David Polka
David Polka is a visual artist and graphic designer currently based in Oakland, CA. Originally from Las Cruces, New Mexico, he moved to the East Bay 12 years ago to immerse himself in the area’s thriving art scene. His practice includes illustration, interior and exterior murals, and installation. A graduate of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, he has been exhibiting work since 2006 in group and solo exhibitions across the US in Oakland, San Francisco, New York, Boulder, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Anchorage and Honolulu.
The Abstract Art Exhibition:
"This series of works is a reckoning with the looming specter of despair, a meditation on the importance of healing, and an effort to create a space of respite in the midst of a turbulent world.
Fluid, alluvial shapes in muted hues of blue and green are punctuated with sharp, vibrating reds. Meandering lines weave across the patinated surface of the paintings, their accumulative structure evoking the passage of time and forming a space steeped in reflection and melancholy.
These paintings are more than a balm for grief, or a means to stave off the pernicious mechanisms of depression, they are also a place of refuge: a quiet space to collect ourselves and to take stock of what really matters. In this space we can find the capacity, through a kind of creative alchemy, to transmute the despair that haunts the background of our lives into something beautiful, defiant, and affirmative."
-David Polka
