September 13, 1997 to November 30, 1997
The Art of John Cederquist:
Reality of Illusion
Presented by the Art Department

California artist John Cederquist's playful, trompe l'oeil furniture pieces blur distinctions between reality and illusion with a magician's flair. The lively works are capable of acting like functional furniture, but in fact are backdrops for a virtuoso display of optical tricks, cartoon-like drawings and an artful confusion of skewed perspectives. This mid-career survey, curated by Kathy Borgogno for the Oakland Museum of California, features 40 major pieces made between 1981 and 1997. It is the artist's first solo exhibition in a museum since 1983.

Using traditional furniture forms -- chests, benches, bureaus and the like -- Cederquist (b. 1946) constructs his pieces using hand-laminated veneers glued to a plywood body. Using motifs from such disparate sources as Popeye cartoons and Japanese woodblock prints, he paints, carves, dyes, grooves and otherwise treats his veneers to achieve his incomparable illusions -- a puff of steam escaping from a tubular pipe that doubles as the back of a chair, an elegant high boy encased in an impossible arrangement of packing crates, or a huge, white-capped, blue-green wave cresting out of the front of an open drawer.

Born and raised in Southern California, where he continues to live and teach at Saddleback Community College, Cederquist often pokes fun in his work at conventional East Coast notions of fine art, fine furniture and the imagined shortcomings of California artists. His pieces, with titles likeTubular, Steaming Poodle Bench and How to Wrap Five Waves, are a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the Southern California culture of Hollywood, Malibu and Disneyland, where illusion often assumes the substance of reality.

A 132-page, full-color catalog features an introduction by Renwick Gallery Curator-in-Charge Kenneth R. Trapp, and essays by Arthur C. Danto, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Columbia University, and Nancy Princenthal, art writer and Adjuct Professor of Modern Art at Princeton University. An artist's chronology and bibliography are included.

The exhibition will travel nationally. The itinerary includes the Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (September 10, 1999 through January 9, 2000).

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