A Solo Virtual Exhibition: Human Conditions: Portraits of a Fraying Age

Gallery 2727 in Berkeley is presenting my solo virtual exhibition: Human Conditions: Portraits of a Fraying Age (February 1 – March 3, 2026), featuring 21 figurative and portrait paintings of mine.

I depict life frankly and critically, as visual surfaces and interior qualities. Instead of verisimilitude, I strive to discover and capture what is hidden, emphasizing the implicit and the unspoken.

Though I sometimes use more vibrant colors to express enhanced emotions, or allow more exuberant colors to generate a dimension of visual excitement, acknowledging that joy remains, I tend to narrow my palette, deliberately stripping away the noise.

For Human Conditions: Portraits of a Fraying Age, I have assembled a group of twenty-one oils painted over the last twenty-some years, mostly portraits and figurative pieces. The majority of these are black and white, while some are mainly monochromatic with muted coloration, and a few are inverted images like photographic negatives. All the sitters, singly or in groups, are melancholic, sad, yearning, or resigned. These images comment on the often sad, isolated nature of modern life, and on a social fabric torn apart by class divides and political schisms, depriving people of identity, hope, and self-determining agency. 

Presenting these images in muted tones, or even black and white, transforms the sitters into ghostly silhouettes that evoke fading memory and a distorted world, where the familiar has become alien and corrupt.

The exhibition also strives to capture the paradox of our time: a world more "connected" than ever, yet populated by individuals who feel more lonely, miserable, and profoundly divided than at any point in history.

 

Hallucinatory oil painting "Disperse"

 

My 2022 oil painting, Disperse, captures a hallucinatory moment of a nighttime landscape — between the silhouettes of two monumental and interlocking trees, a group of tiny figures scurrying by, running away from their familiar ground, their fates, their tormentors or captors. The specificities are intentionally omitted, so as to leave the viewers to interpret freely and to fill in the missing details, though the title does hint at diaspora stories in the headlines of late.

 Disperse, oil on canvas, 20"x30", 2022

This piece will be part of the juried exhibition "Within Sight or From Imagination" at GearBox Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave, Oakland, CA 94612 (August 10 - September 9, 2023). Juror: Jeremy Morgan.
Opening Reception: August 12, Sat., 1 to 4 pm | Juror’s talk: September 2, Sat., 2 pm

July Exhibition in City Art Gallery, San Francisco

In July, I will return to the wonderful co-op gallery in San Francisco: City Art Gallery, which “opened its doors at 828 Valencia St. in 1998 and has remained a constant in the radically changing Valencia corridor.” 

Exhibition date: July 5-30
Reception & the City Art’s 25th Anniversary Celebration: July 7, Friday, 7-10 pm Location: 828 Valencia St, San Fransisco (between 19th & 20th)
Gallery Hours: Sun, Wed-Thursday 12-9 pm, Fri/Sat 12-10 pm
My gallery sitting shifts: July 16, Sat, 12-4:30 pm, July 22, Sun, 12-5 pm

Below are the sample of the pieces I will exhibit:

 

 

Opening Reception to "Rejuvenation — Winter to Spring", a solo exhibition in Albany, CA

 

 

Yesterday afternoon, the reception to my solo exhibition "Rejuvenation — Winter to Spring" took place. 

This art exhibition in Albany Community Center Foyer Art Gallery contains 14 gouache paintings I completed in the last three years, recording our collective emergence from frigid winter into a slowly thawing spring. These paintings and abstractions of landscape, juxtaposing dark hues and bright colors, rigid lines, and sensuous washes, echoing contradicting characteristics and features, reflect the shifting of seasons and moods. The show ends on June 26.

 

After several days of severe storms, balmy spring days arrived this weekend, inviting quite a few people to attend the opening reception on a beautiful spring afternoon. I was grateful for the opportunity to share my experiences and my art with these very supportive friends and art lovers.

 

Finally, spring had arrived.

Rejuvenation — Winter to Spring, a solo exhbition in Albany, CA

From March 24 through June 26, I will present 14 gouache paintings in a solo exhibition “Rejuvenation — Winter to Spring” at Albany Community Center Foyer Art Gallery.

The onset of the warm and colorful spring, dislodging frosty and somber winter, is a time for the revival and rejuvenation of nature and human spirits, and is an occasion to celebrate.

The 14 pieces presented are gouache on paper, most painted under the shadow of the pandemic, recording our collective emergence from frigid winter into a slowly thawing spring. These paintings and abstractions of landscape, juxtaposing dark hues and bright colors, rigid lines and sensuous washes, echoing contradicting characteristics and features, reflect the shifting of seasons and moods.

Albany Community Center Foyer Art Gallery
March 23 - June 26, 2023

Featured Oil Painting - Crisp

Though lately I am mostly attracted to shifting patterns, colors, tones, and shapes, from time to time, I am still inspired by pure scenery, particularly when I can discern such variations, and especially if the landscape evokes strong emotions such as moody melancholy. Such an image I had encountered in Manchurian China, barely a few months before the pandemic started to ravage the globe, intrigued and challenged me to create an oil painting when sheltered at home, Crisp, an understated work aptly captured a sense of community, isolation, and resilience.


Crisp
22” x 28”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020

This painting is being exhibited in Biafarin Online Exhibition (March 10 – April 10, 2021): Exhibizone – Winter 2021 Catalog.

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 
 

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Glittering Exhibition - "Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters" at Legion of Honor

Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters is the first major international exhibition to assemble works by England’s nineteenth-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with the medieval and Renaissance masterpieces that inspired them. Important loans of paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts from international collections, as well as works drawn from the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, demonstrate the Pre-Raphaelites’ fascination with Italian masters, including Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, and Paolo Veronese, as well as northern Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling.

-- Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco

Though weary of the stilted beauty of the Pre-Raphaelites paintings, I came away enchanted by this well-curated, and sparkling exhibition, which juxtaposed the Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters, relating the connections between these two groups, in the timeline of the artistic development of the Pre-Raphaelites. The amazing achievements of the Old Masters were self-evidence; while the Pre-Raphaelites impressed with their virtuosity and romantic beauty, however mannered they could be.

First group:


The Virgin and Child with an Angel, St George and a Donor, Hans Memling


Virgin and Child Enthroned with Angels, Master of the Saint Lucy Legend


Madonna and Child with Two Angels, Followers of Adriaen Isenbrandt


Virgin and Child, Dieric Bouts and or workshop


The Annunciation, Jan van Eyck


Mariana, John Everett Millais






Portrait of a Man, Lucas Cranach the Younger






The Ransom, John Everett Millais

Group 2:


The Holy Family, Perino del Vaga


Madonna and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist, Piero di Cosimo


Copy of The Annunciation by Fra Angelico, Cesare Mariannecci


The Meeting of Saints Dominic and Francis of Assisi, Fra Angelico


A Crowned Virgin Martyr (Saint Catherine of Alexandria), Bernardo Daddi


The Nativity, The Baptism of Christ, Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Noli me Tangere, Perugino


Giotto Painting the Portrait of Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti


Dante's Dream


Valentine Reproaching Proteus for His Falsity, William Holman Hunt


Lorenzo and Isabella, John Everett Millais


Beata Beatrix, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Group 3:


Idealized Portrait of a Lady, Sandro Botticelli


Idealized Portrait of a Lady, Sandro Botticelli


Madonna and Child with Two Angels, Sandro Botticelli & The Virgin and Child, Workshop of Sandro Botticelli's


Portrait of a Lady Known as Smeralda Bandinelli, Sandro Botticelli




Flora & Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti


Love and the Maiden, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope

Group 4:


Self-Portrait, Raphael


Lucretia, Paolo Veronese


 Portrait of a Young Man with a Green Book, Giovanni Cariani


A Young Woman Holding a Mirror with Her Servant, Parus Bordone






La Pia, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 
Lady Lilith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti


Bocca Bacciata - Dante Gabriel Rossetti


The Heart of the Rose, Edward Burne-Jones

Group 5:


The Passing of Venus, Edward Burne-Jones


The Entombment, Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola)


Cupid's Hunting Fields, Edward Burne-Jones


The Wheel of Fortune & The Ascension, Edward Burne-Jones


The Tree of Forgiveness - A Mosaic in Rome, Edward Burne-Jones


Flora & Pomona, Edward Burne-Jones










Exhibition ends on September 30, 2018.


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