Clare Rojas: P.S. Hurray!!
Gallery Paule Anglim
San Francisco, CA
5 – 29 September 2007

by Tonya Warner

With her affinity for bold swathes of colour mixed with fine details and allusions to the graphics of sign painting, Clare Rojas has been loosely grouped with what some have called “the Mission School.” Immortalized by the touring and much hyped exhibition “Beautiful Losers,” this group includes the likes of Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, and Chris Johanson. What sets Rojas apart, however, is her use more of the invented nostalgia-tinged old timeyness that is popular in San Francisco, rather than a reliance upon graffiti credentials. For her show at Paule Anglim, Rojas, who also performs music under the name Peggy Honeywell, has imbued the gallery with an old country hominess – complete with painted banjoes hanging from wooden hooks.

Rojas has taken a great amount of care in the presentation of her artwork, from painting half of the wall a bright blue to having the artworks hang, unframed, from a long row of coat hooks lining the space. The paintings are mostly done on boards, whose corners have been sanded down to create the illusion of age and wear. The images themselves seem to draw from a folk art tradition with their repeated decorative patterns and flat, two-dimensional renderings.

As is typical with her work, these images seem to have a feminist slant – the men in Rojas’s paintings appear somewhat pathetic or dejected, yearning for a woman’s reassuring gaze. This is clearly a women’s realm, however, it is enacted with a certain subtlety that is in strong contrast to the political or body-based feminist art of the 1970s. Rojas is making her way through a male-dominated world and creates scenes where men stand, naked and uncomfortable, in an assumedly female land of curvy folk designs. This position of striving in a man’s world is also expressed in her music video that plays on a loop in the corner; it features Rojas as Honeywell, complete with Grand Ole Opry fashion, playing one of her slow melancholy country/folk songs at a party of frat boys.

The music echoing through the space (sadly, the same song on repeat) mixes with the visual presentation to create a folksy microcosm. It is a world that belies a certain amount of love, care and attention that has gone into its creation. It is a world full of nostalgia for a time and place that has never truly existed, one that is perpetuated by the hearts of dreamers.

http://www.gallerypauleanglim.com/rojas_clare.html

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