Gale Antokal + Catherine Ko Chen: Vestige

Chandler Gallery is pleased to present Vestige, a two-person exhibition of works by Bay Area-born and London-based painter Catherine Ko Chen, and Berkeley-based multimedia artist Gale Antokal, on view from May 2nd through June 14th, 2025. This exhibition brings together Chen’s airy, abstract acrylic paintings and Gale Antokal’s soft figurative flour, ash, graphite, chalk and pastel works. Both Chen and Antokal use their work as an avenue of exploring memory.

Gale Antokal works with memory through her media subject matter, as she so gently renders places without specificity, horizon lines or even a vanishing point that feel familiar and often photographic not only through their realism, but also through the way in which they embody the mood of a private, quiet moment immortalized via photograph. “I like thinking about the fact that usually a sense of “place” is perceived when there are two descriptors. An “above” and a “below” and the relation between the two,” Antokal has stated. “Usually, the consequent edge is a horizon.” Antokal finesses various combinations of graphite, chalk, pastel, flour and ash onto the paper surface, using her index finger to achieve rich, delicate tonalities. Working from photographic imagery of people, places and things, she studies and interprets images – her own, from books, or from the Internet – filtering them through her personal perceptions to tease out nuances of meaning and the nature of seeing, being and remembering. Chen’s abstract paintings become artifacts of her experience while Antokal’s work toys with and emulates a more universal experience and memory.

Gale Antokal was born in New York, New York, and received her BFA (1980) and MFA from the California College of the Arts in 1984. She is a Professor Emerita at San Jose State University in the Department of Art and Art History and was Coordinator in the Pictorial area. Antokal held several visiting artist positions and teaching positions including the San Francisco Art Institute, Instructor of Art History at the Lehrhaus Institute, and the American College in Jerusalem. In 1992 Antokal received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has exhibited regularly with Chandler Gallery, Mill Valley, CA, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, CA, Maya Frodeman Gallery, previously Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY, Amy Simon Fine Arts, Westport, CT. She has also held exhibitions at Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica, CA and Cabrillo College in Aptos, CA. Antokal’s work is included in public, private, and international collections.

Catherine Ko Chen is an artist from San Francisco, currently based in London. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Etesian Gallery (Menorca, ES) and Problem Library (San Francisco), as well as group shows with Warbling Collective (London, UK) and North Coast Asylum (Cornwall, UK). 

 

Chandler Gallery is proud to partner with Problem Library, a 501(c)–3 organization in San Francisco that provides a nurturing environment for students to realize their potential, guides alumni and working artists to pursue fulfilling and challenging work, and encourages the broader community to step beyond just being a professional- to become role models and leaders in their communities. Chandler Gallery has committed to donating 10% of all sales of Chen’s works to Problem Library.