September2017
Ruptures
Ruptures, staged at 21 Grand Gallery in Oakland, CA examined the uncanny and familiar at the edges of our everyday. Artists often function as oracles, imagining the future in a fast changing world. Dan Grayber, Marya Krogstad, Yael Zaken, Ashley Harris and Jeremy Newman contributed works that required a double take, and questioned just what lies within the bounds of normalcy.
Loosely defined as doubts as to whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might in fact be animate and encompassing notions of anxiety, the abject, synchronicity and simulacra; the uncanny has migrated from the fringes of our collective consciousness into the realm of the quotidian. Artificial intelligence, smart machines, biological and genetic alterations no longer belong solely to science fiction or futurist scenarios but are ubiquitous in our daily lives. As the boundaries between … Read More »
Pretty Baby
OFFSpace’s inaugural exhibition at Art Engine Gallery in San Francisco, CA featured three artists playing with dolls- making them, becoming them or just watching them.
Sara Harrell-Lai, Victor Barbieri, and Goody-B. Wiseman explored the margins of this childish pre-occupation exhibit works both playful and alarming.
Victor Barbieri’s ultra slow motion videos of young girls sleeping capture in vivid detail the childish, doll-like perfection embodied in his passive subjects. Visceral and engrossing, innocent and disturbing, these pieces elicit strong reactions. The subversive power of these gorgeous images puts a twist on the age-old relationship between the artist/viewer and the model/subject. Derived from her museum of a fictitious colony of feral children, Pentegoet Park: The Terrible Ones, Goody-B. Wiseman’s small bronze sculptures conjure dark places we’d rather not acknowledge—The Beastly Baby meets Aesop’s Fables. The museum of feral children documents the terrifying voyage of … Read More »