Image: Mitra Fabian, Ventilation series, 2006-7, Paper and glue, Dimensions variable.
Courtesy of the Artist and Bandini Art, Los Angeles.

Mitra Fabian (Phantom Galleries 2006) will be having her first bay area solo exhibit with an opening reception this Friday, 8/10, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.

(from the ICA website:) Using everyday household materials, Mitra Fabian transforms scotch tape, glue and paper into sprawling floor works and topographies that confound scale. From a distance, the artwork resembles urban developments flowing into the contours of the land. At a microscopic level, the work might be seen as proliferating spores or an aberrant growth, indefinitely spreading.

Fabian's installation and sculptural works straddle the line between exquisite and grotesque. The objects can be beautiful and benign; made from innocuous materials into sculpture more sublime than threatening. Yet simultaneously, the enigmatic forms seem to be in the process of unchecked growth and glue and tape become disturbingly epidermal.