OAKLAND, CALIF.- Clars Auction Gallery in collaboration with exhibited.at presents the visionary inaugural auction: Artists to Watch: California. This section will lead the Spring Modern + Contemporary Art + Design Auction held on March 21, 2pm.

Founded by former Christie’s specialist Rodania Leong, exhibited.at focuses on art, community and innovation, empowering artists, curators, and galleries with the ability to archive their rich exhibition history while providing guidance on diverse art initiatives.
Together with Clars Auction Gallery, the exceptional art appraisers and auctioneers, who have over fifty years of expertise in hosting Bay Area auctions, this collaboration harnesses the expertise of both exhibited.at and Clars Auction Gallery whilst delving into the rich history and allure of California art.

California has long been a force for artistic innovation, and this auction aims to showcase the work of ten pioneering artists based in the Golden State. A few of the artists who will be featured in this inaugural sale are Gabe Weis and Alexa Arnold. Gabe Weiss is a mixed-media and NFT artist living in the Bay Area. The self-taught artist is inspired by street art and stoic philosophy and uses a stream-of-consciousness approach to his work to explore perceptions of reality. His physical and digital works are shown internationally. This past year, his work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Picasso Museum, Seattle Art Fair, and various galleries throughout Asia and the United States. Gabe is committed to sustainability in his craft. By reusing older materials found around the house such as cereal boxes, maps, and old dictionaries to create timeless works, he hopes his work inspires others to reuse materials as part of their art practice. “So What?”, 2023 Mixed-Media Collage on Canvas, acrylic paint, oil markers, graffiti markers 40x 30 in. (estimate: $7,000 / 10,000). Alexis Arnold is a mixed media visual artist in Oakland, CA. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Aspen Art Museum, Napa Valley Museum, Whatcom Museum, Beaux-Arts Mons Belgium, Atlanta Airport, Bergdorf Goodman, di Rosa, and The NY Hall of Science.

Alexis’ work is included in the collections of SFMOMA, Meta, VCU, MediaMath, Costa Cruises, University of Pittsburgh, and others. SCULPTURE Book, 'Oxford Dictionary of Art' The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Crystallized Book Series), 2024 book, borax 7.75 x 11 x 8 inches signed, (estimate: $1,500 / 2,000).

Clars will present a very important work by the 1991 National Artist of the Philippines, Hernando Ruiz Ocampo. Ocampo stands as an iconic artist in the Philippines, being a leader of modernist painting in the country during the first half of the twentieth century. As a painter who ushered in an era of creative exploration in the country, Ocampo developed a singular style that expressed the Filipino experience through emotive color, form, and abstraction.

H.R. Ocampo was born and raised in greater Manila in 1911 and studied both law and writing, becoming an accomplished poet and writer of fiction before approaching the visual arts. His early painting career is marked by experimentation with modes of expression, including a series titled Luetica, for which his visceral depictions of human mortality earned him strong reactions upon exhibition. After the devastation of World War II in the Philippines, progressive artists worked to reflect the hardships and realities of life. Ocampo and his colleagues, including fellow National Artists Vicente S. Manansala and Cesar Legaspi, inaugurated a movement of distinctly Filipino Neo-Realism, combining modernist abstraction with figurative subject matter. Neo-Realists took their inspiration from the struggles of workers, family life, poverty, and the local landscape; although one can detect the influence of prior and concurrent movements in Europe and the United States, including Cubism and Vorticism as well as Social Realism, the Neo-Realists’ work was categorically unique in its blend of the Filipino experience with modernist aesthetics. Out of the many talented artists in his circle, Ocampo favored the freedom that abstraction afforded him in his work, and as he gained confidence in his practice, it became more symbolic and less objective in nature.

Ocampo continued to delve further into abstraction as his career progressed.

His close peer Cesar Legaspi was quoted speaking about Ocampo’s creative evolution, stating, “I think the impact of those paintings was needed then as the controversy between the moderns and the conservatives was going full blast and we had to have some kind of exemplar as to how far and how powerful a new kind of art could be.” While Ocampo did create paintings that used abstraction while still forming a recognizable scene, such as the landscape Reaching for the Moon and the mother and child figures in Break of Day, his most well-known pieces are those that allow for open interpretation and push viewers to investigate their own subconscious. Here, the painter relies on formal elements to create a sensory experience. The principles of color and shape are fundamental to Ocampo’s work in the later years of his career. One can identify his personal connection to the color orange in many of his works, and he uses amorphous and organic shapes like tiles to form imposing structures, painstakingly faceted with vivid tones to achieve depth and form.

The monumental work by Ocampo in the March sale, one of only two made by the artist in this size, is titled Mga Kiti, which can be taken as a reference to either duck embryos or mosquito larvae. Dating to 1978, the scroll-like painting, done in acrylic paint on Tetoron fabric, showcases a repeating pattern of similar forms that echo human figures, the bodies of birds, lotus pods, and cellular structures. The background, painted a deep red that graduates into lighter crimson, recalls blood, with the small circles sprinkled throughout suggesting blood cells. Yellow linework traces throughout the length of the painting in a style reminiscent of batik, a medium originating in the neighboring country of Indonesia, and further separates the areas of red, black, and orange like cells dividing. The lines and colors seem to undulate, expand, and contract, like compartments of breathing lungs. Like in much of his previous work, Ocampo utilizes color, specifically in the spectrum of orange, and creates a mosaic-like composition. Although the piece was commissioned by patron Ginny Jacinto, the idea of regeneration may have been close to Ocampo’s own heart during its creation; the artist was in his late sixties and dealing with multiple health issues. Mga Kiti was Ocampo’s final painting before his death in December of 1978; its themes of renewal, movement, and creation seem to be a summation of his work, the balance between figuration and abstraction, and a pure expression of life itself. Mga Kiti serves as a grand testament to Ocampo’s talents as a master of his craft, both in formal composition, with his uncanny ability to evoke tactility and sensoriality, and as a translator of ideas, emotion, and the creative force from which all art originates.

In addition to the stunning Ocampo painting, Clars is presenting an array of impressive pieces in the sale. A featured work is a life-size ceramic kimono by American sculptor Karen LaMonte. LaMonte is known for her sculptures of garments which appear to be draped over a human form but stand alone as if moving on their own. LaMonte works in glass, bronze, and ceramic, and the child’s kimono in the March sale is made of ceramic with a light blue celadon glaze.

Another sculpture highlight in the March sale is a bronze by Eric Goulder titled The Woman. This figural piece depicts a nude woman seated while raising a hand to her mouth, a look of surprise on her face. The nearly life-size sculpture is formed in a highly realistic style displaying musculature and hair texture, as well as emotion and body language.

Moving on to the selection of paintings this March, Clars will offer two oil on canvas works by Bay Area Figurative Movement member Henrietta Berk. Berk is celebrated for her emotive use of color and the strong element of movement in her painting. She often utilizes an impasto painting technique, which we see in both of the pieces in the March auction. One painting, titled Spanish Landscape, depicts a starkly lit town with a blazing orange sky over green fields and scattered buildings. The second piece, an untitled figurative painting, shows a young woman and man seated and talking in the grass. Speculation on this work and other similar pieces by Berk alleges that the couple is modeled after President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Another standout in the March auction is a large oil on canvas by Latvian-American painter Raimonds Staprans. Staprans built a large following while practicing in San Francisco during the second half of the 20th century. He is known for bold color and painterly brushwork, often focusing on architectural landscapes and still lifes. The painting at Clars this month is a rare figural work depicting a female nude. Staprans maintains his signature bold color and audacious painting technique in his exploration of the human figure. Also included this March are large paintings by Enrico Donati and Hunt Slonem, a work on paper and print by Bay Area artist Joan Brown, and much more.

In addition, Clars Auction Gallery will offer one of the most extensive contemporary glass collections in Northern California as part of a prominent Bay Area estate. The couple were tireless and passionate about the art of glass blowing and spent over three decades acquiring important pieces. They were known nationally as top tier collectors and the pieces Clars will be offering select iconic pieces from several artists including Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey, Therman Statom, David Salvadore, and Joel Phillip Myers.