David Richard Gallery will present “Technoforms” by Trygve Faste, a selection of new paintings on shaped canvases in which the artist creates an interface between high-technology, industrial design and studio art. This is Faste’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and it will be presented July 2 - July 27, 2013 with an artist reception on Friday, July 5 from 5:00-7:00 PM at the gallery located on 544 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, phone 505-983-9555 in the Santa Fe Railyard Arts District.

Faste’s newest series of paintings entitled Shards, Protoforms and Turboforms read initially as explorations of color and shaped canvases. However, there is something about them that seems too familiar—bright colors, high-tech design, a sense of fast pace and speed—evocative of highly sophisticated, technical consumer goods such as tennis shoes, designer eye glasses and ski gear. Yet they are abstract paintings, not representing anything in particular but a concept—the seductive power of industrial design and how it feeds human desire and emotion, deluding us into thinking we really need the newest high-tech consumer gadget or product. Aside from the conceptual underpinnings, these paintings go beyond a Pop critique of consumerism and are more of a celebration of technology and painting. The supports and paintings are meticulously crafted and beautifully modeled to create illusions of a manufactured object with contoured shapes, deep grooves, crevices and vents. The precision and reactive colors right out of science class make us think of space exploration, synthetic polymers and computer-generated graphics.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue featuring images of the twelve paintings in the exhibition and an essay by writer, critic and art historian, Peter Frank.

Trygve Faste received an MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2004, and a BA in Mathematics-Computer Science and Studio Art from Whitman College in 1997. He has worked professionally as a designer at IDEO, WET Design, and Fakespace Inc. He uses his interest in product design as groundwork for paintings exploring abstracted imagery based on consumer culture and designed environments. Trygve’s work has been exhibited nationally and is in the permanent collections of The Cranbrook Art Museum, Compuware Inc. and Chrysler. Recently his work has been published in the LA Weekly and Ceramic Review Magazine, and he was just awarded an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant for his upcoming shows in 2013. Faste has lectured at Otis College of Art, California State University Northridge & Long Beach, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Stanford University. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon.