Curatorial
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
Fahrenheit 451
“…a book, in its purest form, is a phenomenon of space and time and dimensionality...” Dick Higgins
Traditionally, the book is a container for knowledge – fiction or factual information or theoretic ideas conveyed through text and images. The essence of a book, however, is a very human experience: a relationship between the communicator and the audience using the book/object as a catalyst. A book is a sequential experience; we view the current page in the present moment, while previous pages rest like transparent images in our memories. It is only in reflecting on the entire work in retrospect that we view the work as a whole entity. Consequently, the book is a very time-based form of communication that by its very nature is also a tactile experience, creating an intimate experience between the object and the viewer.
The objects and installations in Fahrenheit 451 deal with the disintegration and re-fabrication of both visual and verbal languages. The essence and beauty of language is that we can use words and images to create layers of transparent meanings, both to clarify ideas and to reach abstract depths of meaning that evoke a visceral response. In this way, visual language can trigger an intuitive response in the same way that odors or music have the ability to stimulate subconscious sensations for which we have no words.
The artists in Fahrenheit 451 use the book format as an intimate container of the self, creating a personal narrative or a sense of the body, using skin-like transparencies and human forms to convey a very tactile sensibility. These books relate to the fragile and vulnerable structures which we are wrapped in: skin, hair, bone. Physically, these books explore the translucent areas of communication between the interior self and the exterior world.
Our existence, how we assimilate ideas and disseminate information, and our personal interactions, have been drastically changed by the modern age. It is virtually impossible to maneuver through our world without being influenced by the electronic infrastructure that we have created. We now communicate through machines more often than we do face to face. The artwork in Fahrenheit 451 investigates the modern age from a distinctly human perspective. Many of the artists use electronic tools to represent very human experiences. They have chosen formats that investigate the role of language, the isolation of words or symbols and their potential to create multi-layered meanings. They have created statements on how humans have used technology against humans, and on how we survive in spite of an increasingly fragmented society.
Cheryl Coon, Curator
Bay Area Reporter Review
Steven Jenkins
Wonder Words: ‘Fahrenheit 451’ revels in verbal prolixity
“Book lovers never go to bed lonely,” reads the slogan on a T-shirt for sale at the local car-wash gift shop. Pondering this as I pay for my Super Scrub Special, I concur that books do make splendid companions between the sheets, as any passionate reader will attest. Moreover, as vessels for life-altering words and ideas, and as beautiful objects in their own right, books provide myriad enticements and rewards, what French lexicologist Roland Barthes called “the pleasure of the text.” Naturally, we’re horrified when those pleasures are threatened, when books are censored, their wisdom and delight kept from us by the thugs of moral propriety, or when it looks increasingly like the predominance of the digital universe is leading to book obliteration.
Fahrenheit 451, a dynamic, linguistically rich exhibition on view at the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, dispels all fears of books being banished to paper-strewn gulags. Borrowing its title from Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel in which all books are banned and burned (their pages torching up at a toasty 451 degrees), this group show features book-related works by nearly three dozen Bay Area artists who brandish words as weapons, puzzles, or prayers. Brilliantly curated by Cheryl Coon with an eye towards stylistic diversity, Fahrenheit 451 is a heady exploration of the thrills and hazards of ink on paper. As with any good book, there are too many profound musings, plot twists, and semiotic challenges in the exhibition to absorb in one reading.
Upon entering the gallery you hear the sound of a typewriter, the source of which is Jim Campbell’s installation consisting of a glass pane painted to resemble a blank sheet of paper, beneath which is a box containing a computer chip that arranges and “types” the 7,344 characters contained in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Gazing at the blank sheet, knowing that it can be covered with such inspiring words, the viewer is powerfully reminded that language, both written and spoken, can change the world. Campbell’s piece is an ideal set-up for much of the work on display.
Books come in all formats, shapes, and sizes in the exhibition. Their unusual materials include carved acrylic and neon (Vincent Koloski’s modern primitive Petrobook), embossed leather (Cathy Feiss’ Constructing a Text II), cotton handkerchiefs (Nan Robarge’s Sedum Spec Book), and even cow guts. (Lisa Kokin’s fascinating but odorously repellent Inventory was inspired by a trip to Buchenwald concentration camp and consists of hundreds of found objects – buttons and fragments of Hebrew texts – encased in fowl-smelling bovine innards.)
Several pieces take the form of more traditional books with cloth covers and paper pages. In Robert’s Postcards, Michael Light presents a gorgeous and haunting collection of photos sequenced to trace a universal narrative of warfare, loss, and memory. April Gertler employs found photographs and handmade paper to tell an ambiguous tale of passion and violence in the Breaking Point, while Brian Janusiak artfully tears pages and photos to reconstruct mythology in Icarus Takes a Wife.
All of these books invite perusal, yet others on display make their point with a look-but-don’t-touch strategy, their contents investigated only at the risk of danger. Hundreds of pins stick out from the goatskin pages of Coriander Reisbord’s Resentment, and K. Ruby covers her volume of new-clippings with a nasty-looking metal rat-trap. Andy McKee qualifies the title of his exquisitely dangerous glass book Small Things That May Hurt You with words like “matches,” “electrical outlets,” and “promises.”
Many artists here favor direct narratives with clear-cut messages – or do they? In The Truth is Quite Simple, Prentiss Cole layers slippery truisms such as “Do or Die” and “With Meaning Exists Absurdity” on cheesecloth, acrylic resin, and polyester film. In Card Catalog, Diane Jacobs catalogues responses to a Rorscharch ink blot under categories including “hostility,” “bodily preoccupation,” and “sadomasochistic orientation.”
Narrative ambiguity strikes in Seth Kroeck’s McCarty Street Matches and in a similar piece by Kirsten Cole. Both artists imprint ambiguous works and phrases, such as “four generations of nervous feet” and “erotic” on wooden matches. For Spiritual Sense, John Muse has constructed a delicate jumble of fabric squares, suspended in a wire and thread hammock, covered with words like, “almost,” “Babel,” “book,” and “infallible.” Donna Leigh Schumacher’s ambitious mixed-media piece The Kiss blends photo-collages and layers of text. From a jumble of words jump random phrases – “She sleeps in pink on red satin sheets,” “killed when in drag,” “you fucked your sister” – that suggest an epic narrative of misdirected desire and gender confusion. In contrast, Sharon Siskin’s Sinking, a book made from metal, mirror, wood and bone, consists of a single, unmistakable sentence: “AIDS kills some of the most magnificent human beings I’ve known.”
Among the exhibition’s more playful entries is Indigo Som’s The Aeronautics of Love, featuring two paper airplanes suspended from the ceiling and covered with ruminations on long-distance relationships. Also lovely is Andrea Brewster’s Oh Pioneers, a quilted piece incorporating digitized photographs of women trailblazers and disordered pages from Willa Cather novels.
One of the lingering pleasures of Fahrenheit 451 – easily the best group show I’ve seen this year – is that it gets you thinking about your own favorite novels and poems, love letters, and dangling participles. All week I’ve had lines from André Breton and Kafka swirling in my head, their words making me giddy and dizzy. The splendid work in this clever exhibition – much of which I don’t have the space to mention – has the same effect. I could write a book about it. - Steven Jenkins
Fahrenheit 451 Artists:
Andrea Brewster
Jim Campbell
Irene Chan
Kirsten Cole
Prentiss Cole
Carolyn Cooley
Steven Elliott & Christina La Sala
Isabel Farnsworth
Cathy Feiss
Barbara Foster
Heidi Lynn Ganshaw
April Gertler
Judy Hiramoto
Diane Jacobs
Brian Janusiak
Lisa Kokin
Vincent Koloski
Seth Kroeck
Michael Light
Andy McKee
John Muse
Emily Payne
pollock/silk
Coriander Reisbord
Nan Robarge
K. Ruby
Donna Schumacher
Sharon Siskin
Karen Sjoholm
Indigo Som
Gillian Spragens
P.K. Steffen
Brian Taylor
George Woodward
“…a book, in its purest form, is a phenomenon of space and time and dimensionality...” Dick Higgins
Traditionally, the book is a container for knowledge – fiction or factual information or theoretic ideas conveyed through text and images. The essence of a book, however, is a very human experience: a relationship between the communicator and the audience using the book/object as a catalyst. A book is a sequential experience; we view the current page in the present moment, while previous pages rest like transparent images in our memories. It is only in reflecting on the entire work in retrospect that we view the work as a whole entity. Consequently, the book is a very time-based form of communication that by its very nature is also a tactile experience, creating an intimate experience between the object and the viewer.
The objects and installations in Fahrenheit 451 deal with the disintegration and re-fabrication of both visual and verbal languages. The essence and beauty of language is that we can use words and images to create layers of transparent meanings, both to clarify ideas and to reach abstract depths of meaning that evoke a visceral response. In this way, visual language can trigger an intuitive response in the same way that odors or music have the ability to stimulate subconscious sensations for which we have no words.
The artists in Fahrenheit 451 use the book format as an intimate container of the self, creating a personal narrative or a sense of the body, using skin-like transparencies and human forms to convey a very tactile sensibility. These books relate to the fragile and vulnerable structures which we are wrapped in: skin, hair, bone. Physically, these books explore the translucent areas of communication between the interior self and the exterior world.
Our existence, how we assimilate ideas and disseminate information, and our personal interactions, have been drastically changed by the modern age. It is virtually impossible to maneuver through our world without being influenced by the electronic infrastructure that we have created. We now communicate through machines more often than we do face to face. The artwork in Fahrenheit 451 investigates the modern age from a distinctly human perspective. Many of the artists use electronic tools to represent very human experiences. They have chosen formats that investigate the role of language, the isolation of words or symbols and their potential to create multi-layered meanings. They have created statements on how humans have used technology against humans, and on how we survive in spite of an increasingly fragmented society.
Cheryl Coon, Curator
Bay Area Reporter Review
Steven Jenkins
Wonder Words: ‘Fahrenheit 451’ revels in verbal prolixity
“Book lovers never go to bed lonely,” reads the slogan on a T-shirt for sale at the local car-wash gift shop. Pondering this as I pay for my Super Scrub Special, I concur that books do make splendid companions between the sheets, as any passionate reader will attest. Moreover, as vessels for life-altering words and ideas, and as beautiful objects in their own right, books provide myriad enticements and rewards, what French lexicologist Roland Barthes called “the pleasure of the text.” Naturally, we’re horrified when those pleasures are threatened, when books are censored, their wisdom and delight kept from us by the thugs of moral propriety, or when it looks increasingly like the predominance of the digital universe is leading to book obliteration.
Fahrenheit 451, a dynamic, linguistically rich exhibition on view at the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, dispels all fears of books being banished to paper-strewn gulags. Borrowing its title from Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel in which all books are banned and burned (their pages torching up at a toasty 451 degrees), this group show features book-related works by nearly three dozen Bay Area artists who brandish words as weapons, puzzles, or prayers. Brilliantly curated by Cheryl Coon with an eye towards stylistic diversity, Fahrenheit 451 is a heady exploration of the thrills and hazards of ink on paper. As with any good book, there are too many profound musings, plot twists, and semiotic challenges in the exhibition to absorb in one reading.
Upon entering the gallery you hear the sound of a typewriter, the source of which is Jim Campbell’s installation consisting of a glass pane painted to resemble a blank sheet of paper, beneath which is a box containing a computer chip that arranges and “types” the 7,344 characters contained in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Gazing at the blank sheet, knowing that it can be covered with such inspiring words, the viewer is powerfully reminded that language, both written and spoken, can change the world. Campbell’s piece is an ideal set-up for much of the work on display.
Books come in all formats, shapes, and sizes in the exhibition. Their unusual materials include carved acrylic and neon (Vincent Koloski’s modern primitive Petrobook), embossed leather (Cathy Feiss’ Constructing a Text II), cotton handkerchiefs (Nan Robarge’s Sedum Spec Book), and even cow guts. (Lisa Kokin’s fascinating but odorously repellent Inventory was inspired by a trip to Buchenwald concentration camp and consists of hundreds of found objects – buttons and fragments of Hebrew texts – encased in fowl-smelling bovine innards.)
Several pieces take the form of more traditional books with cloth covers and paper pages. In Robert’s Postcards, Michael Light presents a gorgeous and haunting collection of photos sequenced to trace a universal narrative of warfare, loss, and memory. April Gertler employs found photographs and handmade paper to tell an ambiguous tale of passion and violence in the Breaking Point, while Brian Janusiak artfully tears pages and photos to reconstruct mythology in Icarus Takes a Wife.
All of these books invite perusal, yet others on display make their point with a look-but-don’t-touch strategy, their contents investigated only at the risk of danger. Hundreds of pins stick out from the goatskin pages of Coriander Reisbord’s Resentment, and K. Ruby covers her volume of new-clippings with a nasty-looking metal rat-trap. Andy McKee qualifies the title of his exquisitely dangerous glass book Small Things That May Hurt You with words like “matches,” “electrical outlets,” and “promises.”
Many artists here favor direct narratives with clear-cut messages – or do they? In The Truth is Quite Simple, Prentiss Cole layers slippery truisms such as “Do or Die” and “With Meaning Exists Absurdity” on cheesecloth, acrylic resin, and polyester film. In Card Catalog, Diane Jacobs catalogues responses to a Rorscharch ink blot under categories including “hostility,” “bodily preoccupation,” and “sadomasochistic orientation.”
Narrative ambiguity strikes in Seth Kroeck’s McCarty Street Matches and in a similar piece by Kirsten Cole. Both artists imprint ambiguous works and phrases, such as “four generations of nervous feet” and “erotic” on wooden matches. For Spiritual Sense, John Muse has constructed a delicate jumble of fabric squares, suspended in a wire and thread hammock, covered with words like, “almost,” “Babel,” “book,” and “infallible.” Donna Leigh Schumacher’s ambitious mixed-media piece The Kiss blends photo-collages and layers of text. From a jumble of words jump random phrases – “She sleeps in pink on red satin sheets,” “killed when in drag,” “you fucked your sister” – that suggest an epic narrative of misdirected desire and gender confusion. In contrast, Sharon Siskin’s Sinking, a book made from metal, mirror, wood and bone, consists of a single, unmistakable sentence: “AIDS kills some of the most magnificent human beings I’ve known.”
Among the exhibition’s more playful entries is Indigo Som’s The Aeronautics of Love, featuring two paper airplanes suspended from the ceiling and covered with ruminations on long-distance relationships. Also lovely is Andrea Brewster’s Oh Pioneers, a quilted piece incorporating digitized photographs of women trailblazers and disordered pages from Willa Cather novels.
One of the lingering pleasures of Fahrenheit 451 – easily the best group show I’ve seen this year – is that it gets you thinking about your own favorite novels and poems, love letters, and dangling participles. All week I’ve had lines from André Breton and Kafka swirling in my head, their words making me giddy and dizzy. The splendid work in this clever exhibition – much of which I don’t have the space to mention – has the same effect. I could write a book about it. - Steven Jenkins
Fahrenheit 451 Artists:
Andrea Brewster
Jim Campbell
Irene Chan
Kirsten Cole
Prentiss Cole
Carolyn Cooley
Steven Elliott & Christina La Sala
Isabel Farnsworth
Cathy Feiss
Barbara Foster
Heidi Lynn Ganshaw
April Gertler
Judy Hiramoto
Diane Jacobs
Brian Janusiak
Lisa Kokin
Vincent Koloski
Seth Kroeck
Michael Light
Andy McKee
John Muse
Emily Payne
pollock/silk
Coriander Reisbord
Nan Robarge
K. Ruby
Donna Schumacher
Sharon Siskin
Karen Sjoholm
Indigo Som
Gillian Spragens
P.K. Steffen
Brian Taylor
George Woodward
paper rock scissors
paper rock scissors
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
paper rock scissors
There is a direct relationship between artists' hands and minds that becomes a visual form of non-verbal communication between thought and action. An artist's coordination, between seeing and the gestures of creating, is often a balancing act that involves physical motion as much as thoughtful contemplation. Artists naturally experiment and play with materials and ideas before actually creating the finished work. Generally this is a complex process that includes an infinite variety of choices and materials. How artists select their format and medium can often be a random choice based on a gut reaction that may eventually lead to startling revelations about the concept of the work.
The artists in Paper Rock Scissors scrutinize the ordinary elements of our lives: family, gender, race, identity and language. Their thoughts span social issues regarding loss of culture and more intimate investigations about our domestic lives and the loss of family and tradition. Many of these artists collect remnants, the detritus of every-day-life. These objects and images are like relics that show the accumulated moments spent: first in gathering, preserving, and contemplating these materials, then in the time spent in the studio incorporating these materials into the art.
Many of these artists investigate this passing of time through the process of aging and decay, or by their actions. There is a sense of our own mortality inherent in making art that will last longer than our selves; many of the pieces address these issues by incorporating fleeting images, fragile papers, rust, and time-based performances or projects. Often this work has the power to induce strong emotions such as nostalgia, or trigger memories similar to the way certain smells recover a sense of place. Memories, like many ideas, are translucent and layered, often shifting out of focus or changing perspective as we grow older.
Making art is often a series of gestures, rituals, and random acts leading to a final object that requires some further contemplation. This process can be both frustrating and fascinating, like starting out on a road trip with no itinerary. The work is certainly influenced by state of mind, physical well-being and countless other variables that all contribute to the finished piece. The studio becomes a laboratory of sorts where artists transmute these raw materials into a physical representation of one's ideas. In this respect, the process is similar to the search for the proverbial philosopher's stone.
Cheryl Coon , Curator
Artists:
Julia Babiarz
Lynn Beldner
Mardi Burnham
Kirsten Cole
Pamela Cooper
Christel Dillbohner
Nicholas Fedak II
Christine Heinitz
Diane Jacobs
Christina La Sala
Gretchen Mentzer
Virginia Ray
Shawn Smith
Jason Tannen
Art Papers Magazine Review
Carol Ladewig
The works in Paper Rock Scissors, an exhibition curated by Cheryl Coon, a former writer for this publication, provided an opportunity to examine the work of artists who develop their thoughts and perceptions in a variety of media to create visual forms for non-verbal communications. The works in the show are, in Coon’s words, “…like relics that show the accumulated moments spent: first in gathering preserving, and contemplating these materials, then in the time spent in the studio incorporating the materials into art.” In contrast to the collecting of artist to create work, curators create temporary collections to be encountered in a particular space and time. The collection then disperses and returns to the studio or to another collection. The curator/collector’s sensibility in gathering and displaying works by various artists adds a new dimension of meaning to the works as they visually interact.
Coon has drawn from 14 artists working in a variety of materials: video, paint, sculpture, assemblage, woven paper, printing, and photography. There is a sense of fragility and mortality here which focuses on the commonplace elements of our lives. There is a delicate sense of detail and color in the works presented; the overall palettes in the exhibit, sepia, muted blacks and whites, occasional touches of red and blue, evoked and contributed to the quality of quiet memory and reflection. These artists used materials, objects and text taken from everyday – photographs, motorcycle parts, wax, paper, spoons, and a cup – and transformed and combined them to form new objects which are both surprising and thoughtful examinations of the ordinary elements of our lives: family, gender, race and identity and language.
Virginia Ray’s Stone Necklace is in many ways emblematic of the show, composed using found stones and ordinary fishing line. Each stone is tied simply and elegantly, all hanging at the same level, it is a quiet piece which is surprising, beautiful and visually arresting. The passage of time during which this piece was composed was recorded by exposing the stones to the sun on paper which left behind images of the stones.
Jason Tannen’s work is on a CD-ROM, accessed through a computer located in the gallery. The project has three segments, Scissors Paper Rock, and each segment has three components, a narrative text, photographic portfolio and video. Scissors is inspired by film noir, tapping into the darker side of human nature. The world of dissolute streets, all-night diners and empty telephone booths populate this section. Paper refers to records and documents and is an impressionistic view of family history and immigration. Rock describes the geography and substance of Fort Point, a Civil War-era military fort in San Francisco. This work is an interesting paradox and contrast to the pieces in the show in that is has transformed the commonplace materials of scissors, rock and paper into electrical impulses rather than an actual physical object.
The work in this show also covers a wide range of materials and processes from traditional to new media. The thread of memory runs through each of these artists’ works. In assembling this ephemeral collection, Coon has provided us with the works of artists that are engaged in a thoughtful and thought-provoking process, a skilled exploration of materials, the process of making and thinking thus elaborating on fundamental aspects of our lives.
There is a direct relationship between artists' hands and minds that becomes a visual form of non-verbal communication between thought and action. An artist's coordination, between seeing and the gestures of creating, is often a balancing act that involves physical motion as much as thoughtful contemplation. Artists naturally experiment and play with materials and ideas before actually creating the finished work. Generally this is a complex process that includes an infinite variety of choices and materials. How artists select their format and medium can often be a random choice based on a gut reaction that may eventually lead to startling revelations about the concept of the work.
The artists in Paper Rock Scissors scrutinize the ordinary elements of our lives: family, gender, race, identity and language. Their thoughts span social issues regarding loss of culture and more intimate investigations about our domestic lives and the loss of family and tradition. Many of these artists collect remnants, the detritus of every-day-life. These objects and images are like relics that show the accumulated moments spent: first in gathering, preserving, and contemplating these materials, then in the time spent in the studio incorporating these materials into the art.
Many of these artists investigate this passing of time through the process of aging and decay, or by their actions. There is a sense of our own mortality inherent in making art that will last longer than our selves; many of the pieces address these issues by incorporating fleeting images, fragile papers, rust, and time-based performances or projects. Often this work has the power to induce strong emotions such as nostalgia, or trigger memories similar to the way certain smells recover a sense of place. Memories, like many ideas, are translucent and layered, often shifting out of focus or changing perspective as we grow older.
Making art is often a series of gestures, rituals, and random acts leading to a final object that requires some further contemplation. This process can be both frustrating and fascinating, like starting out on a road trip with no itinerary. The work is certainly influenced by state of mind, physical well-being and countless other variables that all contribute to the finished piece. The studio becomes a laboratory of sorts where artists transmute these raw materials into a physical representation of one's ideas. In this respect, the process is similar to the search for the proverbial philosopher's stone.
Cheryl Coon , Curator
Artists:
Julia Babiarz
Lynn Beldner
Mardi Burnham
Kirsten Cole
Pamela Cooper
Christel Dillbohner
Nicholas Fedak II
Christine Heinitz
Diane Jacobs
Christina La Sala
Gretchen Mentzer
Virginia Ray
Shawn Smith
Jason Tannen
Art Papers Magazine Review
Carol Ladewig
The works in Paper Rock Scissors, an exhibition curated by Cheryl Coon, a former writer for this publication, provided an opportunity to examine the work of artists who develop their thoughts and perceptions in a variety of media to create visual forms for non-verbal communications. The works in the show are, in Coon’s words, “…like relics that show the accumulated moments spent: first in gathering preserving, and contemplating these materials, then in the time spent in the studio incorporating the materials into art.” In contrast to the collecting of artist to create work, curators create temporary collections to be encountered in a particular space and time. The collection then disperses and returns to the studio or to another collection. The curator/collector’s sensibility in gathering and displaying works by various artists adds a new dimension of meaning to the works as they visually interact.
Coon has drawn from 14 artists working in a variety of materials: video, paint, sculpture, assemblage, woven paper, printing, and photography. There is a sense of fragility and mortality here which focuses on the commonplace elements of our lives. There is a delicate sense of detail and color in the works presented; the overall palettes in the exhibit, sepia, muted blacks and whites, occasional touches of red and blue, evoked and contributed to the quality of quiet memory and reflection. These artists used materials, objects and text taken from everyday – photographs, motorcycle parts, wax, paper, spoons, and a cup – and transformed and combined them to form new objects which are both surprising and thoughtful examinations of the ordinary elements of our lives: family, gender, race and identity and language.
Virginia Ray’s Stone Necklace is in many ways emblematic of the show, composed using found stones and ordinary fishing line. Each stone is tied simply and elegantly, all hanging at the same level, it is a quiet piece which is surprising, beautiful and visually arresting. The passage of time during which this piece was composed was recorded by exposing the stones to the sun on paper which left behind images of the stones.
Jason Tannen’s work is on a CD-ROM, accessed through a computer located in the gallery. The project has three segments, Scissors Paper Rock, and each segment has three components, a narrative text, photographic portfolio and video. Scissors is inspired by film noir, tapping into the darker side of human nature. The world of dissolute streets, all-night diners and empty telephone booths populate this section. Paper refers to records and documents and is an impressionistic view of family history and immigration. Rock describes the geography and substance of Fort Point, a Civil War-era military fort in San Francisco. This work is an interesting paradox and contrast to the pieces in the show in that is has transformed the commonplace materials of scissors, rock and paper into electrical impulses rather than an actual physical object.
The work in this show also covers a wide range of materials and processes from traditional to new media. The thread of memory runs through each of these artists’ works. In assembling this ephemeral collection, Coon has provided us with the works of artists that are engaged in a thoughtful and thought-provoking process, a skilled exploration of materials, the process of making and thinking thus elaborating on fundamental aspects of our lives.
Natural Selection
Natural Selection
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
Natural Selection
These artists have at least two things in common: they all collect and they all have a deep fascination with the mysteries of nature. Their work may be seen as a scientific specimens, oddities, and personal observations. Many of the artists approach art from a science background, emphasizing the similarities between scientific investigation and artistic experimentation. They use their studios like a creative laboratory, where they dissect and reassemble objects and ideas that document their daily activities and interaction with nature. The artists have contained, wrapped, and preserved plants and animals; like fossils, the work in this exhibition is a record of life caught in a fragile state of disintegration. This suggested sequence, with younger strata overlying older strata, records the time spent in the studio and reflects on the cycles inherent in nature, and on how nature reclaims materials through decay and deterioration.
For centuries people have collected the strange and the exotic, inspected and speculated on the meaning of the inexplicable elements around us. The German curiosity cabinet, Wunderkammer, housed wonders ranging from mummified mermaids to shrunken heads, as well as fossils and other elements of natural history, but its first emphasis was on the strange and unnatural, and fakes were abundant. The bestiary descended from the Physiologus, a book known to be in existence in the fifth century organizing the elements of natural science. The bestiary exemplifies ideas found in this book of nature, for example, the conception of the world as either the product of text (the divine word) or reducible to text (quantitative and qualitative science). To a great extent, the mysteries in nature have been preempted by our modern science that endeavors to categorize, explain, and control every nuance of our world.
Even this knowledge of scientific facts cannot reduce the sense of awe most of us experience when we are confronted with raw nature; it is an instinctive reaction to something greater than ourselves. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us." In her artist statement, Susan Magnus writes of the "strange mixture of horror and delight" she experienced as a child while viewing the collection of pickled monsters and other exotic animals at the Vanderbilt Museum. Most of us still have this sense of morbid curiosity and twisted humor, like Steinbeck's Cannery Row tales of Mack and the Boys going on the great frog hunt to get specimens for Doc's lab. There is no logical explanation for why certain elements in this exhibition are at once humorous and full of sorrow, beautiful and repulsive; it is simply a gut reaction we have. We recognize our lack of control over our world in spite of the advances in modern science. So, go and see the otters in Monterey Bay before they're gone; enjoy what you can while it's there, because change is inevitable.
Cheryl Coon , Curator
Artists:
Mari Andrews
Laurel Hunter
Robert Keller
Deborah Lohrke
Jeannie M
Susan Magnus
Victoria May
Carol Selter
Kerry Vander Meer
These artists have at least two things in common: they all collect and they all have a deep fascination with the mysteries of nature. Their work may be seen as a scientific specimens, oddities, and personal observations. Many of the artists approach art from a science background, emphasizing the similarities between scientific investigation and artistic experimentation. They use their studios like a creative laboratory, where they dissect and reassemble objects and ideas that document their daily activities and interaction with nature. The artists have contained, wrapped, and preserved plants and animals; like fossils, the work in this exhibition is a record of life caught in a fragile state of disintegration. This suggested sequence, with younger strata overlying older strata, records the time spent in the studio and reflects on the cycles inherent in nature, and on how nature reclaims materials through decay and deterioration.
For centuries people have collected the strange and the exotic, inspected and speculated on the meaning of the inexplicable elements around us. The German curiosity cabinet, Wunderkammer, housed wonders ranging from mummified mermaids to shrunken heads, as well as fossils and other elements of natural history, but its first emphasis was on the strange and unnatural, and fakes were abundant. The bestiary descended from the Physiologus, a book known to be in existence in the fifth century organizing the elements of natural science. The bestiary exemplifies ideas found in this book of nature, for example, the conception of the world as either the product of text (the divine word) or reducible to text (quantitative and qualitative science). To a great extent, the mysteries in nature have been preempted by our modern science that endeavors to categorize, explain, and control every nuance of our world.
Even this knowledge of scientific facts cannot reduce the sense of awe most of us experience when we are confronted with raw nature; it is an instinctive reaction to something greater than ourselves. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us." In her artist statement, Susan Magnus writes of the "strange mixture of horror and delight" she experienced as a child while viewing the collection of pickled monsters and other exotic animals at the Vanderbilt Museum. Most of us still have this sense of morbid curiosity and twisted humor, like Steinbeck's Cannery Row tales of Mack and the Boys going on the great frog hunt to get specimens for Doc's lab. There is no logical explanation for why certain elements in this exhibition are at once humorous and full of sorrow, beautiful and repulsive; it is simply a gut reaction we have. We recognize our lack of control over our world in spite of the advances in modern science. So, go and see the otters in Monterey Bay before they're gone; enjoy what you can while it's there, because change is inevitable.
Cheryl Coon , Curator
Artists:
Mari Andrews
Laurel Hunter
Robert Keller
Deborah Lohrke
Jeannie M
Susan Magnus
Victoria May
Carol Selter
Kerry Vander Meer
Writing
Margaret Keelan’s Intimate and Universal Stories
Ceramics: Art and Perception
Excerpt:
...Often, if you look at sculptors' hands, you may be able to tell the medium they work with, or their level of experience and how intensely they work. The cuts and the scars etched into the surface of the bone dry skin, the splattered hot wax and metal burns, all of the crisscrossed marks are like a road map showing the history and the life of the artist.The scars mingle with the wrinkles and the lifelines to show layer upon layer of events – the incidents and accidents that shape an artist's studio practice. Keelan's figurative sculptures resonate with the same resilient spirit – their peeling, decayed and scratched surfaces are powerful because they refer to a vast interior world rather than a superficial outer beauty....
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Ceramics: Art and Perception
Excerpt:
...Often, if you look at sculptors' hands, you may be able to tell the medium they work with, or their level of experience and how intensely they work. The cuts and the scars etched into the surface of the bone dry skin, the splattered hot wax and metal burns, all of the crisscrossed marks are like a road map showing the history and the life of the artist.The scars mingle with the wrinkles and the lifelines to show layer upon layer of events – the incidents and accidents that shape an artist's studio practice. Keelan's figurative sculptures resonate with the same resilient spirit – their peeling, decayed and scratched surfaces are powerful because they refer to a vast interior world rather than a superficial outer beauty....
read more