Opening reception: Saturday, April 22nd | 5-8PM

Bass & Reiner is pleased to present The Cave, featuring works by Naoki Onodera and Tamra Seal. Through a suite of sculptures and paintings, both artists endorse artistic practice as a mythical imaginary that reflects and distorts the world, allowing it to be better perceived. This exhibition hopes to position artistic creation as a means of accessing a superior plane outside of our own shadow reality.

For this exhibition, San Francisco based artist Naoki Onodera has expanded on a series of small paintings that center around the cave, both as a site and a framing device. Repetitive figures act as icons, familiar feeling but not clearly legible. When painting, Onodera puts on the identity of The Painter, immersing himself in a history and set of stories separate from his own, often including symbols and signs that are taken from the experience of this constructed persona. The resulting images are imbued with folk mysticism and flirt with a psychedelic aura.

Oakland based artist Tamra Seal’s work builds on the language of Minimalism, the Light and Space movement, as well as kitsch and stereotypical images of California-ness (the movie industry, swimming pools, new age religion) while moving towards a new spiritual and material reality. Combining geometric forms that filter, disperse, and mediate light with recognizable and often mass produced objects, Seal creates alien landscapes, like the West Coast in an alternate universe. Included in this show will be a mix of existing, new, and site specific sculptures.

Naoki Onodera lives and works in San Francisco, CA. His work has been included in exhibitions throughout the United States and Japan including recent solo shows at The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, and Cafe Banda, Tokyo. 

Tamra Seal lives and works in Oakland, CA. She holds a BA from Tufts University in Arts Education, a Studio Diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. Seal has exhibited extensively throughout California including shows at Pro Arts, Oakland; Hilde Gallery, Los Angeles; Evergold Gallery, San Francisco, Tmoro Projects, Santa Clara; and The Palo Alto Arts Center.