Artist reception: Saturday, April 1, 4:00–7:00 pm

Artist Statement:
Nascent State is a reckoning with the looming specter of despair, a meditation on the importance of healing, and an effort to create a space of respite in the midst of a turbulent world.

Fluid, alluvial shapes in muted hues of blue and green are punctuated with sharp, vibrating reds. Meandering lines weave across the patinated surface of the paintings, their accumulative structure evoking the passage of time and forming a space steeped in reflection and melancholy. 

These paintings echo the turmoil of the past three years. Born out of a period of intense personal change, they are an expression of loss, grief and an ongoing struggle with depression. They are also a mirror of the overwhelming chaos and suffering we see around us. Heartbreak ruptures our sense of self, a deeply painful and disorienting experience that leaves us unmoored and adrift. A cursory glance at the headlines portrays a world that is also ruptured, drifting inexorably towards disaster. How do we reconcile these dire visions of the personal and communal? Registering the devastating scale and impact of global events, compounded by pain in our own lives, can easily feel all too terrible to endure.

My last solo show in 2017 was titled Architecture of Resilience. It responded not just to the 2016 election and the crass, depraved hostility of that administration, but to the urgency that resilience quickly held as a rallying cry and coping mechanism. Six years later, that notion carries a different sort of weight in the midst of a global pandemic, cataclysmic wildfires, a burgeoning fascist power grab, and innumerable conflicts. In this changed world, I find deeper meaning in the idea of resilience as transformative, a quiet strength that lends itself to healing and growth.

This collection of work is more than a balm for a broken heart, or a means to stave off the pernicious mechanisms of depression, it is also a place of refuge: a quiet space to restore ourselves and to take stock of what really matters. In this space we can find the capacity, through a kind of creative alchemy, to transmute the despair that haunts the background of our lives into something beautiful, defiant, and affirmative.
— David Polka

David Polka is a visual artist and graphic designer currently based in Oakland, CA. Originally from Las Cruces, New Mexico, he moved to the East Bay 11 years ago to immerse himself in the area’s thriving art scene. His practice includes illustration, interior and exterior murals, and installation. A graduate of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, he has been exhibiting work since 2006 in group and solo exhibitions across the US in Oakland, San Francisco, New York, Boulder, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Anchorage, and Honolulu.

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