Ober has exhibited her work recently in Baltimore at Gallery Imperato, at Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, DC, the Riviera Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and at the Karin Sanders Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY. Cara is a 2005 MD Artist Grant recipient for painting, and keeps a studio in the station north arts district. Ober recently curated The Jolly Cowboy at the DC Arts Center, Arbitrary Specifics at Sub-Basement Artist Studios, as well as Liquid/Solid: Contemporary Abstract Painting at McDaniel College.

Press coverage for Ober's art exhibitions include the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore City Paper, Washington City Paper, Georgetown Voice, Peek Review and Radar Review. Current projects include preparing for a solo show at Gallery Imperato in September, 2007, and a group show, 'Living Room,' at the Randall Scott Gallery in Washington, DC April, 2007.

Reivews

“Cara Ober is a magpie of suburban imagery. In her mixed-media paintings and drawings, she teases meandering narratives out of motifs from her upbringing such as wallpaper, textiles, reference books, tattoos, and graffiti, combining abstract and representational forms to explore communication, conflict, gender, and class on a two-dimensional surface.”
- Rebecca Lowery, Curator and Gallery Director at Flashpoint Gallery, 2007. www.flashpointdc.org



“Cara Ober’s paintings are activated by eccentric juxtapositions that lead to quirky, open-ended narratives. Taken together, Ober’s works catalogue a full range of the more humble modes of human inscribing. She references stencils, the patterns of wallpaper and fabrics, tattoos, and illustrations from childhood books. At times, she also allows words to creep into her compositions. Like chipped and fading walls that have begun to reveal overlapping and embedded fragments from years of human efforts at decoration and expression, Ober’s paintings ask viewers to make sense of out-of-place scraps of imagery emerging against worn but still richly colored surfaces.”
- Kristen Hileman, Assistant Curator, Hirshhorn Museum, 2005.



“Ober has taken her craft to the next level. She paints from the heart and the hip, imbuing her works with equal measures of memory and sexual tension. While maintaining her tendency to toss together crayon doodles, wallpaper swatches, elegant gold fleur-de-lis patterns, drawings of birds and flowers, and snatches of text, Ober has given herself free rein to experiment. These newer works, completed over the past year, exhibit a willingness to accept her uncanny ability to make completely disparate elements look somehow interrelated. Facsimiles of dictionary definitions, airplanes, and neon yellow flowers have augmented her calligraphic doodle style, and the pieces have become even more enigmatic and dreamlike.”
- J. Bowers, Baltimore City Paper, March 15, 2006. www.citypaper.com



“Intimate and unsettling are indeed apt descriptions of the two dozen or so feminist-inspired works in this exhibition, which are both intensely personal and, in many cases, quite deliberately provocative. Ober notes that although she was taught in school that the alleged differences between men and women's art are wholly artificial social constructs, she never believed it. Men and women are different, she insists, and it is those differences that are, in large part, what makes the art women create so interesting.”
Glen McNatt, Baltimore Sun, December 9, 2004.

“One doesn’t know the story she is telling, but [know] it has everything to do with a sensibility’s elaboration of its possibilities. Ober holds our attention with a play of imagery that never quite settles into unpredictability.”
- Carter Ratcliff, MAP Critics Picks Essay, 2003. www.mdartplace.org

Artist Statement

I find beauty in all the wrong places. In my paintings, a cigarette butt with fuchsia lipstick kiss prints, or a soiled gingham tablecloth, can function simultaneously as holy icon and ironic joke. In the work that I do, I aspire to create the paradoxical, awkward, and enigmatic quality of heartfelt poetry on a graffitied bathroom wall. Unwittingly sitting there, gazing at the words scrawled through random layers of crude, and sometimes, elegant visual meanderings, an epiphany overtakes me. For an instant, I see the world as it really is: gorgeous in contradiction and absurdity, funny in generic blather, and authentic in poignant longing.

Of course, my conception of validity and splendor is entirely subjective, based on my suburban upbringing, my sense of humor, and my own tunnel-vision rebellion. Although I prefer to hint at my opinions rather than dictate, to tease rather than to rant, I intend my paintings to be provocative statements to challenge conceptions of beauty, value, and truth.

As I work, my paintings constantly generate new questions for me, and, as discoveries are made and truths revealed, more questions arise, invalidating earlier judgments. I allow myself to playfully harvest imagery from bourgeois forms of adornment: wallpaper, textiles, tattoos, and graffiti, allowing narratives to organically evolve. Whether heightened metaphor or harebrained anecdote, I craft my visual narratives with the cheapest, tackiest, and silliest ornamental nothings I can find, partly because I believe these ideas are culturally biased and, in part, because they are my birthright.

The formal questions that torture and delight me center on the unique range of marks the viscous media of paint affords me, and the awkward juxtaposition of linear drawing with it. I work in layer after layer, building up a surface, erasing past verdicts, and then looking back on buried decisions with nostalgia. Unselfconscious and hastily made marks intrigue me the most, but must compete with contrasting ordered systems for an argument to be raised on the canvas.

What do I want? Who do I love? How much is too much? How much can I stand to lose? The universal questions, for me, are the most personal, and, the more bewildering the answers to these questions, the more gratifying the search.