Bay Area Exhibitions

JULIE CLOUTIER: USEFUL IRRATIONALITIES

Irving Street Projects, 4331 Irving Street, San Francisco, CA

October 1 – December 31, 2016

Through daily ritualistic stacking, assembling and rearranging of hundreds of wheel-thrown ceramic sculptures, artist Julie Cloutier will use the storefront gallery at Irving Street Projects as a testing ground for various groupings and realignments of her works. Useful Irrationalities questions the boundaries of utility within the domestic environment, exploring the relationship between labor and value and fine and applied art.
 
Cloutier’s stoneware vessels evoke both an ancient and modernist aesthetic and technique. Her works highlight the natural beauty of the dense, rock-like nature of her material when it is fired to its maturation temperature, through a process that historically dates back thousands of years. For this project Cloutier has developed a specific language of wheel-thrown shapes and characters according to the naturally occurring variance of color and texture of various clay bodies. The ever-changing components will offer a progressive demonstration of conventions within the larger ceramic collection.

IAN KIMMERLY: AS WE WANTER, WE ARE CLOSER

Dolby Chadwick Gallery, 210 Post Street, Suite 205, San Francisco

December 8, 2016 – January 28, 2017

The painting As We Wander, We Are Closer (2016) features an image of a couple with their faces pressed closely to each other. Although the nature of their relationship is unknown, their pose is one of undeniable intimacy. Exploring the effects of seriality, Kimmerly repeats this images three times at different scales, divesting the private moment of any overt preciousness. The changes in scale create a sense of depth and motion, as if the image were flying toward you—an ephemeral bit of data hurtling along the information superhighway. While digital blips in the form of abstract gestures can be seen as obscuring various parts of their faces, it is also possible to read this “noise” as being dispersed as part of a larger process of revelation and formation: for all their weaknesses, digital technologies also harbor great potential. Because their presence in our lives impacts how we view ourselves, our relationships, and our world, they should, in theory, prompt us to reconsider how we want to live our lives. Such shifts in gaze are played upon in Twofold (2016), in which primarily white and peach-toned paints have been dragged horizontally across the eyes of three figures. Several short, dark strokes, however, have been applied on top of the lighter colors, as if transposed eyes, viewing the world not only from a new angle but also through a different lens. 

MARTIN ROTH: UNTITLED (PERSIAN RUG)

Capital, 716 Sacremento Street, San Francisco

November 12 – December 24, 2016

In Martin Roth’s constructed landscapes, animals and plant-life take center stage. For this exhibition, Roth presents Untitled (Persian Rug), which examines how the introduction of an organic element can redefine a surface, an object, or its relation to the surrounding space. Roth impregnates a single Persian rug with wheatgrass seed, allowing grass to slowly grow through and takeover the material—augmenting, and eventually ruining it. In a culture of ever-present media, where most social spaces are saturated with screens, Roth makes a point of creating something real, something temporary: something that lives. The work’s ephemeral nature and limited lifespan is matched by its inherently experiential qualities. The sensual and time-based aspects of the work, such as the damp smell in the gallery, the spreading of the lush composition, and the irregular patches in which the green comes to life, are difficult to appreciate through documentation. The rug becomes a landscape of change. Roth has said, “The grass grows from the dust of history.” Roth creates this work based on the perennial urge by Western countries to impose their culture and values on other—largely Islamic—countries, in an attempt to ‘improve’ them. When the grass invades the Persian carpet, it initially creates something new and beautiful. In the end the grass destroys a valuable and historic object. To grow, the work needs constant care and attention. During this process Roth is not only an artist but also a gardener and storyteller, cultivating a contemporary narrative created from traces of the past.

KOKI TANAKA: POTTERS AND POETS

Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St, San Francisco

November 4, 2016 – February 14th, 2017

This exhibition by artist Koki Tanaka explores the idea of temporary creative collaborations.

Its two featured projects—A Poem Written by 5 Poets at Once (First Attempt) and A Pottery Produced by 5 Potters at Once (Silent Attempt) are part of a larger series in which Tanaka assembles strangers with a common profession or avocation and asks them to work together simultaneously to create new work. The projects are represented through documentation, primarily video.  

For the first work, Tanaka brought together Japanese poets who write in different styles. The poets, seated at a small round table, write verses, exchange ideas, think and write quietly, pen to paper, no computers in sight. They edit and add to each other’s work, read lines aloud, and talk about the processes of writing, in some cases talking around tensions and unspoken disagreements.  

For the second, Chinese potters sit around a pottery wheel and form clay into vessels using an assortment of techniques and tools. At times they work together, at other times they ask one potter to take the lead, and sometimes they disagree with the next steps they should take. The resulting vessels are on display as part of the exhibition.  

Tanaka’s interest in human relationships, activism, history, and community comes through in these subtle, humorous, unscripted works. He says, “To do something collaboratively is an ethical proposition….What is documented here is a kind of social sculpture, and as such it is also a document of the failure of that process.”

LILIANA PORTER: ACTUALIDADES / BREAKING NEWS

Hosfelt Gallery, 260 Utah Street, San Francisco

October 15 – November 23, 2016

Argentinian artist Liliana Porter is a master at distilling life and art to simple profundities through humorous juxtapositions of incongruous objects.  For her first exhibition at the gallery in four years, Porter premieres a new video, Actualidades/Breaking News.  In addition to the video, the exhibition showcases a full range of new work, including paintings, sculptural objects, installations, works on paper, and photographs, each challenging the proposition that time is linear and reality graspable.