We are pleased to share that the Sonya Rapoport drawing Survey Chart No. 19 will be included in the exhibition Way Bay at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, January 17th – May 6th, 2018.
A sweeping exploration of the creative energies that have emerged from the San Francisco Bay Area over the past 200 years.
This exhibition is not a conventional historical survey but rather an open-ended and provocative attempt to reveal hidden currents and connections among works from disparate times, cultures, and communities.
– BAMPFA Director & Way Bay Chief Curator Lawrence Rinder
Sonya Rapoport’s Survey Chart works elaborate on the Nu-Shu language of earlier pieces, a collection of feminist stencils representing gendered symbols. Working directly on found, pre-printed papers, Rapoport used vivid acrylics or in other cases, delicate, atmospheric graphite.
After discovering a collection of antique survey charts referencing a dam-building project on Idaho’s Snake River, she repurposed them as substrates for the series, building on her interest in information, symbolic communication, and visual analysis.
The work—one of two pieces acquired last year by BAMPFA—represents Rapoport’s career at the pivotal point when she was transitioning from Abstract Expressionism to Conceptual Art practice and illuminates her interest in the visual dialogue between found surface and painted/drawn shapes.
– Text by KunstWorks