UPCOMING
Fall 2010
TBA
June 11th - July 9th, 2010
opening reception : Friday June 11th, 2010.
6:00 - 8:30pm
private pARTs
group show:
Danielle Benson, Ryan Whittier Hale, Alan Miknis,
Alexa Natanson, Sonja Smith
Ryan Whittier Hale
Untitled (Bookshelf), 2009
Digital C-Print mounted on Plexiglas
30" x 36" ed. 1/5
Ampersand is happy to present "private pARTs".
Following a very successful "Home" show in June 2009, Ampersand has re-invited the four local art aficionados/curators "Young Ampersand", Jesse Brown, Rachel Hooper, Saskia Mauro and Theodora Mauro.
Unsettled by the blurred fine line between the private and public arenas brought in by new technologies and contemporary social mores, Y.A. has chosen to investigate how illusions of intimacy and privacy, voyeurism, social networking, public persona building, exhibitionism, surveillance, alienation, globalization and loss of authenticity have all somehow informed the practices of 5 recent Art School graduates, all visual artists (mixed media, photography) linked to the San Francisco Bay Area:
Danielle Benson, Ryan Whittier Hale, Alan Miknis, Alexa Natanson, Sonja Smith.
CURATORS' STATEMENT:
"The relationship between public/private has long been negotiated, and perhaps the boundaries between the two have never been so blurred as in today’s age of constant Internet use and pervasive media. Using the dual existence of ampersand, a live/work space, as a jumping off point, we are interested in work that explores the conflicts, tensions, unions and coexistence of public/private, in all its forms. The 5 emerging artists in "private pARTs" are looking to analyze and question the ideas of public/private. The artists here curated all consider the intricacies of these relationships.
Danielle Benson's piece, presents a collection of found photographs, re-appropriates intimate personal moments; it embraces discarded memories and brings them back to life.
In his digital photographs, using himself as the primary subject/object, Ryan Whittier Hale explores the complexity of the individual, of exposed intimacy, and the fallacy of stereotypes.
Alan Miknis' delicate paintings reflect on the complex relationship between the individual and the collective.
Through the use of light and shadows Alexa Natanson's photographs play with the illusion of representation.
Sonja Smith's mixed media piece exposes the hidden narratives buried within a deconstructed private object.
The playful title "private pARTs" may also be a sly commentary on the art business marketing practices. "
Young Ampersand June 2010
February 26th - March 26th, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, February 26th 6-8:30pm
Shashana Chittle: Mind (You)
Lauren Davies: Looking After
sculptures, wall installation
Shashana Chittle: Mind (You)
Stone/Bone [detail] (2010)
bone, geode, glass
9"x10"x8"
Shashana Chittle (Bay Area artist) methodically draws attention to the mysterious relationship between matter and consciousness. In her studio practice, sensory investigations are always paired with exercises in spiritual rituals, eventually incarnated in her mystical, delicate and sublime drawings, paintings and installations.
"My work is born of mystical necessity.
One popularly circulated starting place for meditation is to deeply consider the question ‘Who am I?’
I started examining this very question in 2004, and found that an impatient and pressing part of me wanted to outsmart the question . This examination lead to a contentious and endlessly circling argument within me which lasted over five years.
The work in this exhibition functions as arrows pointing toward the experiences I've had outside of this vicious circle, experiences of moving through layers of charade and projection that occlude the immaterial but nonetheless empirically real nature of pure awareness.”
-
Shashana Chittle 2010
Lauren Davies: Looking After
Remains of the Day [detail] (2010)
mixed media model, digital images, ash
28"x48'X11"
Lauren Davies is a San Francisco-based artist working in a range of mixed media projects that explore our often-troubled relationship with the natural world. Much of her work is based on the childhood experience of attending painting classes in a natural history museum. Davies' installations explore the ironic artifice found in many museum dioramas coupled with the folksy presentations of small town historical interpretive centers. Labor-intensive "do it yourself" replicas of wildlife and geological elements are carefully constructed from wildly inappropriate materials. Other recent projects have ranged from recreated scenes of destructive fires and debris, to the absurdity of correspondence course taxidermy studies and pedigreed dog breeding. Curatorial oversight of a vast collection of lint has been an ongoing project for over ten years. The unifying element found in these eclectic projects is an interest in exploring obscure subject matter and imagery, coupled with an obsessive use of sad sack materials and an underlying dark humor.
“Looking After presents a series of abstract, mixed media objects that visually suggest the lumpy remains of scorched specimens. These odd objects are paired with brightly colored architectural elements such as wall panels, carved molding, shelves and display pedestals. The work weaves together a variety of personal interests: taxidermy, dioramas and natural history displays; curating and presentation of collections; issues of preservation, ownership and control over the natural world. The title Looking After refers to the function of curators from a previous era when the job required “looking after” collections of everything from religious paintings and rare stamps to gem stones and antique farm tools. Looking After presents carefully crafted scenes of destruction and debris, to create a visual commentary on the possibility of real world chaos inflicted on the orderly environment of the natural history museum. The 2008 fire that virtually destroyed Deyrolle, the greatly beloved taxidermy emporium located in the heart of Paris, was the inspiration for this project.”
-Lauren Davies 2010
January 15th to February 19th, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday,January 15th 6-8:30pm
Kevin P. Clarke : Against Parallel
drawings, paintings, sculptures
David Fought : Back At The Beginning
sculptures, wall installation
Co-curated by Lori Gordon
Wooden Paradigm (2009)
Cypress and Walnut
48" x 48" x 48"
Kevin P Clarke (Oakland, CA) works in a broad range of media: painting, sculpture, and drawings. Clarke is a founding member of Million Fishes Arts Collective. Clarke recently opened the MacArthur b arthur gallery, and is creator and curator of "The Small Gallery”
kevinpclarke.com
“Untitled” 5 (5)sides (2009)
burnt wire, plaster, (incidental sunlight)
14” x 43” x 6”
David Fought (San Francisco, CA) works with bent wires installations and plaster sculptures. With lines, masses, surfaces, light and shadows, Fought offers a subtle look at the engagement objects have within space.
Fought is a current Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
davidfought.com
October 16-November 13, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, October 23, 6-8:30pm
Snippets: Lori Gordon
vinyl prints, wall painting, take-away newspaper
Curated by Bruno Mauro
Opening reception includes
Live performance:
Jen Delos Reyes presents ‘See How They Shine' Choir
Lori Gordon is a San Francisco-based cross-disciplinary artist and independent curator.
Gordon received her MFA at the California College of the Arts. She is the recipient of a SECA Award nomination and the Murphy Cadogan Fellowship from the San Francisco Foundation. Exhibition venues include Richmond Arts Center, San Jose Mus eum of Art, Mission17, Southern Exposure, Temescal Amity Works, RockPaperScissors, The Kitchen (NYC) and Gavin Brown's Enterprise at Passerby (NYC).
Gordon’s work investigates the structure and power of belief. Through collaborative endeavors, she explores the distance between coincidence and intention, with an emphasis on setting up moments that deviate from the expected. With all her work, she is more interested in the journey than the destination; attempting to make the ineffable visible.
SNIPPETS:
These textual declarations are derived from snippets of things Gordon has heard or had said to her, provided out of context for others to read. By sharing these messages, she is able to impart ambiguous moments for others to consider and appreciate. Inevitably some are interpreted as advertising; poetry; or an insider's joke, but she is interested in that ambiguity as well. Participants are always invited to send photographs of snippets installed in locations of their choosing. For this exhibition, Gordon will feature one large snippet painted on the gallery wall, vinyl prints and photographic images, and a newspaper of Snippets. Gallery visitors are invited to put these signs up in their windows and send documentation to the artist for addition to her online archive.
"From the moment I first experienced Lori Gordon’s work I was in awe of it. I was struck by the contradiction of its stark purity and silly magic, magnetized by its seeming fragility, unner ved by its immediate intimacy, embraced by the possibilities of its absurdity. Gordon’s work embraced me. It hums in your ears, offers you mirages and mirrors. Whether it is her watercolor quotes from ‘films that made me cry’, aura portrait paintings, hug performances or collaborative curatorial projects, all of Gordon’s various practices envelop the viewer, the sitter, the collaborator. Her endeavors cheer together with the sardonic smile of desperate human hope. She finds balance – allowing you the space to examine your own fragility, awkwardness, isolation – all in order to get strength from it.
Gordon is a healer. The artistry that inhabits herself, her gifts, talent, her ver y artwork appear shamanistic. I accepted this from the beginning. She may not save us, but she will always empower us. In the end her vision is always pointing at beauty and salvation, even in the absurd.
With Snippets she succeeds all over again. Gordon does not assemble the art as much as she captures it from all of us: words overheard on a busy street, in the train, on the plane; she offers it all back to us from the dreamlike transport of decontextualization. The text pieces provide us with the floating feeling of displacement, the joys of collaboration and finally contemplation.
In her own words: “Items of value lose their significance; resources that seemed useless become precious. Ideas continue to form, and the artists stay the course to create. Their tenacity alerts us, it moves us; it leaves us thinking, questioning our own reality as we all carry on. This is their gift to us.”
I thank her for that."
Bruno Mauro
September 4 – October 3, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday September 18, 6:00-8:30pm
CF01: Alan B. Callander
Single-channel video
Dusseldorf Paintings: Emi Winter
Paintings and works on paper
Curated by Patricia Maloney
Ampersand International Arts is pleased to present solo exhibitions of recent work by Washington DC-based artist Alan Callander and Oaxaca-based artist Emi Winter. Each artist utilizes formal strategies around color and shape to foreground the inherent nature of the media in which they work. In Düsseldorf Paintings, Winter’s playful and buoyant abstra ct watercolors, gouaches, and oils on canvas revel in the flexibility and sensuousness of painting. They convey an unfettered, masterful handling of gesture and line. Meanwhile, Callander’s single-channel video CF01 is an alluring and meditative animation that combines cinematic narrative structure with painterly abstraction. Translucent, colored quadrangles vibrate, shift, layer, and meld into a compositional crescendo. At times, both bodies of work suggest landscapes, the forms occupying and resembling the tangible world. At other moments, an actual and visual lyricism prevails. Collectively, Düsseldorf Paintings and CF01 inundate the senses, and remind one of the potential for surprise that art possesses.
Alan B. Callander received his BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from American University in 1996 and his MFA from the Maryland Institute, College o f Art in 2009. Screenings of his work have been shown at Conner Contemporary/Rubell Family Collection, Washington DC; Plateaux Festival, Torun, Poland; the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Laptopia #4 Festival, Tel Aviv, Israel; the Decibel International Festival of Electronic Music, Art, and New Media, The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, among others. Callander lives and works in Washington DC.
Emi Winter was a 2001 Artist in Residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. She has had numerous international exhibitions, including solo shows at Hebel 121, Basel; Ateliers Hoherweg, Düsseldorf; Compact Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA; Galería Quetzalli, Oaxaca; Patricia Faure Gallery, Project Room, Los Angeles; and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, among others. Selected group exhibitions include Instituto Cultural de México, Miami; Casa de las Américas, La Habana, Cuba; Centro Cultural de la República El Cabildo, Asunción, Paraguay; Instituto Cervantes, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Museo Emilio Caraffa de Córdoba, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá, Colombia; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico; Texas Gallery, Houston; and James Kelly Contempor ary, Santa Fe, NM. She lives and works in Oaxaca.
Patricia Maloney is an Associate Curator for Ampersand International Arts, where she has previously curated Open Network: Brooklyn (2006) and Firmament (2008). Additionally, she is Managing Editor for shotgun-review.com, a commentator for the podcast Bad At Sports, and a contributing writer to artforum.com. Maloney, who lives and works in Berkeley, received her MA in Theory and History of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008
HOME
photography, drawing, painting
June 12th -July 10th , 2009
OPENING reception :Friday, June 12th : 6:00 - 8:30pm
Artists: Gideon Chase, Hannah Hooper, Andrew Watson Kirk, Max Schoening, Ethan Scott
Curated by Young Ampersand: Jesse Brown, Rachel Hooper, Saskia Mauro, Theodora Mauro
Ampersand is happy to present HOME.
Ampersand has invited four local art aficionados to curate the first Young Ampersand exhibition: Jesse Brown, Rachel Hooper, Saskia Mauro and Theodora Mauro are childhood friends; they all studied art history and art making and have grown up in homes where art criticism, art collecting and art making are an everyday reality. Choosing a subject familiar to all, the HOME curators explore individual interpretations of the idea of Home by recent Art School graduates, all visual artists linked to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Curators’statement:
"With rising foreclosure rates and the current uncertain state of the economy in the United States, homes have become not only symbols of refuge, but thwarted symbols of the 'American Dream'.
With HOME we aim to address how art can reflect broader understandings of the places we live in: how they are not only defined by the roof over our heads, but may also be the people, places and events that impact our lives."
Obviously the irony of Ampersand gallery being a live/work space is not lost on any of the participants.
text inspired by HOME:
ampersandsfwords.blogspot.com
Max Schoening // Untitled (soccer,boys,Kenya) // c-print //
2008
PETRIFIED FOREST
Christina La Sala
mixed media installation
May 8th - June 5th, 2009
OPENING reception :Friday, May 8th, 6-8:30pm
Christina La Sala is an installation artist who lives in San Francisco. She received her BFA from The Tyler School of Art, Temple University Phila delphia, PA and her MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute. Ms. La Sala has shown work nationally and abroad. She was an Artist in Residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts, an Artist in Residence at The Hermit Foundation in The Czech Republic and an artist in Residence at Elsewhere in Greensboro, N.C.
Ms. La Sala divides her exhibition time between gallery work, film and theatre design. She has designed sets, millinery and specialty props for Big Mess Theatre in Philadelphia, Specialty props for Leah Stein Dance Co. Philadelphia, specialty props for Smart Mouth Theatre, S.F. and Set Design and Specialty Props for Theatre First Oakland CA.
about her work in “Petrified Forest “, Christina La Sala says:
“ I have been trying to create work that measures time. I thought I was going to build clocks and instead have made fossils. Petrified Forest is a collection of artifacts that attempt to measure the passage of time by concentrating on the inconsequential and the ephemeral. There are two bodies of work in this project. One is concerned with measuring time through artifacts of events; specifically patterns from gift-wrap, stripped of their color and softness to become exoskeletons in geological samples. Experiences change over time and through the filter of memory become shadows of themselves.
The hash marks are counting pieces that reference the exquisite tedium of boredom and waiting. Waiting for the right moment, waiting for something to happen, letting the moment pass. Inaction becomes dynamic when it is documented in detail; each stroke is unique and treated as the last."
Christina La Sala // Counting, [Petrified Forest series] mixed media // installation //
(glass, wood) //
dimensions variable //
2009
ALWAYS CLOSE BUT NEVER TOUCHING
Vanessa Marsh
photography, sculpture
Vanessa Marsh was born in Seattle WA and lives and works in San Francisco, CA. She received her BA from Western Washington University and her MFA from the C alifornia College of the Arts. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the San Jose Museum of Art, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco. Marsh was the 2004 CCA MFA awardee at the Headlands Center for the Arts and a 2007 recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
about her work in “Always Close But Never Touching”, Vanessa Marsh says:
“ It was in high school that I began to find my true artistic vision. It started with a basic photography class and my mom’s old Nikon E series camera. The next year I had my first car and would take long drives out onto th e edges of the Seattle suburbs. Wandering through the damp richness of Washington State, I rediscovered a landscape I had grown up with; flooded fields and medians overgrown with blackberry bushes, evergreens dripping with water and rivers alw ays at capacity. I found myself fearless with my camera,20exploring defunct industrial sites, climbing past "no trespassing" signs, keeping my eye out for security guards and taking as many shots as I could. I'd let myself into abandoned houses decaying with mold and half heartedly boarded up, looking for the perfect pile of detritus to photograph; an open fridge in the backyard or a ba by carriage overgrown with blackberry vines. These buildings were all on the edges of fields that within a few years would become Wal-Marts or a sea of cookie cutter houses, not yet torn down, but no longer functioning as they were originally intended. They were places where I shouldn't have been but where there was no one left to tell me to get out.
The idea of spaces between meanings became a fascination for me whether regarding the physical landscape, in considering memory or in making art. I think about ways that my art can tell a truth and yet be rooted in imagination simultaneously. My practice of model building began as a means to create a certain kind of photograph, an image that was at once real and surreal. As I worked more with miniatures I realized that the experience of looking into a model was similar to the feeling of being in abandoned places: of being an unintended visitor i n a place that is at once somewhere and nowhere.
The models are built referencing snap shots and many details are filled in from my own imagination. When I build the models I am thinking of the places I've explored on the outskirts of Seattle, places on the brink of evolution and extinction - between meanings.
Building the models is an attempt to fully embrace my own sentimentality of where I grew up; the home where I no longer live. The environment where I feel the most comfortable yet choose not to be. The models are about recreating something important again that has been deemed unusable and outdated. In building them I am creating on a miniature scale a part of my own history, exploring the ways in which memory and identity are tied not only to location but also to one’s own imagination. ”
Ray Davis of pseudopodium.org , and Matthew Boyko and Sarah Stone contribute texts inspired by La Sala and Marsh’s work:
ampersandsfwords.blogspot.com
Vanessa Marsh // Building in Aberdeen //
Mixed media and found materials //
6x12x20 //
2009
AMPLIFYING THE TWILIGHT
March 06 - April 18, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday March 06, 6:00-8:30pm
Curators:
Brian Andrews and Marc LeBlanc
Group Show:
Shashi Chittle, David Coyle, Ryan Fenchel, Sayre Gomez, Alison Ruttan
Amplifying the Twilight investigates the gray area between the rationality of hard science and the speculative intuition of culture. Works by Shashana Chittle, David Coyle, Ryan Fenchel, Sayre Gomez, and Alison Ruttan bridge the horizons between the futurism of technology and exploratory alchemical practices. Responding to Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - the works examine the role of science in human life, inquiring how science shapes our understanding of the world, from metaphysics and spirituality to politics and ethics.
The drawing practice of Shashana Chittle methodically archives her experience awakening each morning, capturing her fleeting visual perceptions. David Coyle's video triptych reinterprets the speculations of science fiction as a form of personal horror. The intuition-driven collages of Ryan Fenchel draw from the subjects of freemasonry, Egyptology, and other esoteric studies. Sayre Gomez records how the alchemical transformation of energy has become a pedestrian, invisible part of our visual lives. The photographic clusters of Alison Ruttan parallel the behavior of primates and humans in humorous and embarrassing dialogs.
Brian Andrews is an artist and critic in San Francisco.
Marc LeBlanc is a curator and writer in Berlin.
In the past the two have worked together on writing reviews for San Francisco's Shotgun-review.com and conducting interviews for the Chicago-based contemporary art podcast, Bad at Sports; this is their first collaboratively curated exhibition.
more AMPLIFYING THE TWILIGHT :
ampersandsfwords.blogspot.com
David Coyle // Special Agent Dana Scully // 2009 //
Oil on Canvas //
22” x 26”
SEMAPHORES
Jordan Essoe
installation
January 16 - February 28, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday January 16, 6:00-8:30pm
Jordan Essoe is a San Francisco-based artist whose interdisciplinary exhibition projects focus on sociopolitical and psychological issues surrounding property, identity, exile, and war. His work has been exhibited at TART, San Francisco; The Palm Springs Desert Museum, CA; Scope Miami; 21 Grand, Oakland, CA; Intersection for the Arts and PLAySPACE Gallery (both San Francisco); Swarm, Oakland, CA; Red House Gallery, Venice,=2 0CA; Meneer de Wit Gallery, Amsterdam; Ha'Kibbutz Gallery, Tel Aviv; and The Zebra Poetry Film Award, Berlin. His poetry and critical writing have been published nationally and internationally. Essoe is co-founder of the Humane Slaughter Acts Performance Festival.
Through Semaphores, Essoe explores the [re]ordering of the world, the [dis]placement of people, and the global distribution of force, wealth, and empathy. He characterizes the age of globalism in part by a latent sense of universal exile, both in the Global South and Global North. In this body of work, Essoe juxtaposes psychological exile against forcible expulsion, bridging the two by evoking a profound sense of responsibility.
Semaphores is a multimedia installation that encompasses photography, video projections, collage, and materials ranging from mirrors or brown paper bags to sugar cubes. Essoe appropriates an array of media and art histori cal images to invoke complex and ambiguous relationships amongst the installation's constituent parts. A collage series depicting aerial photographs of a northwestern region of Colombia where agrarian communities are being massacred and displaced preludes a rendition of Edward Hopper's 1955 painting Hotel Window, its central figure becoming an inert and distant observer to these horrific but obscured events. Similarly, Essoe utilizes Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, as a conceptual lens for addressing the problematic of remaking the world by grand design. Inspired by the fictional society of intellectuals within Borges's narrative, Essoe initiated his own collective of thinkers to contribute to an installation of 72 images envisioning their idea of “economic democracy”. Contributors include philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, author Derrick Jensen, economist Michael Greenstone, ecologist David Wilcove, anthropologist Laura Rival, artist Ken Friedman, poet Bill Berkson, activist Sarah Anderson, and many others.
more SEMAPHORES:
ampersandsfwords.blogspot.com
Jordan Essoe //
Error //
2008 //
Peg Board, Dimensions variable
SCRAP
Jeff Morris
drawings / mixed media sculptures
October 24 th - December 7th, 2008
OPENING reception:Friday, October 24, 6:00 - 8:30 pm
JEFF MORRIS
Jeff Morris is a San Francisco Bay Area artist who has successfully exhibited his mixed media sculptures, installations and drawing projects at Ampersand International Arts in San Francisco and Paris, MM Galleries, Limn Gallery, Southern Exposure and the Luggage Store gallery in San Francisco as well as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, PA. Jeff Morris artwork is in private collections in Paris, San Francisco, New York and London.
About Jeff Morris work , James Nestor says:
"Straight lines. Crooked lines. Horizon lines. Cracks and fissures. Lines that separate the mountains and sky and sea.
Lines are the subjects of Jeff Morris’ work. But not just lines. It’s the spaces outside and in between the lines, around the lines, their shapes and colors, where they start and stop – these are the real players in these pieces. Because as each line is magnified and manipulated and abstracted (...) so are the spaces that surround it, so is the meaning and our perception also changed. Light turns to dark, day to night, unmoving earth becomes ephemeral air – definition is redefined"
Jeff Morris // 071308 // 2008 //
graphite on paper //
24”x14”
AFTERMATH
Andy Vogt
drawings / wood sculptures
ANDY VOGT
Andy Vogt completed a BFA in Intermedia at Carnegie Mellon University. Vogt is a founding member of Operation Re-Information (O.R.I.),a science+information / art performance collective that champions "the repurposing of existing information and the resultant product: reinformation." Andy Vogt's current artwork explores again "repurposing", not only through the reinterpretation of wooden structural remnants salvaged from dumpsters around San Francisco, but the drawings they inspire.
Vogt's work has been exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area at Swarm Gallery, Ampersand International Arts, The Luggage Store, Headlands Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, The Lab, Mission17, 301 Bocana, 111 Minna and New Langton Arts. In Los Angeles, his work has been shown at Upspace, and the LH Horton Gallery in Stockton, and the UC Davis Memorial Union Gallery in Davis, California. Additionally, Vogt has exhibited at the Samson Projects in Boston, and The Skinny Building and Pittsburgh Filmmakers in Pittsburgh, PA. Andy Vogt presently lives and works in San Francisco.
About his own artwork, Andy Vogt says:
"Looking back, moments appear suspended between intersections of time and place, certain details crisply defined, the rest ragged and hazy. Interlocked, they become a mental landscape that extends in all directions but is seen from a consistent vantage point; the present. The things and spaces we build have the same fate. Created for one purpose, they endure for a time acquiring new meanings shedding old ones. They are adrift until their demise when they become a marker of time’s inescapable pull downward (...)I see these works as re-crystallized skeletal incarnations of an obsoleted system that has been frozen in suspended animation. Their shapes have a hazy connection to literal structures but subscribe to alternate formal hierarchies."
Andy Vogt // untitled //
2008 //
salvaged wood, paint //
41"x28"x14"
Essayists DeWitt Cheng and Patricia Maloney contribute texts inspired by the artists' work:
ampersandsfwords.blogspot.com
PASSAGE
Ellen Babcock
mixed media sculpture / installation
September 19 - October 17, 2008
OPENING reception : Friday, September 19, 6-8:30pm
Ellen Babcock completed her M.F.A. at the California College of the Arts in 2002. She was awarded the Cadogan Fellowship, the Dennis Leon faculty award, and the Headlands Center for the Arts studio award. She was a Headlands Affiliate Artist from 2002-2004. Ellen has exhibited at numerous gallerie s, including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Southern Exposure, and the Exploratorium. She lives in San Francisco, and teaches at California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute.
Artist Statement
"I often try to wrestle from scavenged, mundane materials, such as Styrofoam, some kind of surprising connection to landscape as a way to examine my desire for redemptive symbiosis. Like many of my comrades, searching for an appropriate scale for human activity in the landscape has increasingly become a preoccupation of my artmaking. With this work I take as a measure a landscape painting from nearly 150 years ago, Frederick Church’s The Icebergs ." EB
HOW FAST YOUR WORLD IS CHANGING
Harrell Fletcher
Christine Hill
Hope Hilton
Jessica James Lansdon
Jennifer Delos Reyes
Markuz Wernli-Saito
curated by Lori Gordon
critical essay by James Servin
March 21-April 25, 2008
OPENING reception : March 21, 6-8:30pm
ARTexts, including critical essay by Jim Servin found here: ampersandsfwords.blogspot.com
Harrell Fletcher is finding it hard to make art amidst all the troubling events happening in the world. He feels it would be better to offer viewers the chance to witness current events through the syndicated show Democracy Now. He makes an effort to watch this every day, and would like to offer the same alternative to gallery visitors.
Christine Hill presents a selection of catchphrase posters, pulled from the Volksboutique library of positive reinforcement quotations.
Hope Hilton wants to share the silence with you. By creating a journey through movement without sound, she trusts that her silent walks will provide an experience that is both contemplative and insightful. It is a journey that strangers and friends will take, following Hilton as she walks an uncharted path, ending the route where she begins.
Jessica James Lansdon is also working through some guilt. She is questioning why it is that artists still make objects today. Is anything worth saving, worth giving away? The glitz and clutter of a trashy collection lure us in and we see that Jessica has attached each object to a piece of string on the wall: she wants the viewer to sever these ties, to cut the threads, to set these things free, thereby freeing her as well.
Jennifer Delos Reyes is honoring those she loves and admires through song and music. Inspired by a funeral she attended, where the pastor led the service singing the deceased's favorite song, Jennifer doesn't want to wait that long. She doesn't want to wait until anyone is gone. By creating an impromptu choir on site, the gallery will be filled with the voices of those who have come together for a brief moment, to share a song.
Markuz Wernli-Saito wants to return the photographs others took for him in an art residency project in Vietnam. He invites the viewer to choose a roll of negatives and mail them back on his behalf to the residents of Bao Loc, hoping to make amends by returning something that was never his to begin with.
As an artist and independent curator Lori Gordon investigates the structure and power of belief, creating projects that attempt to decipher both humanity's and her own connection with the universe. Through collaborative endeavors, she explores the distance between coincidence and intention, with an emphasis on setting up moments that deviate from the expected. In some cases, she is more interested in providing the organized framework around which potential interactions may occur. With all her work, she is more interested in the journey than the destination.
Born 1975 Johannesburg, South Africa. Gordon received her MFA at the California College of the Arts. She is a recipient of the SECA Award nomination and the Murphy Cadogan Fellowship from the San Francisco Foundation. Exhibition venues include Richmond Arts Center, San Jose Museum of Art, Mission17, Southern Exposure, Temescal Amity Works, RockPaperScissors and The Kitchen (NYC). Gordon is the co-founder of Little Red Hen Collective and You Can Have It All. She recently chaired a panel at the University of Regina conference, "Open Engagement", on emerging Social Practices. This year she will be co-curating the Infinite Exchange Gallery for the Zero1 Biennial, and she will participate in the Talking Arts series at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, where she will provide portfolio reviews to artists.
Markuz
Wernli-Saito // Shadow Followers,
Returning the Negatives //
Photograph by K'Li Ang Va //
2007
2007
Nick Graham / American Ironic
Albert Reyes / something wicked
Jennifer Starkweather and Lauren Davies
2006
December
INTERIOR LIFE
Artists: Tommy Becker, David Fought, Lori Gordon, Amanda Hughen, Christine Lando, Jeff Morris, James Sansing, Sarah Smith, Jennifer Starkweather, Andy Vogt.
October / November
FIRMAMENT : Arngunnur Yr and Amanda Hughen
April 7 - May 5, 2006
OPEN NETWORK: Brooklyn
Larry Bamburg
Mai Braun
Dana Frankfort
Kate Gilmore
Olen Hsu
Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Paul Lee
Curated by Patricia Maloney
March 3 - March 26, 2006
Jennifer Kaufman: No Way Of Knowing When This Song Began
Andy Vogt: Redensified
January 13 - February 17, 2006
Albert Reyes: Wonderland
Megan Wilson: Spring
2005
November 4 - December 16
Rebecca Szeto
Creature Comfort
September 9 - October 4
Michael Campbell + Kevin King
Assisted Living
05. 20. - 06. 17
Maiko Sugano
(Art) in Everyday Life
Dharma Strasser Maccoll
Migration
03. 18. - 04. 15
Victor Cartagena
Anatomy of la Mentira : Red Noses
02. 11. - 03. 11
Lisa Goldschmid
Apparent Boundary
James Sansing
Recent Work
01. 07. - 02. 04
Philippe Jestin
Expressing Relief
Jen Pack
Threadworks
2004
09. 10. - 10. 24
Uli Gassmann
Uli Universum
06.11. - 07.09
Jeff Morris
“I 'm just happy to be here.”
Marion Jannot
Next to Nothing
05. 07 - 06. 04
Nilus de Matran
Life
Candace Plummer Gaudiani
Conversation
02. 13 - 03. 05
Sarah Smith
The Sustained Illusion
Tanya Hastings
Tenuous
01.09. - 02.06
Nuit Blanche (Lost in Translation)
Franco-American Group Show: artists co-curated
Leo Bersamina & Jesse Simon
Michael Campbell & Coby Ellison
César Cofone-Dadamo & René Lanié
Nilus de Matran & Jeff King
Amanda Hughen & Maria Park
Marion Jannot & Valérie Blin-Kaddour
Philippe Jestin & Albert Reyes
Mary Lamboley & Amy Tomson
Jeff Morris & Steven Elliott
Jennifer Starkweather & Kate Randall
Rebecca Szeto & Melora Kuhn
Megan Wilson & Kevin Chen
2003
01.10. - 02.07
Henrik Kam
Spaces/Traces
02. 14. - 03. 14
Lisa Goldschmid
Topographic Sense
Indigo Som
Pastel Diaspora
05.30 - 06. 26
Paula J. Clark
Intangible: 30 X 30
Jennifer Starkweather
Meander: an Exploration of Space
09.05. - 10. 03
Christine Lando
That Day: a retrospective, 1973-2003
11.14 - 12. 12
“ i miss you ”
International Group Show
Sylvie Belanger Canada
Michael Campbell Usa
Yoshinori Hosoki Japan
Kan Xuan China
Philippe Laleu France
Christine Monceau France
2002
01. 18. - 02.08
Robert Gutierrez
Will Nature Make a Man of Me Yet?
Jeff Morris
Closer
04.05 - 04.26
Al Reyes
Limited Attention
09. 20 - 10.18
Nilus de Matran
Low
Jeff King
Enso
10.25. - 11.16
Amanda Hughen
Synthetic
Arngunnur Yr
All and None
11. 22. - 12.20
Lynn Marie Kirby
En Passant
2001
01.05. - 02.09
Enigmatized
Michael Campbell
Philippe Jestin
02.16. - 03.16
Trace
John Ferdico, Heather Johnson, Laurie Long, Abner Nolan
03.23. - 04. 20
Miranda Lloyd
The Hybrid Zoo
Rebecca Szeto
Disposable Opulence
06.01 - 07.29
Cesar Cofone-Dadamo
Body. Ending. Line
10.12. - 11. 09
Megan Wilson
Filly
Tanya Hastings
Fluttering Fairy Tales, or the Seduction of Illusion
11.15. - 12.14
Kara Maria
Fabricator
Mary Lamboley
Overlapping Territories
2000
02.03. - 03.03
Multiplicity in time & space: intangible/imminent/virtual
International Group Show (21 artists)
05.04 - 06.02
Jeff King
Japan Works
10.06. - 11.03
Peripheral Stretch
Robert Gutierrez
Jeff Morris
R.E. Sanchez
11.10. - 11. 08
Yasuhiro Esaki
Barbed wire series
Haruko Sasaki
The rabit and the moon, endlessly,
playfully, having joyful conversation
1999
04.16. - 05. 28
Victor Cartagena
Anatomical memories-Memorias Anatomicas
06.03. - 07.1
Muriel Goodwin
Moon/reflection
10.15. - 11.19
Yeahee Um
China