My Strange Goddess: The Art of Yoko d’Holbachie Reception: Saturday, April 28th, 5 – 8 pm | Exhibition: April 29 – May 20, 2012 Inspired by popular culture in her native Japan and beyond, Yoko d’Holbachie’s acrylic on canvas paintings are at once vividly inviting and disturbingly dark. Candy colored creatures, with wormlike tentacles travel through fantasy landscapes. Elements of Kawaii, Anime, Pop Art and Surrealism blend together in tightly rendered works that pull the viewer in with bright, cheerful energy and hold on with strange, complex elements. Time spent with these charming beasts elicits questions about our ideas of reality, appearance, power and danger. Is this seemingly sweet creature planning to do harm or does it actually need help? Is it reaching out with gentle tendrils or are those poisonous vines? Can first, second, even third impressions be trusted in art and life? With “My Strange Goddess,” Yoko d’Holbachie continues her search for answers while turning her attention, specifically, to the feminine. What does it mean to be feminine? Are the goddesses of these portraits angry, loving, weak or dangerous? How does a female artist who equates her process with giving birth to images conceived in her imagination and passed through her body, perceive and present the concepts of fertility and creation? With this show, her most personal body of work to date, Yoko d’Holbachie bares her soul to her audience; inviting us to experience the many sides of her own inner Goddess and conclude what we will.