San Francisco artist Tara Foley's anticipated solo show at Fecal Face.com's new gallery space (which opened in February and is aptly named Fecal Face Dot Gallery), features gouache paintings on paper accompanied by mixed media three dimensional sculptures on shelves below, in some instances further exploring the subject of the painting above it and in others a puzzling juxtaposition.  If you're familiar with Tara's work, you'll find the work in this show much more sparsely composed, much more restrained than, for instance, her all-out transformation of Triple Base Gallery two years ago, where she basically created a rural backyard in the gallery, laying sod on the floor, and building a swing set and a few full-size trees. 

The installation piece in her current show, Say Hello to Neverending, is actually a found object--a door salvaged from a fire on her block.  The door must have been closed the entire time the fire blazed, for one side was completely untouched by the flames and still painted rental-apartment white.  It now bears the artist's touch--the phrase "When One Door Closes Another Opens" painted in a flourish of calligraphy.  This is perhaps the most optimistic piece in the show, but would have had more gravity if it weren't for the hopeful and rather sanguine proverb emblazoned on the piece.

The show's premise is to represent the "infinite potential borne from life cycles" and Tara aptly shows the recurring destruction and reinvention of history, nature and culture in her paintings through recurring symbolic imagery and almost-jarring juxtapositions.  I say "almost-jarring" because the use of negative space in her pieces softens the blow, separating the elements of the composition and reminding us that they are painted, imposed and invented on the paper.  In the piece Next Nature and the Ghosts of the Past we see what may be a Buddhist temple high above on a hill, a group of ghostly looking Native Americans, remnants of the Crusaders, an escalator and a spiral staircase (both leading nowhere), and a majestic polar bear on its hind legs with a mystical constellation (in her signature pink) above his head.  But wait! - on the right there's a little man with a rifle aimed right at the polar bear, ready to blow the whole life cycle to pieces.  That little man shows up all over the exhibition, always with that rifle aimed at the beautiful polar bear.  It seems like she's pointing to a dead-end in the life cycle here, and I find it hard to imagine what door opens after the Polar Bear Door is closed forever. 

She further points out how messed up mankind is with the brilliant and claustrophobic painting, The Disorders We Become, a flowchart of personality disorders pointing from blank-faced individuals, towards what looks like a giant anthill or beehive, and shooting off into the left panel of the painting into a crowd of unidentified people, "others" and "strangers".  Trees and nature also exert their influence on us in this painting, alive or dead, signified by the pink lines of thread extending from the trees and connecting to the people, all intertwined in a messy, complicated life-cycle.  This show leaves you with quite a bit to think about and a sense of the inexplicable.  Are we somehow stuck building a stairway to nowhere, our rifles all the while trained on the last vestiges of our natural world? 

--Natalie Stanchfield

(*Images, from top to bottom:  Tara Foley, Say Hello to Neverending, June 6 - July 3, 2008; Fecal Face Dot Gallery, Take the Stairs to Neverending, 2008, gouache and tape on archival paper, 30 x 22", courtesy of the Artist and Fecal Face Dot Gallery.  Tara Foley, Say Hello to Neverending, June 6 - July 3, 2008; Fecal Face Dot Gallery, For Those Who Live Behind the Castle, 2008, mixed media sculpture, gouache and thread on archival paper, 30 x 22", courtesy of the Artist and Fecal Face Dot Gallery.  Tara Foley, Say Hello to Neverending, June 6 - July 3, 2008; Fecal Face Dot Gallery, Next Nature and the Ghosts of the Past, 2008, gouache and thread on archival paper, 41 x 29.5", courtesy of the Artist and Fecal Face Dot Gallery.  Tara Foley, Say Hello to Neverending, June 6 - July 3, 2008; Fecal Face Dot Gallery, The Disorders We Become, 2008, mixed media sculpture, gouache and thread on archival paper, 29.75 x 21.75", courtesy of the Artist and Fecal Face Dot Gallery.  Tara Foley, Say Hello to Neverending, June 6 - July 3, 2008; Fecal Face Dot Gallery, The Hunter and the Hunted, 2008, gouache on archival paper, mixed media, 30 x 22", courtesy of the Artist and Fecal Face Dot Gallery.)