PRESS RELEASE

The Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to present a ten year survey of artworks and installations by Bay Area artist Tracey Snelling.   Ms. Snelling’s works range from two dimensional photographs to multi-media installations incorporating photographs, miniature constructions of buildings or towns and video screens and projections. 

Based on her own travel snap-shots or found photos, Ms. Snelling’s interest lies in exploring blurred borders: between the first and third world, between American, Asian and European buildings and villages amid booms and busts; and the edges where constructed nostalgia meets memory.  The exposition of urban and suburban myths is explored by re-constructing these travelogue towns and their road-stop curiosities, strip-malls, motels, urban oddities, all topographies etched in our collective conscience.

While the mechanics of the installations are clearly revealed, Ms. Snelling has painstakingly crafted these works.  Details in these vignettes include perfectly reproduced ambient light, electronic advertising signage, audio and video loops of music or ambient noise, bill boards, and film or video projections - all of which encourage speculation about the possible lives of imagined inhabitants.   Hand-applied or quirky graphics, peeling paint, dated architectural flourishes -  add layers to the implied narrative - matching and expanding the resonance imbued in the still-life constructions.

Snelling was born in 1970, in Oakland, California.  She received a BFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and currently lives and works in the Bay Area.  Snelling has shown work in museums such as, but not limited to, PS1 MOMA, NY; Gemeentemuseum Helmond, the Netherlands; Shanghai Zendai MOMA, Zhujiajiao, China; Frist Museum, Nashville, TN; Houston Center for Photography, TX;  Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; The Museum of Arts and Design, NY and she has had solo exhibitions throughout the US as well as in China, Belgium, the Netherlands, and London.