F*ed Up Fairy Tales
JUST THE FACTS:
F*ed Up Fairy Tales a collaboration by: Gale Hart, Skinner & John Stuart-Berger
Opening Receptions: May 19 & 20
Closing Reception: June 10
Reception Times: 7pm - til late each night
Regular Gallery Hours: Tue - Sat 11am - 7pm
907 K Street, Sacramento – www.ToyRoomGallery.com
Contact Info: John Soldano, Toy Room Gallery (916) 446-1400 or mail@toyroomgallery.com
Gale Hart, Artist (916) 448-5090 or gale@galehart.com
Follow the Toy Room Down the Rabbit Hole… and Hang on for a Visual Ride!
A collaborative show with Gale Hart, Skinner, & John Stuart Berger
Alice, Humpty Dumpty, The Frog Prince, Pied Piper, and more… fairy tales like you’ve never seen them. Twisted, humorous, psychedelic, and full of surprises. That’s what you’ll discover at the Toy Room Gallery’s May/June show; “F*ed Up Fairy Tales.” All from the minds of three of Sacramento’s most creative and talented artists: Gale Hart, Skinner, and John Stuart Berger.
This show does more than bring together three proficient artists side-by-side. Rather, it twists, weaves, and intertwines their three distinct styles into the same piece – not always letting you know where one stopped and the next one started painting. Other times, leaving a distinct or signature peculiarity, so you know exactly who’s who.
And speaking of who’s who, meet the three visual story tellers:
When you think of Gale Hart a flood of images come to mind: whimsical found metal sculptures, creepy clay heads in resin, rows of cute, 3-dimentional animals with not-so-cute titles like “Why’d You Have to Go and Shoot My Mamma,” and finally her gargantuan paintings on canvas of intense human figures who seem to stare right through you and won’t let you walk past without burning an impression in your mind. Intense. Accomplished. Malleable. Heart is always challenging our assumptions, our thoughts, and changing up her game so you never know what she’ll hit you with next.
When it comes to Skinner, think of an obsessed boy raised on science fiction, comic books, fantasy films, beasts, monsters, robots, and more. Add huge heapings of a vivid imagination, the drive to push himself further, and the desire to never do the same thing twice. Mix in some vibrant colors and day-glow paints, then blend for 20-odd years and you have a painter whose art looks somehow at home on the outside walls of a lounge or hanging in a gallery.
Under marshmallow clouds, John Stuart Berger plants a garden of prehistoric plants with thorny stems, near black holes where worms with fangs wiggle out, by mice heads on peppermint sticks, and abominable bunny monsters. A cartoon land that somehow is violent but cute, sticky but soft. Alive yet dead.
And that’s what makes this show so extraordinary. These three artists already create their own amazing lands of make-believe, so you can only imagine what happens with their worlds collide and they each contribute to the same paintings. With the subject of fairy tales, you can be sure of a ride into a visual world you won’t soon forget.
