Rebecca Camacho Presents is pleased to announce an installation of new works by Karen Barbour on view in the gallery’s project room, marking the artists’ first exhibition in San Francisco in twenty years.

Barbour's maximalist paintings on canvas and paper are environmental. Populated by whimsical figures and imaginary landscapes composed of bold colors and intricate passages made by an assortment of mixed media dots, shapes, and patterns that fill the entire surface of the picture plane, Barbour’s suite of atmospheric works is firmly rooted in structure and world-building yet undefinable as any specific place or time – inviting magical thinking.

In a practice that consistently mines her own oeuvre by reworking, revising and layering imagery, Barbour develops paintings over a long period of time, with a distinctively intuitive approach. While on the surface her works appears playful and whimsical, a cursory assessment belies the larger context for viewers to investigate how they experience and process the world around them.

Barbour’s abundant compositions reflect influences ranging from folk art and textile design to spiritual abstraction, while also nodding to modernist masters such as Gustav Klimt or Paul Klee. The effect is simultaneously meditative and energizing, a reminder of how painting can hold multiple layers of meaning without forcing a singular resolution.