Catharine Clark Gallery 248 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 TEL 415.399.1439 www.cclarkgallery.com

Chris Doyle | Hollow and Swell

in conjunction with BOX BLUR 2.0 September 9 – November 11, 2017

Join us for an opening reception on Saturday, September 9 from 3 – 6pm Conversation with the artist and Alice Gray Stites, Chief Curator and Museum Director of 21c Museum Hotels at 4:30pm

Chris Doyle. Still from Swell, 2017. 4K Digital Animation. Edition of 5 + 2AP. 10:12 minutes.

Score by Jeremy Turner, performed by Flux Quartet. Sound design by Owen O’Neil.

San Francisco, CA: Catharine Clark Gallery presents Hollow and Swell, an exhibition of new animations and watercolors by Chris

Doyle. The works mark the conclusion of Doyle's extended response to Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole's iconic five part

series, The Course of Empire (1833 - 1836), which depicts a single landscape as it transitions from a pastoral setting to a dense

metropolis that finally, through conflict and overpopulation, deteriorates to a site of overgrown ruins. Hollow and Swell draws

inspiration from the central painting of the cycle, The Consummation of Empire (1836), which imagines a neo-classical civilization at

its apex. Whereas Cole's painting responded to a shift from agrarian to mechanized society during the Industrial Revolution, Doyle's

work considers the impacts of digital technology on a rapidly proliferating cultural landscape.

Catharine Clark Gallery 248 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 TEL 415.399.1439 www.cclarkgallery.com

The centerpiece of Catharine Clark Gallery's presentation is Swell, a 4K digital animation with an original score by Emmy-

nominated composer Jeremy Turner as performed by Flux Quartet. Swell imagines a city that has grown to unprecedented heights

at a historical juncture where industrialization has yielded to a technological revolution. Natural environments are obstructed by

buildings and structures throughout Doyle's animation, a salient metaphor for our attempts to control nature through modes of

expansion that undermine our most basic needs for survival. On October 27 and 28 at 7:30pm, Eos Ensemble will perform Jeremy

Turner's score at Catharine Clark Gallery as part of BOX BLUR 2.0. Tickets for the event will also be available through

Eventbrite. Seating is limited.

Doyle renders laborers and construction workers in silhouette, reminding us of the human cost of industrialization and expansion. At

the same time, traces of the artist's intervention -- including a depiction of Doyle's hand illustrating the animation -- draw attention to

the role that artists also play in pervasive -- and even invasive -- proliferation of "culture."

Hollow and Swell also features The Price of Gold, a stunning three-channel animation displayed on a folding "screen." Adapted

from Doyle's 2016 animation In the Labyrinth -- which debuted at Catharine Clark Gallery's 2016 presentation at Texas Contemporary -

- The Price of Gold depicts an eerily luminous setting of twisted thickets, branches and animal skulls rendered in gold. For Doyle, the

landscape in The Price of Gold represents a "repository of fears, desires, and fantasies" that reflects the looming threat of

environmental collapse caused by material consumption and excess.

In two related watercolors, Doyle renders the Hermitage Museum's famous Peacock Clock, a gilded automaton fabricated by James

Cox in the late 18th century that features three life-sized mechanical birds. As both a decorative object and a symbol of excessive

wealth, the Peacock Clock becomes a strange artifact of a decadent history before the onset of bloody and violent social upheaval.

Multiple sculptural objects throughout the gallery, in contrast, present hybrid animations presented under glass vitrines -- Doyle

remarks that "part handmade, part digital," these works "bring together elements of the natural world with electronic components into

a kind of precarious" harmony.

Catharine Clark Gallery's presentation of Hollow and Swell coincides with the launch of BOX BLUR 2.0, a series of concerts, film

screenings and conversations. In its second year, BOX BLUR is the non-profit wing of the gallery and part of an ongoing initiative to

support performance programming and education. Partners for BOX BLUR 2.0 include Chris Doyle, Words on Dance, the San Francisco

Dance Film Festival, Jeremy Turner, Eos Ensemble and Alice Gray Stites on behalf of 21c Museum Hotels.

Please join us for an opening reception on September 9 from 3 - 6pm, as well as our inaugural event for BOX BLUR 2.0: a

conversation with Chris Doyle and Alice Gray Stites, Chief Curator and Museum Director of 21c Museum Hotels. Beginning at

4:30pm, Doyle and Stites will discuss the works on view in Hollow and Swell, as well as their multiple collaborations through 21c,

including Dreams on Infinite Luster, currently on view at 21c Museum Hotel in Durham, NC.

Catharine Clark Gallery 248 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 TEL 415.399.1439 www.cclarkgallery.com

Chris Doyle. Still from Swell, 2017. 4K Digital Animation. Edition of 5 + 2AP. 10:12 minutes.

Score by Jeremy Turner, performed by Flux Quartet. Sound design by Owen O’Neil.

Chris Doyle | Hollow and Swell

September 9 – November 11, 2017

Saturday, September 9: Opening reception from 3 – 6pm | Conversation with the artist and Alice Gray Stites at 4:30pm

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BOX BLUR 2.0 Programming

The San Francisco Dance Film Festival (SFDFF) and BOX BLUR: Select films will be screened in conjunction with Hollow and Swell in the gallery’s media room,

beginning September 9. Films are directed by an international roster of filmmakers.

Films: Genome, directed by Loughlan Prior and Jeremy Brick; The Sum of All Parts, directed by Peter Bil’ak, Lukas Timulak; White Spirit, directed by Aude Thuries; and

Womb, directed by Gilles Jobin

Friday, October 20 at 5pm: Champagne reception and large-screen projection of SFDFF works selected for Catharine Clark Gallery and 3-D presentation of Womb.

Filmmakers in attendance -- to be confirmed.

Friday, October 27 and October 28 at 7:30pm: Eos Ensemble performs Jeremy Turner's score to Chris Doyle's Swell, as well as a program of music by Janacek,

Debussy and Shostakovich. Accompanied by a panel discussion with Chris Doyle, Jeremy Turner and Craig Reiss. Tickets available soon on Eventbrite.

Please visit the gallery's website and Eventbrite page for addition BOX BLUR events.

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Media inquiries contact Anton Stuebner: associate@cclarkgallery.com

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday from 10:30am – 5:30pm| Saturday from 11am - 6pm

Next up: Wanxin Zhang | November 18, 2017 – January 20, 2018

Gallery Closed for the Holidays: December 24, 2017 – January 1, 2018

Catharine Clark Gallery 248 Utah Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 TEL 415.399.1439 www.cclarkgallery.com

CHRIS DOYLE is a multidisciplinary artist who received his BFA from

Boston College and his Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s

Graduate School of Design. Industrial ruin, debris, and waste are all

featured in Doyle’s work, which focuses on societal need for restoration

and conservation.

This exploration began with an interest in reinterpreting Thomas Cole’s

series of paintings, The Course of Empire (1833 - 1836) with a video,

Apocalypse Management, commissioned by MASSMoCA for the exhibit

These Days: Elegies for Modern Times, and exhibited in 2009.

Doyle's 2012 exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery, Idyllwild, brought 19th

century paintings by Thomas Cole, 15th century panoramic landscapes

by Hans Memling, and Last Judgment altarpieces from the Renaissance

to contemporary relevance by reinterpreting the original narratives and

using newer technologies to address timeless subjects.

Doyle’s temporary and permanent urban projects include commissions

for the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia, the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Stockholm, Sweden, as well as for many civic

installations and private collections both internationally and domestically. His exhibition titled Unfolded has become a permanent

installation at 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Additional projects include LEAP (2000), a video projection at New York City's Columbus Circle in conjunction with posters throughout

MTA's subway system, presented by Creative Time and Commutable, and commissioned by The Public Art Fund. In 2007, 50,000 Beds,

a large-scale, collaborative video installation involving 45 artists, was presented simultaneously in Connecticut by The Aldrich

Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield), ArtSpace (New Haven), and Real Art Ways (Hartford). In July 2014, Doyle’s film Bright Canyon

transformed Times Square’s electronic billboards into a flourishing canyon of waterfalls and creatures. In 2015, Doyle was also

commissioned to produce The Lightening: a Project for Wave Hill's Aquatic Garden in celebration of Wave Hill's 50th anniversary.

Chris Doyle’s work has been exhibited at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, MASSMoCA, P.S.1 Museum of Art, the Tang Museum, the

Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Taubman Museum of Art, and The Sculpture Center. His animations have also been included in the

New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center (2008) and the Melbourne International Arts Festival (2005). Doyle has received grants from

the New York Foundation for the Arts, NYSCA, Creative Capital Foundation and the MAP Fund. He received the Borusan Contemporary

Art Collection Prize and was named as a Guggenheim Fellow in the discipline of Film and Video. Doyle lives and works in Brooklyn has

been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2010.