March 21, 2023 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to present Lyric Abstraction: Hami and Home, a solo exhibition of paintings by David Frazer. The artist’s second show at the gallery will feature abstract oil paintings, including a distinct body of work inspired by the desert town of Hami in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of northwestern China.  A critical gateway between the East and the West along the Silk Road, Hami is one of two separate conditions for which the exhibition is named. Home, alternatively, refers to Frazer’s life in Providence, RI, not only as an accomplished artist and Professor Emeritus at Rhode Island School of Design, but also as a husband, father of three, and grandfather of five. Lyric Abstraction: Hami and Home will be open to the public from April 5 – May 19, 2023, with an opening celebration hosted on April 8th from 4:30 – 6:30 PM PST.

In 2019, Frazer traveled from Beijing to Hami by train - a journey that catalytically spurred an entirely new visual and conceptual framework. This expanded perspective and its associated reflections developed into the series of “Hami” works on view in the exhibition. While Frazer had spent a great deal of time in the urban hubs of Eastern China, his trip to Hami showed him a wholly different China from what he had ever experienced or known. Struck by the stark beauty of the desert landscape, and the enduring humanity and cultural breadth in the midst of such harsh conditions, Frazer recalled the experience upon returning to his studio, allowing his memories to intuitively guide the direction of each work. The resulting canvases are intentionally simplified, the palette reminiscent of the hazy gradient between sand and sky, the brushwork linear and delicate. Frazer captures the sense of isolation and resilience that characterizes life in this remote part of the world, introducing these dimensions to his abstract iconography. Other works in the exhibition continue this meditation on solitude, reflecting upon the sense of isolation experienced on a global scale during the COVID-19 pandemic, and on a personal level in Frazer’s own life. 

The artist encourages accidents, making sense of the unknown as he goes. The improvisational approach that Frazer has carefully honed over his decades-long studio practice evolves into an exciting new chapter with his “Hami” series. Lyric Abstraction: Hami and Home highlights Frazer’s established bodies of work alongside the “Hami” paintings, allowing for new dialogues to emerge from the exchange between the two series, and from the engagement of the local arts community in Palo Alto. 

About David Frazer

David Frazer is Professor Emeritus of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), having served as the Chair of the Painting Department for many years during his tenure from 1978 to 2020. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from RISD in 1970 and his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of New Mexico (UNM) in 1976. Frazer’s paintings are improvisational, with no prior designs or predicted outcomes. Many of his motifs, like the birds and eggs, are not narrative but rather suggest thoughts of vulnerability, birth, love, risk, and loss.

David Frazer has traveled extensively as a visiting artist and art educator, and his work has been exhibited internationally in China, Italy, South Korea, and the United States. His recent solo exhibitions include the Rhode Island School of Design, RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI; Congju International, South Korea; China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China; Shandong Art Museum, Shandong, China; among others. His works are in the collections of many public institutions such as Fidelity Investments, New York; China National Academy of Painting, Beijing, China; China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China; and Lu Xun Academy, Academy of Fine Art Museum, Shenyang, China.

March 21, 2023 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to present Inland Current, a solo exhibition by realist landscape painter Neil Griess. The show features acrylic, gouache, and pastel paintings derived from Griess’s home state of Nebraska, with an emphasis on the interaction between the natural world and the built environment. His pieces attend closely to oft-overlooked subject matter, such as stray grasses along a suburban creek or the raised lettering on a car. By dialing into — and lightly distorting — the visual information we see in our day-to-day lives, Griess recontextualizes it into something beautiful, strange, and deeply precious. Inland Current will be open to the public from April 5 – May 19, 2023, with an opening celebration hosted on April 8th from 4:30 – 6:30 PM PST.

The exhibition’s title, Inland Current, juxtaposes the idea of ocean currents with the artist’s landlocked home of Nebraska. As a landscape painter, the inclusion of “land” nods to his artistic lineage, while “current” speaks to the contemporary relevance of the work. While a few of his paintings take on a larger scale, most occupy a smaller canvas, creating a sense of intimacy and detail.

Griess usually works from photographs that he takes in places that hold personal significance to him — a field behind his elementary school, a bike trail, a nearby creek that has endured even as the land turned from prairie to farmland to suburbs. With his new series focusing on grasses, he used a fisheye lens attachment on his phone to create reference images with a skewed point of view and softer, blurrier edges. The process of painting allows Griess to spend slow, focused time with each captured moment, paying precise attention to each blade of grass. 

Other paintings in the show also reference Nebraska, but take images from Google Earth as their inspiration; Griess began capturing glitched screenshots of his hometown during a period of distanced longing while he was away teaching in Palo Alto. The resulting paintings are simultaneously nostalgic and unfamiliar — beloved places seen from afar. 

Straying from the traditional landscape form, the artist’s car lettering pieces often allude to a conceptual or imagined landscape; By shifting the perspective of the letters, which float in an unspecified environment, they begin to take on an almost monumental scale. In this way, they feel both highly specific and universally relevant. Viewed as a whole, Inland Current captures the feeling of a distinct place and time, while inviting viewers to see the wider world through the artist’s eyes. 

About Neil Griess

Neil Griess is a visual artist based in Omaha, Nebraska. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2011 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his Master of Fine Arts in 2019 from Stanford University. Through layered imagery in painting and drawing, Griess reflects on the contemporary American landscape and its possible futures. He investigates how modes of travel and contemporary web mapping services affect the way landscapes are perceived and held in memory. Seams and distortions present in landscape images evoke an unsettled relationship between place and time.

Griess has held solo and group exhibitions nationally, with a focus in Nebraska and California, at the Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA), Kearney, NE; Nebraska Arts Council, Omaha, NE; The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Omaha Public Library, Omaha, NE; University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE; University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE; Pottawattamie Arts, Culture & Entertainment (PACE), Council Bluffs, IA; Stanford University, Stanford, CA; among others.

In 2016 and 2023, he received awards from the Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards and a Merit Award for the 2016 Independent Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts from the Nebraska Arts Council. His work has appeared in print in New American Paintings in 2015 as well as the textbook, Art for Everyone, from Oxford University Press, published in 2022. Since 2019, Griess has been teaching as an adjunct professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He currently lives and works in Omaha, NE.