SAN DIEGO, CA.- A new solo exhibition at Four Walls presents an evocative selection from Kimberly Tomney’s extensive series of swimming pools. Tomney’s mixed-media works use reflective silver paint and ink on lined notepaper to depict outdoor leisure scenes that are vacant of vacationers. Kimberly Tomney: Silver Lining will be on display in the gallery’s Project Room from March 8 to May 7, 2008, concurrently with the exhibition Bill Dane: An Avalanche of Circumstance, Photographs Since the 1970s, in the Main Gallery. A reception will be held on April 12.

With an affinity to Southern California “light and space” art forms, which focus on the dematerialization of objects through an emphasis on light itself, Tomney’s pools illuminate. These hybridized painted drawings are intimate in scale, minimal in detail, and have an ephemeral effect. By absorbing and reflecting subtle shifts in ambient light according to the time of day in which they are seen, and the angle and distance in which they are viewed, these pieces suggestively map the fluctuating physical and perceptual relationships of the viewer to each individual work. Significantly, however, these alternating dark then shimmering pieces are also handcrafted objects, with the economy of means in which they were produced made obvious as a humble form of elegance.

In “Mirage Motel” for example, the effect of the artist’s combinations of solids, lines, and liquids (apparent in the way the applied silver paint flowed and dried) suggests depths both beneath and well beyond the surface of the piece. Tomney’s explorations of optics, perception, and the transitional states in between reflect upon the human condition that what you get is not necessarily what you see.

Kimberly Tomney received a BFA from San Diego State University and has exhibited at the Oceanside Museum of Art and galleries in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the La Jolla Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in San Diego.

Reinventing Ray Street, Four Walls presents exhibitions of local and international artists, which garner the positive critical attention of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Art Week, San Diego City Beat, El Latino, Riviera Magazine and other publications.

Gallery Hours: Free and open to the public Thursdays - Saturdays, 11: 00 a.m. - 6: 00 p.m., and by appointment.

Ray at Night: Receptions occur during this North Park neighborhood art walk, held the second Saturday evening of every month.