Sheldon Greenberg: Syncretic Overlays Exhibit (SF)
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Modernism West / Foreign Cinema | 2534 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
Event Details
Submitted by the Event Organizer
August 22 – December 31, 2025, Artist reception Tuesday, October 21, 6-8PM
ON VIEW NOW THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2025
RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST TUESDAY, OCTOBER, 21, 6-8PM
Modernism is pleased to present seven paintings and nine works on paper by Sheldon Greenberg in “Syncretic Overlays.” Reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg, Greenberg appropriates familiar iconography to pay homage to masters who have shaped artistic expression and to explore how their influence resonates in contemporary practice.
The paintings borrow imagery from Old Masters such as Jean Simeon Chardin, Edgar Degas, Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse and Balthaus. Having admired these artists’ historic paintings for decades, Sheldon Greenberg wonders whether they might gain new admirers if they were to be reconceived as contemporary art. In pursuit of this question, Greenberg critically broke down what he saw and systematically reconstituted the most fascinating elements in his own contemporary style.
As eclectic as these works may be, Greenberg has unified them through his use of visual devices carried over from his previous bodies of work. Principal among these are his use of silkscreens, stripes, polka dots and mute charts. The silkscreens are especially important on both a visual and conceptual level. Often taking Greenberg’s photographs of palm trees as their subject, they provocatively disrupt the traditional spatial organization of paintings from past centuries, in addition to distorting the viewer’s sense of time, as they employ a photographic process that didn’t exist in the era of Chardin.
Named after well-known songs from pop culture, Greenberg’s paintings recontextualize landmark works from the canon to offer the viewer an opportunity for a postmodern reconsideration of the works’ cultural, personal and temporal meanings.
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Presented by MODERNISM INC.
Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.
Cost: FREE*
