The Approach is pleased to present the first UK exhibition of five artists from the San Francisco Bay Area. ‘Lo-gressive Living’ includes new works on paper by Nick Ackerman, Christopher Garrett, Chris Johanson, Jo Jackson and Keegan McHargue. Their work is heartfelt, handmade, and deeply observational. Its urban realism is filtered through shared interests in graffiti, Folk Art, comic books, music and West Coast mysticism.

Chris Johanson’s irreverent, dead-on portraits of street culture and the yuppies, hippies, hipsters and losers that inhabit it, humorously express the joys, frustrations, and misconceptions of contemporary urban life. Involved in patterned explorations of myth and ceremony, Keegan McHargue creates meticulous and well-crafted works on panel and paper. He weaves a highly idiosyncratic universe of heraldic bestiary into a flat landscape; creating a subtle tension between perspective and form. Nick Ackerman’s brightly striped manipulations of extreme perspective often act as a back-drop for his drawings, which include poignant self-reflections scrawled across the surface. Christopher Garrett’s drawings explore themes of social and sexual anxiety, whilst Jo Jackson's precise and vibrantly figurative paintings are psychologically provocative, remaining beautiful and accessible symbols of our times.

Selected Exhibitions:

Nick Ackerman; Pocket Atlas, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2003), Graphic Novel, solo exhibition, Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery (2002), Widely Unknown, Deitch Projects New York (2001), Christopher Garrett; We Are Electric, Deitch Projects, New York (2003), Monster Drawing Rally, Southern Exposure, San Francisco (2003), Chris Johanson; Jack Hanley Gallery, Solo Exhibition, San Francisco, (2003), Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2002), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Widely Unknown, Deitch Projects, New York (2001) Jo Jackson, The Eclipse Gallery, Basel (2003), Beautiful Loosers, Contemporary Art and Street Culture, Contemporary Art Centre, San Francisco, (2003), Bay Area Now 3, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, (2003),  Keegan MacHargue, Feel the Wind, Solo Exhibition, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco (2003),  The Wolfman Cometh, Solo Exhibition, Rivington Arms, New York, We Are Electric, Deitch Projects, New York.