Pocket Utopia is pleased to present a group show of artists Dana Gentile, Suzanne Walters, Bill Gerhard and Sophie Naess. By piecing, placing, molding, and making, all 4 artists address an active replacement, constructing collages, models, silk screens and passive solar printing.

Dana Gentile specifically fills space around shards of porcelain plates with wood. Gentile’s collages reference the broken landscape and scenes on the plates (both dinner and decorative). Hers is a “plate tectonic,” a precarious state symbolized by a pile of broken plates installed on the floor.

Suzanne Walters fills the space not with the paintings she is known for, but with the hand-crafted models she constructs in order to make her paintings. A bear claw, a wanderer in the woods resting on a photographic starry night, are surrounded by wolves in various states of repose. The sublime permeates, the plates break and nature is somewhere else.

In the “project space” that floats above and holds the back of the space, Bill Gerhard presents his ongoing “sun prints” that bruise black paper into purple while Sophy Naess makes silk screen portraits that contain only parts and not a whole. In addition, back by popular demand Rico Gatson has editioned a very limited Nina Simone print in her true colors.

Pocket Utopia is a relational exhibition, salon and social space run by artist Austin Thomas.

On Saturday, October 11th, starting at 4:00 pm, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky will present a salon titled “Memories of Development (MOD),” presenting photo stills and a rough cut video that focus on the psychological and cultural legacy of Latin America’s "third world" status using her childhood memories of growing up in Guayaquil, Ecuador as an entry point. This is a work in progress.

Amy Lincoln will be the artist in resident, starting September 6, 2008.