Gale Hart

CONTEMPORARY PAINTER & SCULPTOR

Self-taught artist Gale Hart (b. Lansing, Michigan, 1956) has established an energetic 40-year career experimenting with new techniques and materials often incorporating sarcasm and humor in her work to exaggerate the absurd. Hart’s work serves as a vehicle for her witty and critical eye on the social issues of contemporary life in American culture over the past half-century. She has shown at Context Miami, FL; Context New York, NY; The Los Angeles Art Show, CA; and Art Aspen, CO; and exhibits nationally. Since 2012, Gale has received three public art commissions for the city of Sacramento, CA and recently completed a major commission for the city of Elk Grove, CA.

STREET ART VOCABULARY

The evolution of an ongoing series, Hart's latest sculptures are more ambitious in scale and complexity of materials. In the context of the studio, the spray can is simply one tool among many. Here, they are magnified in scale and covered with a colorful fusion of gestures and images from abstraction to Pop Art and graffiti. Twisted and bent, the cans appear to be crushed, suggesting their emptiness and demise as a useful tool. But a can is not just a can—their grand scale and sensual folds reference classic definitions of sculpture. The process of experimentation and fine tuning reflects an unwavering interest in the impact of form that aligns Hart’s work with earlier masters in the tradition of sculpture. Merging technical mastery, Pop Art and contemporary street vocabulary is her way of examining the historical tradition of multiple mediums.