Mitra Fabian: Natural Conduct 

June 2–July 27, 2017

Mitra Fabian, Tuft, 2017, capacitors on foam core, 18 x 20 inches
Courtesy of the Artist and Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland

Chandra Cerrito Contemporary is pleased to announce two concurrent solo exhibitions of works by Bay Area artists Brian Caraway and Mitra Fabian from June 2 to July 27, 2017.  In Caraway’s Divine Madness and Fabian’s Natural Conduct, paintings and sculptural works explore the richness of repetition.

Mitra Fabian’s intricate sculptures incorporate found objects, like electrical resistors and capacitors, recovered from computer manufacturing refuse.  Swarms of these circuit board elements are embedded in porcelain structures or fastened to paper, resulting in biomorphic shapes reminiscent of coral, sea urchins or lichen despite their high tech components.  Like artists Tara Donovan and Gay Outlaw, Fabian re-presents accretions of manmade materials in unexpected and evocative ways.  In Fabian’s case, remnants from technology consumption are transformed into hybrids of the machined and the organic.  In this duality, nature seems to dominate by providing the overriding sculptural forms, perhaps suggesting a long-term view in which even the most advanced human innovations will be subsumed by the natural world. 

Mitra Fabian was born in Iran and raised in Boston.  She earned a BA in Art and Anthropology from Kenyon College in Gambier, OH in 1996 and an MFA from California State University, Northridge in 2005.  She relocated to the Bay Area in 2005.  Fabian has been exhibiting nationally since 1997 including at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR, the Laguna Art Museum, the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, and Ampersand in San Francisco.  In 2007 her work was featured in a solo exhibition at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.  Other exhibitions include those at Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, and Oliver Art Center at California College of the Arts in Oakland.  Fabian has completed residencies at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and Centre d’Art Marnay in France, This is Fabian’s first exhibition at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary.

EXHIBITION GALLERY