Los-Angeles-based artist Joshua Petker returns to The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco for his fouth solo exhibition “We’re Not As Colorful As We Think We Are”, running until Oct. 2, 2010.

Petker’s works, self-described as strongly reminiscent of Gustav Klimt’s turn of the century portraits of women, consist of 12-18 small to medium pieces rendered in both mixed media on canvas and gouache and ink on paper.

Women figures remain the medium by which Joshua Petker communicates the universality of color in manipulating physical appearance.

His art is strongly modern, suspending his female figures between intense color spaces of monochrome, liberating them from the confines of everyday life but not from gender. Consequently, his women characters may not be in touch with their inner sensations, divorced from themselves by the dictates of custom and culture.

Considering the Klimt connection, which reflects a visually integrated female sensuality in our minds, we wonder if modern women — or modern American women living in LA — are more divorced from their sensual selves than say — Italian, French or Brazilian women?

The artist says he is fascinated in particular by how women create identities for themselves with fashion.

Unfairly or not, women have been used objectively in art for so long that I can paint and feel like I am referencing this objective historic subject all while trying to paint the inner emotions of a person, subjectively. Plus, I am primarily only attracted to art that I consider beautiful, so a beautiful women is an easy subject for me. But, when I say I only like work that is beautiful I should point out my opinion of what is beautiful is definitely artistic and at times ugly.

” Life and the world can be pretty dark,” says Petker, “but I believe, all in all, in good, even when it’s bad.”