Dennis Gallagher: Shape / Structure

Rena Bransten Projects is pleased to present our fifth solo exhibition of Dennis Gallagher works. This grouping of ceramic sculptures, wall plates, and still-life drawings demonstrates his articulation of the world as a compendium of geometric forms. Referencing tools, furniture, architectural structures, or the human figure, Gallagher reduces these forms to their most prosaic shapes: rectangles, triangles and spheres.

While his works suggest a minimal approach, the surfaces are expressively manipulated with gouges and scores. The sculptural works often evoke tension with their precarious balance, implied arrested movement, and in the relationship between strong blocks and spheres. This tension is furthered in that the work exists in the balance between abstraction and representation.

Dennis Gallagher was born in 1952, in San Bruno, California. He received both his BA and MFA from Fresno State, and went on to teach at both the California College of Arts and Crafts and the San Francisco Art Institute. He has completed commissions in the private and public sectors of the Bay Area and the Napa Valley, including a large-scale public installation at Juniper Networks in Sunnyvale, California. His works are included in the collection of The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, The Fresno Art Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, The San Jose Museum of Art, The Rene di Rosa Preserve, Napa, The Runnymede Sculpture Park, Woodside, and The Oakland Museum of California Sculpture Court. Mr. Gallagher passed away in 2009.