Linda Stark: Nuggets, 2007; oil and Polyclay on canvas over panel; 36 x 36 x 3 in.; courtesy Angles Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Brian Forrest.

Currently on view at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is “MATRIX 250,” featuring the work of Los Angeles based artist Linda Stark.  Stark is known for making figurative and abstract paintings with heavily built-up surfaces of paint since the late 1980s. The exhibition showcases approximately fifteen paintings made by the artist over the last two decades, highlighting her more recent series of “adorned” and “branded” paintings, which conflate the surface textures of the painting with various aspects of the female body, primarily flesh. The artist drips and meticulously builds layers of thick oil paint in her modestly scaled works, the largest of which measure three feet square and the smallest seven inches square. She engages with the physical aspects of paint, repeatedly turning the canvas on its side to build up a dense network of layers, which sometimes appear more sculptural than painterly. Stark frequently spends several years working on her luscious surfaces, underscoring the temporal and material properties of oil paint.

“MATRIX 250” is on view through December 22nd, 2013.

For more information visit the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA).