VENICE, CA.-Commissary Arts announces Organic/Structure, a two-person exhibition of recent work by Los Angeles artists Deborah Hede and Lynda Pizzuto. The show features drawings by Hede and drawings and paintings by Pizzuto. The paring of these two artist’s works reveals their symbiotic yet diverse approaches to interpreting nature and constructing the image.

Deborah Hede’s minimalist inspired charcoal and pastel drawings on handmade paper begin with the grid as the organizing device. Hede builds up numerous deep sculptural layers of charcoal and pastel, molding and weaving the material through and in front of the underlying framework until the image reveals its subtle tendencies and emerges. In a set of all black drawings, dense layers of charcoal laid down in a series of worked layers obliterate the grid and form a new surface pattern. In other works, lines that are more organic pull in tension with the structure, suggesting a three-dimensional space beyond or in front of the picture plane. Her square compositions become like small windows onto a larger arena, and in this way, Hede explains, suggest ephemeral, fragmented memories and the limits of time and space to contain them. “My surfaces, objects, and images establish a relationship between the passage of time, and the ephemeral qualities of materiality and weight, amid concepts of entanglement, and dissolution.”

Deborah Hede received her MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited in solo shows at Aaron Payne Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kate Ganz USA Ltd., New York, and ACE Gallery, Los Angeles. Her drawings will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Gravitas at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Long Island City, New York, (April 2008, curated by Jan Riley). Hede’s drawings are included in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Lynda Pizzuto’s work is rooted in Organic Abstraction. Inspired by Eastern philosophies, Pizzuto plays with the harmony and symbiosis of interdependent patterns, both natural and accidental. Her recent series of ink drawings on paper and on canvas are exuberant and energetic. Loose fragile lines, ink washes, and collaged elements evoke emerging botanical images and amoeba-like organisms expanding across the surface. Her paintings combine lush, interlacing layers of green, yellow, and red that suggest landscape in an entirely abstracted form.

Pizzuto attended Otis College of Art and Design and Santa Monica School of Art, Architecture & Design. She taught at the Pont Aven School of Art (accredited by the Rhode Island School of Design), Brittany, France in 2000, and was Artist in Residence, Auvilar, France, 2000, and Pont Aven, Brittany, France, 1995. Pizzuto has exhibited at Jan Baum Gallery, Los Angeles, B.G.H. Gallery, Santa Monica, and Centre International d'Art
Contemporary, Pont Aven, France, among others. Her work has been included in several group shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Europe.

The exhibition runs from December 1, 2007 to January 12, 2008. There will be a reception for the artists on Saturday, December 1, 2007 from 4 to 7pm. Commissary Arts is a new gallery space in Venice presenting the work by emerging and mid-career contemporary artists based in Southern California through a mix of solo and group exhibitions.