Los Angeles - Black Maria Gallery is pleased to announce the fourth annual, "Black Market/Black Maria: Skip the Mall" exhibition. As always, the exhibition will carry a bazaar theme, complete with some of the accoutrements of the shopping experience: paintings suspended on clothing hangers, displayed in shoe boxes and on display stands holding a variety of artworks.

The idea is to both poke gentle fun at the cosmopolitan shopping experience and, on a serious note, remind ourselves of the spiritual rewards of appreciating and owning great art. In keeping with the shopping mall theme, patrons will also be able to take with them whatever they purchase, just as they would in a store.

A painting can be as satisfying as wearing a sexy dress or owning a feature-laden barbecue, except there is an actual, sometimes life-changing meaning waiting to be derived from a work of art. Hence the subtitle of the exhibition: Skip the Mall.
"Black Market" is quintessential Black Maria, showing the work of emerging artists and established artists side by side. It is a great opportunity to see work by artists with international collectors as well as by artists who will be showing their work outside of an academic environment for the first time.

Juri Ueda: Phantom Aquarium
November 22nd through January 3rd, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, 22nd of November, 7:00 - 10:30pm

Black Maria Gallery is pleased to present Phantom Aquarium, an exhibition of Juri Ueda's latest works. The inspiration for the exhibition comes from Juri's relationship nature. Living in Japan, water is large part of her landscape.

"I see water as the representation of emotions (sadness, fear, serenity, etc.,) and therefore often find it to be the source of my inspiration. Since my artwork is a tiny piece of my world in that particular moment, it is in a way a tiny aquarium of what will be lost in time, cut out from the big ocean," Juri Ueda.

Juri lives and works in Osaka, Japan. She received a BFA in Traditional Illustration from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco in 2005. Juri works almost exclusively with watercolors. Some of the galleries that have shown her work include: Suite 100 Gallery in Seattle, Compound Gallery in Portland, Gallery 1988 in San Francisco, Gallery Sora in Osaka and of course Black Maria Gallery in Los Angeles. Juri will have her first solo exhibition at Black Maria Gallery in April of 2009.