Inaugural Exhibition Catalogue: Embark

EMBARK EXHIBITION

02.20.15-03.22.15

g a l l e r y

Paroxysm of meaning, 2014; acrylic and screen printing ink of muslin

Bobby Anspach CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2016 Here’ sentence number one about Bobby, that should still be connected to Master Page A. Consequat cold-pressed slow-carb, exercitation roof party bicycle rights semiotics DIY dolor heirloom gastropub. Pinterest listicle dolor, PBR anim Blue Bottle banjo umami. Pug voluptate farm-to-table, post-ironic forage vero eiusmod XOXO mlkshk mustache proident pop-up exercitation commodo. Locavore placeat banh mi, keffiyeh tote bag eu vinyl esse DIY fap church-key. Reprehenderit sint nulla, cred XOXO put a bird on it four dollar toast lomo accusamus duis.

Wes Anderson minim nihil, retro forage fanny pack sunt consequat enim iPhone. Helvetica ea reprehenderit, skateboard veniam voluptate sustainable jean shorts dolore Carles. Truffaut bespoke eiusmod, tote bag roof party four loko XOXO sriracha mlkshk normcore letterpress meggings salvia. Mustache Neutra viral four loko McSweeney’s Etsy mixtape tempor, do qui letterpress. Cred sartorial veniam Blue Bottle, bicycle rights cillum asymmetrical Godard. Laboris distillery food truck, Echo Park irony butcher deep v. Selvage trust fund meditation aesthetic.

Consequat banh mi letterpress mixtape bitters, tattooed VHS kale chips small batch 3 wolf moon mumblecore placeat.

Artisan actually ugh, ad four dollar toast DIY Brooklyn cold-pressed cardigan Marfa lomo keytar deep v cray. In bitters pug health goth nesciunt, crucifix keytar. Cliche Blue Bottle stumptown sustainable, duis Pitchfork Marfa sint mollit paleo Helvetica. Ullamco Carles taxidermy dolore YOLO, consequat tofu mustache nulla DIY vero butcher sed ugh. Direct trade meh ugh drinking vinegar labore, duis mixtape Tumblr crucifix tilde anim magna do Echo Park. Scenester fap consectetur vero eiusmod sartorial.

Cover Image by Michelle Ott. From the series Antarctica With/Without, (cutout) 2013

EMBARK GALLERY

INAUGURAL EXHIBITION 02.20.15-03.22.15 Bobby Anspach Jose Figueroa Matthew Goldberg Omar Mismar Jacqueline Norheim Michelle Ott Courtney Sennish Matt Smith Chavez

gallery

On view from February 20 to March 22, 2015, the inaugural exhibition titled Embark relates to the physical location of the gallery. Housed in the historic Fort Mason Center, once called the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, the very architecture of the Embark gallery is imbued with the spirit of the 1.6 million passengers who came to Fort Mason to commence voyages into the unknown. Artists were asked to submit works of any media pertaining to the theme of embarkation: the inception of change, beginning anew, and journeys of any kind. Whether the understanding of Embark was narrative, philosophical, abstract or otherwise, artists were encouraged to provide innovative submissions with exploration and risk-taking in mind.

Our inaugural exhibition Embark highlights the diversity of talent flourishing in Bay Area schools. The innovation from these programs is made possible in part by the collaborative exploration of ideas among peers. Our organization’s goal is to facilitate similarly productive dialogues beyond isolated institutions, an objective the artists represented here have proved exceedingly worthwhile. The conceptual significance of each selected artwork was both strengthened and complicated by the others, resulting in a dynamic exchange.

Following the theme of embarkation, perspectives on transition and transformation emerged. There is emotional resonance in Omar Mismar’s search for human connection within urban chaos. The synthetic recreation of an industrial landscape in work by Courtney Sennish suggests anxiety about our increasingly man-made surroundings. Likewise, Antarctica With/ Without by Michelle Ott considers irreversible changes made on the path towards progress and in the name of commerce.

Matt Goldberg playfully gives visibility to this unending cycle of consumption in Cadillac Treadmill, while Matt Smith Chavez conceals the course taken by the images in his digital “paintings,” leaving us to wonder how he got there.

Though conceptual in approach, expressions of the personal are also present. Jose Figueroa explores the relationship between inner experience and outward identity. In a whimsical, self-reflexive installation that follows the narrative of a dream, Bobby Anspach describes an expedition to create new work. And Jacqueline Norheim’s photo collages seem to be as much about the discovery of personal limitations as they are unfamiliar landscapes.

These are just a few of the similarities and differences that demonstrate the value in uniting these networks of creativity. But perhaps the most important commonality is a level of thoughtfulness and originality that inspires promise for the future of Bay Area art.

Angelica Jardini | GALLERY DIRECTOR

Bobby Anspach CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2016 This Is a Fucking Joke follows the artist’s creative process in a uniquely self-referential narrative. The fourteen “station” installation uses hand written drawing and text pieces accompanied by various archival elements, which keeps the story floating in a space somewhere between the real and the imagined. Though dreamlike, the events detailed act as significant turning points, experiences that potentially signify the beginning of a critical responsibility felt by the artist as he moves forward with his work.

Statement by the artist

This is a Fucking Joke, 2014; Apple computer, paper, marker on paper, paper on paper, ink on paper on paper, tape, absent tape which unfortunately removed bits of paper from paper when removed from previously pristine paper***, image of floor on computer, wood, glue, wood glue, (carpet, rug, towels (from the home of Bobby Anspach)), children’s art kit, craft pom poms, love, tru-ray construction paper, hand blown glass vase, speakers, binaural beats, iPhone, light, this, floor, walls, space, person, tea bag label things, green, blue, yellow, red, purple, orange, cardboard, apples

Jose Figueroa UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 2016 Untitled (The Perfect Way), installed in an old suitcase by a window with a view of the Golden Gate bridge, requires us to consider seemingly contradicting “realities” and suggests that our conception of mutually exclusive states of being is flawed.

The illustrious bridge - in itself a symbol of embarkation, to the West and towards industrial progress - is prominently featured in the video. East and West, past and present, public and private. These are just some of the binaries probed in The Perfect Way. The video considers the contrast between the iconic bridge as a beacon of human achievement and the macabre reality that thousands of people have ended their life’s journey by jumping off of it into the bay. A suicide hotline holding message speaks to that tension, to the precarious stasis between expectation and reality, hope and despair, life and death.

Untitled (The Perfect Way), 2013; video-installation, variable dimensions

Categorizations of sexuality and issues of visibility are addressed as sex is simulated by this figure and a male blow-up doll.

Matthew Goldberg SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, 2015 “My aim is to rearrange reality through a process of equal parts creation and discovery. With a strong use of appropriation—whether it’s from canonical art history or the free section on Craigslist—I am attempting to recreate the world from the world, resulting in new and unexpected contexts. The objects I make speak a specific language of mash-up and amalgamation. It’s as if the world were a snow globe that was shaken up and put back down with everything slightly off.”

Cadillac Treadmill speaks to both the futility and possibilities inherent in our conception of “progress.” Goldberg considers the work to be “an icon of ‘the American dream.’” The treadmill of course goes nowhere, a symbol of monotony and fruitless labor that is emphasized by the hood ornament of a vintage Cadillac, a luxury vehicle now rendered useless in both function and value. On the other hand, the found objects begin a new life as part of the artwork, and as the perpetual motion of the treadmill strips away the paint applied to the tread, it creates a new image. Though, as the artist notes, “The longer it runs, the more it destroys itself, leaving only its remnants behind.”

Cadillac Treadmill, 2014; treadmill, paint, faux marble, hood ornament

Omar Mismar CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2015 “For a period of 30 days, I took a walk every day, navigating through the city using Grindr, a geo-location gay mobile app that tells the users the vicinity of gay men around them. Each day I picked a man I desired, and tried to get as close as possible to him using the app. I kept a record of my routes and traced them into paths. Few of these paths became neon sculptures.”

How can we envision the physical paths we walk in an increasingly technological environment? Omar Mismar’s Path of Love project does just that. The realms of public and private are blurred as Mismar selects subjects from the app and attempts to make a real life connection. His sculptures are a concrete expression, a product of an emotional journey. Though the intense vibrating color of the bright red neon seems to reference seedy urban encounters, the detailed presentation of his search is quite intimate, even perhaps sentimental. A sad sentimentality, nostalgic as the hope for human connection remains, but unfulfilled in the end as it is never attained.

The Path of Love #03; 2014; performance, Grindr, neon. Manufactured by Shawna Peterson.

Jacqueline Norheim MILLS COLLEGE, 2016 “With photography and collage, I create interruptions in space. These interruptions examine how we experience a natural landscape, and its passage through time. Portals into different moments explore the land in greater depth.

Each scene becomes a symbol of timelessness, as it permeates the centuries of its existence.”

Jacqueline Norheim’s work expresses the inimitability of a moment. The landscapes she presents prove impossible to access completely, the scope of vision rendered insufficient by the short span of human life.

Canyon I, 2014; digital print and collage

Desert Peak, 2014; digital print and collage

Taos Mountain, 2014; digital print and collage

Michelle Ott UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 2015 “Antarctica With/Without is a series comprised of landscape photographs and drawings. The scale of the images is dependent on the installation site: some prints and drawings are mural size while some drawings are installed at a small scale. This mixture references my experience of being in a landscape that is vast, contrasted with an awareness of the smallness of my body in this place.

The initial photographs were made over several seasons of working at a science research base, McMurdo Station, and the work has evolved through transforming the images into a visual discussion of how humans intervene in this landscape. By photographing while in Antarctica, I maintained an active engagement with the environment.

Upon returning home with the negatives, I have been printing landscapes, making drawings, and creating hand-cut photographs that function as my negotiation between the act of documenting McMurdo (and its surrounding area) and the trace of what humans leave behind. Operating in Antarctica With/Without are elements of the handmade/ machine made, multiples/one-of-a-kind, background/foreground and absence/presence. I see these pairs less as contradictions and more as movable engagements, much like magnets that repel and attract.�

From the series Antarctica With/Without, (diptych 2013); archival ink prints, hand-cut archival ink prints, and graphite on paper

Courtney Sennish CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2015 “I amble through the city of San Francisco in search of illuminations: silent monuments bearing subtleties that transform my being in place. My process is an accumulation of labor, historical research, and intuition resulting in a phenomenological and physical conversion. Contemporary generations have grown accustomed to a lifestyle devoid of wilderness, accepting a contained form of nature. How does living in such a heavily fabricated and dictated environment change our biology? As time blurs memories, does place fade back into landscape?�

Where the Pathway Leads, 2014; mixed media

Communicating Depth, 2014; mixed media

Matt Smith Chavez UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 2015 “I’m interested in the journey of images. In the images that arrive in my studio and the images that I create and send away. I’m interested in the trajectories whereby an image becomes a copy of a copy of a copy, so far removed from its original that authorship begins to seem malleable. Partly my work is about mimesis -- finding a way to mimic gestures and visual strategies to make *representations* of abstract paintings. The goal is never to make an abstract painting per se. Instead I appropriate and resignify the visual strategies of painting to make work that exists self-consciously as something less heroic and more quotidian.

The brushstrokes, spray paint marks, and splatters that I screen print onto my work are derived from stock images produced for commercial purposes and distributed freely on the web.

I use these marks made by anonymous producers as a way to question notions of authorship, aura, and authenticity in a networked age when digital tools are accessible to practically anyone. Ultimately, what pushes me to make work is an interest in our changing relationship to abstraction -- as both producers and viewers -- within a visual economy that is becoming more and more decentralized.”

Paroxysm of meaning, 2014; acrylic and screen printing ink on muslin

An imperfect contest, 2014; dye, bleach, and screen printing ink

Acknowledgements Sartle.com Catharine Clark Julie Lazar Michael Zheng Fort Mason Center Holly Blake Zeus & Thor Libby Garrison Lauren Dare

2 Marina Blvd. Bldg. B Ste. 330, San Francisco CA 94123

Tania Houtzager FOUNDER Angelica Jardini DIRECTOR Carolyn Nickell ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

Embark Gallery.com

Paroxysm of meaning, 2014; acrylic and screen printing ink of muslin

Bobby Anspach CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS, 2016 Here’ sentence number one about Bobby, that should still be connected to Master Page A. Consequat cold-pressed slow-carb, exercitation roof party bicycle rights semiotics DIY dolor heirloom gastropub. Pinterest listicle dolor, PBR anim Blue Bottle banjo umami. Pug voluptate farm-to-table, post-ironic forage vero eiusmod XOXO mlkshk mustache proident pop-up exercitation commodo. Locavore placeat banh mi, keffiyeh tote bag eu vinyl esse DIY fap church-key. Reprehenderit sint nulla, cred XOXO put a bird on it four dollar toast lomo accusamus duis.

Wes Anderson minim nihil, retro forage fanny pack sunt consequat enim iPhone. Helvetica ea reprehenderit, skateboard veniam voluptate sustainable jean shorts dolore Carles. Truffaut bespoke eiusmod, tote bag roof party four loko XOXO sriracha mlkshk normcore letterpress meggings salvia. Mustache Neutra viral four loko McSweeney’s Etsy mixtape tempor, do qui letterpress. Cred sartorial veniam Blue Bottle, bicycle rights cillum asymmetrical Godard. Laboris distillery food truck, Echo Park irony butcher deep v. Selvage trust fund meditation aesthetic.

Consequat banh mi letterpress mixtape bitters, tattooed VHS kale chips small batch 3 wolf moon mumblecore placeat.

Artisan actually ugh, ad four dollar toast DIY Brooklyn cold-pressed cardigan Marfa lomo keytar deep v cray. In bitters pug health goth nesciunt, crucifix keytar. Cliche Blue Bottle stumptown sustainable, duis Pitchfork Marfa sint mollit paleo Helvetica. Ullamco Carles taxidermy dolore YOLO, consequat tofu mustache nulla DIY vero butcher sed ugh. Direct trade meh ugh drinking vinegar labore, duis mixtape Tumblr crucifix tilde anim magna do Echo Park. Scenester fap consectetur vero eiusmod sartorial.