LOS ANGELES, CA.- Bank presents Ann Diener: “Growth,” on view January 15 through March 1, 2008. Informed by the shifting topographical and social landscape of Central California farmland over the past few decades, Ann Diener creates wall-size drawings that speak to the people and places affected by generations of harvest, development and migration. Coming from four generations of farmers, Diener is intimately aware of the dramatic changes that have occurred amongst farmers in Central California. Dense with interlaced organic and man-made forms, Diener’s labor-intensive, monumental works announce themselves with stunning visual bravado. Her intricate layered images create an architectural and agricultural palimpsest, a Baroque space where surprising associations and themes come to the fore.

In Growth, Diener’s Los Angeles solo debut, the artist exhibits new large-scale works on paper as well as small studies and works on canvas, further broadening her investigation into how the land has been visually changed by successive generations of agricultural development, from early small farming communities to today’s fully mechanized corporate farms. Through intricate draftsmanship, she depicts the iconographic remnants left over from the German-Irish workers of the mid-1800 and 1900’s to the predominantly Hispanic farmers of today. Diener is fascinated by the way those who work the land cultivate and harvest crops and by the intricate architecture of industrialized farming.

Remarkable juxtapositions abound in Diener’s recent works. Here architectural elements such as greenhouses, wires, fences, arches and hoops weave in and out, sharing the picture plane with sweeping organic forms such as webs, leaves, feathers, seeds and flowers to create intricate and expansive fields, voluminous forms and ponderous negative space. The work intimately pulls the viewer close with precise details yet also requires a distance in order to perceive the whole. This viewing experience mimics the stratified push and pull, macro and micro texture of historical memory that permeates the Central California landscape.

Santa Barbara based artist Ann Diener works primarily on paper and canvas on panel.
Diener received her BA from UCLA and MFA from UC Santa Barbara. Her recent exhibitions include “Art on Paper”, the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, “Exploring Borders”, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, “draw, paper, scissors”, Domestic Setting and “North by Northwest”, Hunsaker Schlesinger. Diener will have a solo exhibition at Edward Cella Art + Architecture in 2008. Her work has been published in the LA Times, Art on Paper, Artweek and New American Paintings. Diener has also exhibited with BANK at the following art fairs: Aqua Art Miami, Art LA, Preview Berlin and Pulse London.