Laurel Shear: Where Dreams Come True and Go To Die
September 10th - October 1st, 2016  
Opening Reception - Saturday September 10th  6-8pm
A reading from her novel in process Fantasizing the Amalfi Coast by Daviel Shy

[Images]

(Los Angeles)   Tiger Strikes Asteroid presents their first exhibition of California based painter Laurel Shear entitled Where Dreams Come True and Go To Die  opening on Saturday, September 10th, 2016 from 6pm to 8pm. The exhibition runs through October 1st and is open to the public on Saturdays from noon to
5pm.

The unique culture and landscape in California serves as Shear’s complicated visual source for her paintings. Her current work is fueled by three types of light: light through trees in northern California, the 600,000 light bulbs in the Disneyland light parade, and the electronic yet blindingly dark light at strip clubs. Shear uses her  own personal experiences, images from pop culture such as the famous for being famous television personalities exemplified by the Kardashians, and the long rich history of Western Painting to create an unapologetically female voice.  The attitude in Shear’s work and the images she chooses playfully and critically isolate the highly gendered way all of us are raised and manipulated by the culture at large.  

Shear makes large, lush oil paintings that employ devices and conventions from different traditions of abstraction like Color Field Painting and Abstract Expressionism, alongside traditions that use representation such as Vanitas, Photo Realism and Pop Art. She explores formal relationships between
abstraction and representation, and is currently focused on the materiality of paint as a metaphor in relation to her subject matter.

Laurel Shear was born in San Francisco in 1984.  She received her BA from San Francisco State University in 2009 and her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin.  She has studied fine art abroad at Studio Art Center International in Florence, Italy, and at Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, Australia. She has
been awarded fellowships to study at Tyler School of Art - Summer Painting Intensive (2011) and Ox-Bow School of Art (2013).  Shear has shown across the United States including Ampersand International in San Francisco, Not Gallery in Austin Texas, The Ice Box in Philadelphia, and the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles.