For this exhibition at the GAR Gallery, Masha Sha has created, new large scale graphite and crayon drawings on tracing paper. The images are made up of thousands of small expressive marks that culminate in a single word or phrase. Excavating new meaning from familiar words and phrases is the energizing force behind these drawings.


In the making of the drawings for this show, the artist’s mind was engaged with the following questions:

          How to withstand a violent constant wave of time,
          which is permanently closing on you?

           How is it to be at the place where instant / immediate clashes with infinite / total?

           How daydreaming and diffused concentration on intent
           and meaning are saving graces to withstand the permanent pull in infinite directions?

Masha Sha was born in Chukotka, RU in 1982. She graduated from Pro Arte Institute, St. Petersburg, RU (2005), and received an MFA from the University at Buffalo, NY with the Fulbright scholarship (2010). Masha then completed The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, NY (2011). She received the International Award of Recognition from STRABAG in Vienna, Austria (2014) as well as the Young Artist Prize Innovation in Moscow, Russia (2006). She has participated in many exhibitions and projects, as well as a few residences, including Yaddo and Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. Masha has works in many private and public collections including the Russian Museum in Saint-Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, and Anderson Museum of Contemporary art in Roswell, NM. Masha currently lives in Roswell, New Mexico.

A specific focus of James Elaine's work is the act of reclaiming and restoring to a new identity what is lost, forgotten, or broken in life and culture. The materials reflect the body and soul of the individual as well as society as a whole. He is interested in different materials, purchased or found, that are not necessarily associated with painting or fine art, and ways to stretch mediums in new directions. Instead of starting a painting with a blank canvas many of Elaine's materials already have a history of their own, which, to some extent, directs the content of the work. 

James Elaine is an artist and curator living and working between Celeste, TX and Beijing, China. He holds a BFA from The University of North Texas, Denton. From 1989 to 2008 he served as the curator of The Drawing Center, NY and then the Hammer Museum, LA, as the Hammer Projects curator, a program Elaine founded in 1999. In 2012 he founded Telescope, a nonprofit-type gallery in Beijing, to work with and exhibit emerging artists of China and to demonstrate the benefits of a non commercial alternative system. As both an artist and curator, James Elaine fulfills a role of collaborator, and draws parallels between the two worlds. In his art practice he collaborates with the materials and imagery, and as a curator with emerging artists - helping them to find the best inside themselves as well as giving them exhibition opportunities and voice in the local and international art world.