EUTOPIA

Pneuhaus

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Pneuhaus

Compound Camera
Inflatable Expanding Works of Art
Exploratorium, Pier 15 [link]
San Francisco, CA

A contemporary interpretation of ancient camera obscura technology, the design group’s work considers complexities of visibility and sight. Featuring 109 tiny lens embedded into an igloo-shaped structure, the environment offers a respite from the crowded pier, placing the viewer into a position of a voyeur. The field of vision is at once ruptured and expanded, providing many tiny screens of the same scene from a 360- degree upside-down vantage of the outside world. This expansion clouds rather than clears our vision, manfiesting John Berger’s dictum that what we see is never reconciled with what we know.

~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of the author

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Gregangelo Museum

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Gregangelo Museum, San Francisco, CA

Gregangelo Museum, San Francisco, CA

Gregangelo Museum
San Francisco CA [link]

Defying categorization, the museum synthesizes aspects of performance, assemblage, installation and social practice.  Diving into the rabbit hole, the two-hour interactive, immersive experience led by artistic director Gregangelo of Velocity Circus provides a visual cacophony of art and objects emphasizing the social encounter. Asking unsuspecting visitors to turn off their iPhones and share personal stories/challenges/aspirations could potentially backfire, but trust is placed in patrons to be open and honest. Traveling through magical themed portals, learning about space, time and perception, the experience challenges us to think about our individual role/s and effects of our actions in the “multiverse.”

~ Colette Copeland
images courtesy of the author

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Annie Vought

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Annie Vought
a sketchy outline
Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, California [link]
August 12 – September 30, 2017

Annie Vought offers a fresh approach to papercutting traditions without compromising personal sensibilities. Further achieved through repurposed paper from her father’s sketchbooks and written letters, Vought generates a new vernacular and stream-of-conscious poetics decipherable for only brief moments in time. Intimacy exists in scale and clandestine conversations started by the artist, as whispers of thoughts and barely existing with more negative space than physical paper. Lacking words altogether in several pieces, these contain non-verbal communication as dynamic rhythms attempting to convey messages where Vought reveals the futility of complete comprehension in language through playful gesture and serious investigation.

– Jake Weigel
images courtesy of Jack Fischer Gallery 

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Markus Schinwald

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Markus Schinwald
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
jointly organized with SFMOMA [link]
September 09 – December 13, 2014

Like an endoscope moving around a membrane, viewers in Markus Shwinwald’s amusing site-specific installation must proceed around walls, bars and other physical barriers to view a network of objects and images that address interconnected themes of the body. Altered 19th century paintings, adapted table legs, and other bits and pieces morph in and out of each other like muscles, bones and limbs. The objects mystify; the journey through the exhibition can feel aimless, but it rewards those who like to dwell in the imagination creating connections between things that (like disparate body parts) do not stand as strong alone.

Janeil Englestad
Images courtesy of Wattis Institute, San Francisco.
Photos by Johnna Arnold. [Read more…]