Jan Wurm/ Shadow & Light

Having lived in California and Europe, Jan Wurm has honed an eye for social patterns and conventions. She currently divides her time between Berkeley and L.A. and her hand between drawing and painting. Wurm has taught at the University of California, Berkeley Extension and lectured extensively. The past Director of Exhibitions and Curator of Art at the Richmond Art Center, Wurm has authored exhibition catalogues and curated major exhibitions focused on a humanist tradition. Jan Wurm's paintings, drawings, and artist's books examine daily life to reveal aspects of contemporary culture that inform our relationships. Infused with warmth, humor, and an energetic line, the works invite the viewer to join the moment. Her work, exhibited internationally, is in collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Diego Museum of Art, New York Public Library Print Collection, Archiv Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen, Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna, and Tiroler Landesmuseen, Innsbruck.

A Bright Dance – A Dark Gaze

The masked ball has held the excitement of the hidden: the transformative magic of the alluring unknown,  the camouflage of the imperfections of the homely, the secret tryst of the forbidden love, the clandestine political plotting, the (tres)passing of the un-invited.

The masked ball has captured our imaginations and fueled plays and operas, novels and paintings. It has filled the thoughts and dreams of the days and nights of centuries.

When the 20^th century writer, Truman Capote, threw a grand Black and White Ball, he came under the scrutiny of press and public. Capote was criticized for his extravaganza as it was pointedly observed that it was financed by the sales of a book of terror. His huge success, In Cold Blood, traded on his interviews and relationships developed with the perpetrators of a grizzly crime of murder.

These mixed media works present a splashing white of gesso, a frivolous line of ink to burst forth with the excitement of gowns and feathers, champaign and music. These concoctions of gaiety are layered over obscured images. This Black and White Ball celebration masks the mugshots of the perpetrators in In Cold Blood.

In successive generations of Xeroxed copies, the source is obscured but areas darken – a Mark of Cain, a stain carried forward. History bleeds through, and even in black and white, the history, the source colors the present.

The ways in which ill-gotten wealth’s exploitive labor practices, environmental degradation, pollution, deception, corruption, and trafficking can be whitewashed through social charade and distraction, these have been dark points of contention throughout decades.

The surface of sparkle, glitz and glitter serve to seduce. The distractions of details, like the secrets of magicians, redirect from the action. An elaborate slight of hand diverts attention from the dark, the unethical, the illegal, the nefarious.