Paper carpets and Pyrite soar into space ...

We had seen Isabelle de Borchgrave at the Legion of Honor (see the post from April 23, 2011) in the show "Pulp Fashion."  (The images are still in my head ... the women from distant courts and favorite paintings re-created, in paper, and given artistic life: just wonderful!)  We came across de Borchgrave's work again today, at the Serge Sorokko Gallery on Geary Street in San Francisco. Here, there are no figures. And yet, again, the two-dimensional forms seem to expand as we view them Here are the two pieces that we kept returning to, together and then in detail:

 

 

These are two pieces; the one on the left is called "Dans Le Souk," and is (two-dimensional!) mixed media on cottoen cloth.  I am not sure of the name of the piece on the right, but the materials are the same. For more details, see the gallery website,  http://www.sorokko.com/artists/de_borchgrave.html

So that was our foray into color and space. For another invitation to the viewer -- two dimensions moving into three-dimensional space -- and for another chance at invention combined with sheer gorgeousness, here are two works by Leslie Shows, a local artist (she graduated from CCA and won one of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art's SECA awards).  Leslie Shows gives us plexiglass, ink, mylar, crushed glass, metal dust and engraving. She places images of pyrite (fool's gold) onto thin aluminum; the aluminum shines, reflects and deepens the layers we see:

And here is a second piece:

Leslie Shows's work is at the Haines Gallery, at 49 Geary Street in San Francisco, through December 24.

The works may not be so different, after all.  These two artists are building their own artistic worlds.  Roy Lichtenstein once said (in an interview with G.R. Swenson in Art News in November 1963) that "organized perception is what art is all about .... It is a process .... It has to do with a way of building a unified pattern of seeing."  That's what has happened here ... go and see the work if you can!