New works by NIAGARA

Long gone are the smoked filled rooms of opium dens and back alley absinthe bars where some of the most talented artists of yesterday turned to for temporary escape from their everyday lives and for inspiration from the surreal dreamscapes of their drug induced hallucinations. Among these seekers of higher learning were painters, sculptures, authors and playwrights of such notoriety as Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, and Earnest Hemmingway. Their quest of expanding their horizons would lead them to seek refuge in these dark, low-lit spaces, which had a mind warming & numbing effect on their creative endeavors.

This April the Shooting Gallery is excited to announce the return of Niagara, the princess of punk, the Queen of Pop Art and the ruling Monarch of Detroit, to San Francisco with her solo show "Beyond the Pale". With her she brings a series of new paintings inspired by the opium dens and absinthe bars of San Francisco at the turn of the century. These new works of art showcase Niagara’s infamous women in control, while chasing the dragon on a mind-altering journey through French Victorian-Nouveau visuals with strong ties to the far-east. Strong willed and powerful female forces that Niagara has portrayed for years. Women without remorse and a blatant disregard for the male ego.

Her paintings are concoctions of paint, gold leaf, decorative Chinese papers and faux jewels done in multiple layers to represent the different stages of opium and absinthe highs. Like jewels from the orient, Niagara’s work sparkles with exotic imagery and colorful visuals. Her work takes you back to the romance and pageantry of the 19^th century French Bohemian movement and the last American frontier of the Barbary Coast. Like a sailor on shore leave you seek solace in the visual warmth of Niagara’s imagery and representational iconography, sailing her opium seas. Her opium paintings create vivid visual sensations while the green hued absinthe paintings cause your salivary glands to work over time for the taste of the bitter sweet green liqueur. The women in Niagara’s gem’s have high tolerance’s for drugs yet a low thresh-hold of patience for the weak men in their lives. They would just assume leave him lying for dead than share their last drink with him. Niagara will only be here for a month but the after-effects of her stay will linger on like a well-earned hangover.