$4,000
Mixed media, collage, paper, acrylic, charcoal. 16 7/8 x 21 1/2 inches, signed and dated, “J Risser 1981”
Education:
MFA at UC Santa Barbara
Risser has taught at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; at UC, Santa Barbara; U C Berkeley; and the School of Art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Group Exhibitions:
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Smith Andersen Gallery, San Francisco; Davidson Gallery, Seattle; Franklin Furnace, New York; The Crocker Museum, Sacramento; Carlton College of St. Paul, MN
College of Marin, CA; Edmonton Art Museum, Alberta; Esther Bear Gallery, Santa Barbara; Lamamelle Arts Center, San Francisco; De Anza College, Cupertino, CA; Laguna Beach Art Museum, CA
Long Beach Art Museum, CA
Artist statement:
” The work is largely mixed media on various kinds of paper. Collage and assemblage are terms which may at times help define the medium. Opposites are the heart of my work and edge its balance.I employ the more formal uses of paintings and drawing alongside eclectic objects adhered to the paper. The contradiction of two-dimensional vs. three-dimensional painted vs. photographic . of real vs. unreal, and of the overall image or story perceived vs. the physicality of the surface has become intriguing to me. When things seem to work, the stated contradictions rest within a graphic geography rooted in the paper, perhaps similar to someone planning or seeing a journey while looking at a topographical map. I am simply making things with things–using the chosen scraps of my own journey along with the more formal processes involving brush, paint, and drawing tools.”
Bibliography:
Cheney Cowles Memorial Museum, Spokane, WA, 1976 “California Abstraction,” exhibition Feb. 10-March 6, 1977,
MoMA, New York–“Izu Peninsula,” 1978
Laguna Museum, 1986, “Assemblage:The present,” works dating from the 70’s and 80’ including Michael McMillen, Bruce Houston, Italo Scanga, Jeffrey Vallance, Michael Farber, Kim Abeles, James Risser and others. Catalogue with text by artists Gordon Wagner, Arthur Secunda and George Herms, art historian Ann Ayres, and collector Diana Zlotnick.