September 30, 2011 > Patterns of Abuse Patterns of Abuse Submitted By Christine Bender Sun Gallery will host a photographic exhibit by Howard Pugh in the Ken Cook Room beginning October 5 and running through November 12. For the last five years, Howard Pugh's photography has focused on discovering possible meanings and "messages" through patient, close-up explorations of the world of rusted iron, peeling paint, scraped dye-cast metals, eroded concrete, and various other human-fashioned things decaying and dissolving under the sun. "I feel there is an underlying force at work here, trying to reach out, trying to communicate, in a purposeful albeit unintelligible way, by the very way in which the things we have wrought and brought together are slowly disassembled and returned to their original state," says Pugh. He has suggested the possible existence of a cosmic "Rosetta Stone" that may give us insight into a kind of poetic shorthand left by extraterrestrials. Or perhaps simple messages of a more prophetic nature: truths that can only be expressed cryptically, out of some basic hive-awareness that resonates from all life here on Earth. Pugh's photographs have appeared in several solo shows, including (locally) Sun Gallery and Faultline Photographics in Hayward, Ten10 and The Overpass Gallery in San Jose and Florentine Village Resort, Los Gatos. Group shows have included an international circle of like-minded artists (Movement of Aleatoric Modern Artists) in Art Basel - Miami, Florida, and "Magic in the Mix" at PhotoCentral here in Hayward. His work is also being added to several private, corporate, and important public collections, and recently appeared in the book "Aleatoric Artists of the Twenty First Century." Patterns of Abuse October 4 - November 12 Wednesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Sun Gallery 1050 E St., Hayward (510) 581-4050 www.sungallery.org