QUANTUM FOAM
Dan Davis, Phillip Maisel, Henna Vainio
October 7— December 9, 2023
Opening reception: Saturday, October 7, 5-7 PM
Casemore Gallery is pleased to present Quantum Foam, an exhibition of new and recent works by Dan Davis, Phillip Maisel, and Henna Vainio. This exhibiton was organized by gallery artist Sean McFarland.
Quantum Foam includes work in a variety of media—photography, painting, collage, sculpture—that challenge our visual associations with space, how objects appear, and how close observation can change what we see. At a distance, objects may appear flat, the Euclidean limitations of our vision affecting the way we see them and how they occupy space. Up close, however, their appearance changes. A one-to-one, object to self relationship reveals how our perception, like matter in quantum foam, fluctuates in the turbulent nature of spacetime.
Dan Davis’s paintings combine photorealism and abstraction with the architectural feel of late 20th-century living spaces, in which an apartment is more of a “pad,” both modern and comforting, past and future. Well-detailed, hyper-puffy recliners and sleek, minimalist beds float on less-defined surface spaces, not so much in the space as of it, almost dreamlike. Davis questions the “deep human need to replicate our world back to ourselves,” and in that replication, wondering “is it the thing itself, or the idea of it?”
Phillip Maisel’s works use sculpture, collage, and photography to confound viewer expectations of representation, space and assumed structure. At a distance, a strong sense of three-dimensional depth and architectural construction prevails. This proves more visually illusory when inspected with closeness and the photographic elements themselves become trompe l'oeil. The viewer’s perception of space shifts and the shapes and images flatten as if constructed with the precision of a camera lucida.
Henna Vainio's recent ceramic works focus on language in the form of word stacks. In language, understanding, imagination, and meaning intersect as we read, write, speak, and listen from beginning to end. In Vainio’s word stacks, the linear is disrupted as beginning and end are compressed in spacetime. The message becomes nearly impossible to decipher, but the letters remain with their message becoming nearly infinite.
Dan Davis (b. 1978) lives and works in San Francisco. He earned his MFA in 2003 from Goldsmiths College in London, UK. He has had solo exhibitions at Bass & Reiner in San Francisco (2020 ) and the FOLD Gallery in London in (2013, 2009). In addition, he has participated in the group exhibitions Pyramid Scheme (2023) and The Long Look (2019) at Bass & Reiner, Either Those Curtains (2016) at FOLD Gallery, and London Summer Mix (2015) at Turps Gallery in London. In 2012 he participated in Octave, a collaborative performance with Melt at Chisenhale Gallery in London, and co-curated Needle in a Cloud with Nick Goss at FOLD Gallery.
Phillip Maisel (Chicago, 1981) lives and works in San Francisco, CA. He received his MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from McGill University in Montreal. He has had solo exhibitions at Chiquita Room in Barcelona, Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco, Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles, and Document in Chicago. His work also has been exhibited at the William Benton Museum in Connecticut, The University of New Mexico in Taos, and DeCordova Museum in Massachusetts. His book Two Concrete Things, published with Chiquita Ediciones, received the Arts Libris-Fundacio Banc Sabadell Award in 2021.
Henna Vainio (Finland, b.1981) earned her MFA from The Slade School of Art, London, and her BFA from Chelsea College of Arts, London. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include Ben Peterson - Henna Vainio, 1599fdT, Mill Valley (2023); Hardstep, Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2019); More Life, Ratio 3, San Francisco (2018); Capital Gallery, San Francisco (2017) and Step of Two, Royal NoneSuch Gallery, Oakland (2017). She has also participated in a number of group shows in the UK, Finland and Germany.