FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 19, 2025 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to announce its 30th exhibition, A Living Room — an ambitious group show conceived by gallery artist Joe Ferriso. The exhibition assembles twenty artists working at the intersection of aesthetics, functionality, domesticity, and craft. Featured artists include Jonathan Anzalone (Portland, OR), Kim Bennett (Oakland, CA), Takming Chuang (San Francisco, CA), Mark Dutcher (Sea Ranch, CA), Veva Edelson (Sonoma, CA), Joe Ferriso (Sebastopol, CA), Johanna Friedman (Los Angeles, CA), Linda Geary (Oakland, CA), J Grabowski (New York, NY), Jiang Heng (Guangzhou, China), Ava Koohbor (San Francisco, CA), Terri Loewenthal (Oakland, CA), Amy Nathan (Oakland, CA), Duncan Oja (San Francisco, CA), Ben Peterson (Oakland, CA), Steuart Pittman (Oakland, CA), Sally Scopa (Bellingham, Washington), Vince Skelly (Los Angeles, CA), Jamie Sterling Pitt (Houston, Texas), and Fu Zhongwang (Wuhan, China). A Living Room will be open to the public from March 15, 2025, to April 26, 2025, with an artist reception hosted on Saturday, March 29th, from 4:30-6:30 PM PST. For more information, please visit www.qualiagallery.com.

The works assembled in A Living Room all express a connection to material that is slow, thoughtful, welcoming, and warm. Utilizing fabric, wood, stone, metal, light, and color, the pieces seek to transcend their materiality and attract close examination, touch, and contemplation. These contemporary artifacts situate themselves in A Living Room and participate in life activities—works to Illuminate, support, and reflect upon.

The selected artists all have creative practices that draw inspiration from their environment and community. For Ava Koohbor, her art begins with seeking for materials, “these found objects manifest themselves into assemblages…As form emerges the process proceeds; the artwork will eventually become a living object manifesting itself by force of its own energy.” Koohbor will also activate her sonic sculptures through a performance held during the exhibition. Amy Nathan has made a room divider and an open book cast in bronze. The artist carefully hand-crafts these sculptures and depicts an array of flower petals that simultaneously reveal and obscure one’s vantage point. The bronze book, placed open atop a rough-hewn table by Duncan Oja, becomes situated in a context neither artist could foresee. Many of the pseudo-domestic vignettes are built on the premise of conversation. Like an actual living room, guests are invited, and conversations are sparked. In this case, the artworks are the guests. One work of art speaks to the other, and their combined dialogue generates a casual third meaning, something closer to experiencing art outside the museum or gallery setting.

Artmaking brings a sense of connection to the body and a pause from the march of time. For Sally Scopa, she explains, “Her work is an invitation to share in this state of focused attention.” Veva Edelson reiterates this idea of physical attention and states, “Every piece emerges through a quiet devotion to the act of making—whether it is the patient layering of textures, the subtle shifts of light and shadow from the arrangement, or the new discovery found within the process itself.” Edelson and Scopa work in different mediums, sharing a similar intention to reveal an internal dialogue through the artistic process. 

Art is a form of communication built from visual elements. When artworks are shown together, the language embedded within them is interpreted in relation to their context. Jiang Heng’s Falling Flowers paintings have traveled from Guangzhou, China, to California to be in dialogue within A Living Room. It is not unusual to have a bouquet of flowers in a living room setting; however, Jiang Heng’s Falling Flowers depict digitally shredded paper suspended in a vacuum. The ensuing collision of mediums, methodology, and context produces a multilingual dialogue that expands the scope of the exhibition.

When thinking about the ideal place to experience art, it is not a museum but rather a domestic space. The home is where the bulk of our time is experienced, and interacting with art at home reminds one of humanity's higher aims. What makes a space feel alive? Beyond the people that inhabit a space, the art, furniture, lighting, and architecture all contribute. When all the ingredients are carefully measured, and intention, love, and thought are added, a space comes alive. 

The gallery at Qualia Contemporary is a clean, crisp rectangle, a perfect blank slate. This exhibition, A Living Room, is an experiment to activate the gallery with an assembly of objects that are all functional and serve to conjure a sense of aliveness.

– Exhibition text by Joe Ferriso

About Joe Ferriso

Joe Ferriso grew up in a Dominican, Honduran, and Italian household in a doomsday cult in middle-class conservative Long Island, NY, in the 80s and 90s. Making art during church services and skateboarding after school provided an outlet for processing his experiences with authority. Embracing play, freedom, and optimism, his artworks are made from recycled and found materials. His sculptural and painted works are primarily concerned with how color relationships impact perception. Ferriso moved to the Bay Area in 2009 and is a graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 2003) and Stanford University (MFA 2018). He teaches painting and sculpture at Sonoma State University and lives with his wife, two young children, and a dog in Sebastopol, CA.