Angels Gate Cultural Center - Bean Gilsdorf and Dan Gilsdorf

December 10, 2006 - February 4, 2007

Public Reception: Sunday, December 10, 2 pm - 4 pm

Angels Gate is pleased to present an exhibition by Bean Gilsdorf and Dan Gilsdorf from Portland, Oregon. They will be showing a selection of their solo works in Gallery A.

Bean Gilsdorf will be showing a series of quilts printed with a process that uses three dimensional objects as sources for imagery. The focus of her work in this exhibition will be a thirty-six foot long quilt printed with the life-size image of the front and sides of a 1966 Plymouth Valiant. Bean's work has been included in Le Arti Tessili, an international exhibition of textile-based artwork in Italy; and in Transformations at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England.

Dan Gilsdorf will be exhibiting a selection of kinetic sculptures. His work uses mechanical motion, light, and sound to address contemporary American mythologies via familiar images such as railroads, oil derricks, and eagles. Dan's sculptures have traveled to galleries in Austria and Japan, and his 2005 solo show at Gallery 500 in Portland was billed by The Portland Mercury as a "conceptual analysis of industry and humanity... the best thing Gallery 500 has ever shown. Ever."

Artist Statements

Bean Gilsdorf
My work is primarily a test of the limits of what is traditionally a humble, domestic medium. My tendency is to subvert the idea that cloth comes with a built-in reference to home and to "women's work"; to undermine it by combining fabric with non-domestic imagery and processes. Like the tension that exists between opposite magnetic poles, these works are self-conflicted, their elements exerting mutual force on each other.

For me, work is complete when it is tensely ambiguous, when the stereotypical implications of the fabric are engaged in an open exchange with the figurative elements on its surface.

Dan Gilsdorf
I am interested in the narrative capabilities of simple mechanisms. Through repetitive, periodic, or sometimes destructive motion, my sculptures examine the process of how the present becomes the past. They are an exploration of how deeds and events are transformed into memory and catalogued into historical record. These works relate to conditions in my own history; to the timeline, as I see it, of my life. Some evoke the measureless open space of the American landscape, experienced from the passenger window of a west-bound automobile. Others explore the militarism of American culture, attempting to reconcile what my generation has been taught about heroism with the events I have witnessed. Taken as a whole, my work is an investigation of how the mythology of American-ness effects our perceptions of the past and influences our actions in the present and future.

Card

Artist Bean Gilsdorf with one of her pieces for the upcoming Gallery A show. This piece is 36 feet long and is a print of 3 views of a Plymouth Valiant.

Marshall Astor, Bean Gilsdorf and Dan Gilsdorf meeting at their home in Portland to discuss the works and installation of their show.

In Dan Gilsdorf's studio, the piece Chuck and Harriet Hum their Way Across America.

Chuck and Harriet Hum their Way Across America

Spector on white.

Untitled (eagle)

Simple Mechanism Blurry

Powerlines side

Behemoth

Centurion detail

www.flickr.com

See all the images from the Bean Gilsdorf and Dan Gilsdorf exhibition on our Flickr page

Images and more information about Bean and Dan's work are available online at www.beangilsdorf.com and www.dangilsdorf.com.