ROBERT BECHTLE
2014-02-03Throughout his career, Bechtle has returned to motifs such as the streets of his native San Francisco, automobiles, self-portraits, and his family to portray the American landscape. Drawing on the art-historical tradition of photorealism, Bechtle creates complex compositions that flawlessly depict fragments of everyday life.
For this exhibition, Bechtle will present a series of watercolors and charcoal drawings of San Francisco’s tree and car-lined streets, as well as a number of self-portraits. Often using a photograph as his point of departure, Bechtle explores different ways of framing an image, cropping scenes to include only part of the presumable subject matter or orienting the works slightly off-center – compositional effects that serve to heighten the impact of the scenes he is portraying. In several works, he enhances the hilly topography of his neighborhood, Portrero Hill, by closely cropping the picture and omitting any sky or horizon line, thus complicating the viewers’ ability to orient themselves in the work. Often moving the supposed subject of his work – including cars, trees, and row houses – to the margins, he subtly challenges both our understanding of what the subject is, as well as the assumption that the composition’s center should be prioritized over the edges of the work.
Opposite – Bob’s Sebring, 2011
Exhibition runs through to February 22nd, 2014
Gladstone Gallery
515 West 24th Street
NY-10011 New York
USA
