B E N D
B A C K
10.26.19 - 12.07.19 COVER IMAGE: Just Do It, 2019. Archival pigment print. Ed. of 5. Edited for print.
MARGOT BECKER (cca) LIZZY BLASINGAME (sfsu) SANTINO GONZALES (cca) ALEXANDRA LEE (cca) SEAN PEELER (sjsu) COLLIN POLLARD (sfai) HANNAH WAITERS (cca) MENGJIAO ZHANG (sfai) YOURONG ZHAO (sfai) CONNIE ZHENG (uc berkeley)
B E N D
B A C K
A backbend: a straining stretch or a playful symbol of childlike freedom. Falling down, but reaching up towards the ground to achieve the pose - in this show, the backbend becomes a metaphor for optimism. The artists in “Backbend” explore the discomfort in hoping, the posturing of happiness, and the futility of optimism in the face of inevitable demise. At the same time, they endeavor to rewrite histories, wish for possible futures, and make an argument for finding joy in the present moment, absurd as it may be. Altered photographs by Hannah Waiters look to the past, reimagining memories and rewriting narratives by hand painting on recorded remnants. Woven textiles by Margot Becker consider the myths we use to understand our environment, and consider the importance of legacy - the kinds of stories we leave behind. Similarly concerned with future generations, Lizzy Blasingame’s sculptural installation is a call to action, suggesting education is where best to put our hope, and that optimism should be taught in order to achieve positive change. Mengjiao Zhang’s photography considers our fraught relationship with nature, and captures surreal moments in the constructed space of the zoo, the zoo being both a place of optimistic conservation efforts and entertainment at the animals’ expense. Connie Zheng’s video work “The lonely age” confronts uncomfortable truths about ecological disaster and the inefficacy of our response, though there is a hopefulness in the fantasy the film presents, in the imagined community and collaboration required to save the planet. Alexandra Lee’s wishing sculptures center on the hope of finding love and the faith inherent in ritual, or at least the comfort found in taking action towards fulfilling our desires, symbolic as making a wish may be. Hailing from the high deserts of New Mexico, Santino Gonzales’ performative video explores the intersections of ufology, technology and folklore. The yearning to connect with extraterrestrial life is born out of anxiety and isolation, but the quest is ultimately optimistic, illuminating the human desire for connection.
The performativity of well-being in the digital age looms large in the body of work Yourong Zhao calls “Happiness, Inc.”, which points out the artifice in broadcasting our happiness online to the ultimate profit of capitalist social media companies. Sean Peeler similarly riffs on technology and the joy of consumerism, using the often romanticized cyanotype printing process to recreate stock photos of smiling actors shopping online, or laughing at a computer screen. Humor is also present in the photographs by Collin Pollard, whose playful images point out the absurdity of our reliance on material products for a sense of satisfaction, as well as the shallow nature of aesthetically pleasing, ‘feel-good’ advertising. Angelica Jardini | Juror & Curatorial Director of Embark Arts
MARGOT BECKER (cca) “In weaving I perform textile metaphors and myths used throughout history and in the present to communicate human understanding of the world. Weavers are the ancestral timekeepers, the truth-tellers, and the tide holders. While these stories no longer offer a literal explanation for natural phenomena, they find new relevance in the Anthropocene. My work is the visualization of a series of desires: that the web of this world could be affected by the action of an individual node. That a loom could control the rise of the ocean, the pulling in of an individual thread is directly related to the coming waves. The desire to perceive death and decay not as a loss, but as a reordering of molecules in the greater system of which we are already a part. The hope to control my own destiny once I understand that time is a human construct. Throughout history textile patterns have drawn from the world around us to create motifs that celebrate and commemorate the environment. Decoration and embellishments carry human-found patterns in the world around us, nullifying its chaos. My weavings are present-day iterations of the nature-textile. In this era of the sixth mass extinction, there is a new need for metaphor to aid in the mental processing of our current environmental state. How can myths assuage the feeling of foreboding that accompanies the attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible? Will these myths serve us in the end?�
Dark Ecology Weaving #1: Deer, 2019. Jacquard woven. Cotton, wool, alpaca, linen, silk, metallic thread.
LIZZY BLASINGAME (sfsu) “My artwork is about hope. In the book "Pedagogy of Hope" the author Paulo Freire, a Situationist and founder of the critical pedagogy movement, states that hope is the motivator for change. In order to make something better you must first hope for it. In "Pedagogy of Hope" I address the need for change as I see it enacted in the news, in current events, in the words I hear from my students. The soft sculptural installation takes the idea of critical thought and turns it into something playful. Like the Situationists, I believe that play is protest, and radical thought in the hands of the young can change the world for the better.�
LEFT TO RIGHT: Pedagogy of Hope, 2019. Fabric, thread, screen print, school desk. The Endless (workday), 2019. Fabric, thread.
SANTINO GONZALES (cca)
“The high desert New Mexico landscape where I grew up is bathed in atomic test sites and radio telescope arrays – haunted by cultural traditions. Exploring the intersections of ufology, technology, and southwestern folklore, I unearth how these dynamics relate to a fear of alienation and a desire for connection. Site-specific multimedia sculptures act as beacons, merging home-videos and ambient radio transmissions in desert landscapes. These acts are earnest explorations linking natural and machine networks with extra-planetary space-time. The UFO opens up an opportunity for alternative epistemologies, serving as a catalyst for connection in a climate that fears alienation. Though the impulse to contact often grows out of anxiety and longing, this quest is ultimately optimistic, revealing less about extraterrestrial life and illuminating more about a human desire for connection.”
farming frequencies, 2019. Single-channel video.
ALEXANDRA LEE (cca) “To wish for something, an optimistic heart is the main ingredient. Although it could be a melancholy idea to wish for something because deep down we know that there is such small chance that it will come true, deeper down, there is hope that it could someday. The ceramic vessels filled with hand folded paper stars are wishing wells that collect hope of having a wish of true love come true. In East Asian culture, stars were folded to fill up a jar and to be given as a gift to state their love to someone in their childhood. The labor and time spent are straight forward dedication for the true feelings of affection and desire they felt, which is so precious compared to the speedy dating/love scene in this modern world. The holes in the jars imply the forever longing of my wish coming true.�
Counting Stars I-III, 2018-19. Ceramic with glaze and hand folded stars.
SEAN PEELER (sjsu)
“This project investigates the evolving practice of portrait photography and the entanglements between advertisement and photographic culture. Richard Beard, Britain's first commercially-licensed portrait photographer (1841), instructed his customers to say “prunes” during the exposure of their picture. In America and England of the Victorian era, a toothy smile in public was considered vulgar and associated with groups possessing the least cultural capital: the lower-class, the mentally disabled, and children. Smiling for the camera as an automatic reflex is a modern phenomenon championed by Eastman Kodak Company, inventor of the first affordable handheld camera. Portrayed in their advertisements, training manuals, and trade journals were people smiling joyously, excluding the possibility of anything but affirmation of a photographic practice that is fun, easy, and essential for any occasion. The framed cyanotypes contain both humor and irreverence, potentially abrasive to the cyanotype culture that produces predominately romantic and lyrical imagery. Conceptually, the cyanotypes evoke the spirit of consumerism and the fabricated joy found in advertisements. Beneath the lighter veneer of the work is a slightly ominous tone, evoking the likes of a dystopian fantasy.”
Clockwise from Top Left: stock photograph/ search keyword: laughing/ original stock photograph’s title: cheerful multiracial office business people laugh share takeaway pizza together, stock photograph/ search keyword: smiling/ original stock photograph’s title: shopping online, stock photograph/ search keyword: laughing/ original stock photograph’s title: happy friendly diverse millennial team laughing watching joke on laptop, excited multiracial employees having fun together, african, caucasian and asian coworkers enjoy funny online humor on computer, stock photograph/ search keyword: laughing/ original stock photograph’s title: close-up image of smiling businessman using cellphone in the meeting room. All 2019. Cyanotypes.
COLLIN POLLARD (sfai) “My artistic practice ranges from tackling themes associated with color theory, queerness, artificiality and materiality, as well as commentary on our contemporary consumer culture. I set out to construct narratives that embody what it means to be human and to navigate our current political and social environments. By isolating individual forms, textures, objects and colors, my work plays with the notion that even the most mundane objects can speak to a greater definition of beauty, while inherently challenging how human beings define it -especially considering the role social media plays in our current society. The overarching zeitgeist of the United States seems to exist hand in hand with the mindset that we are always living in the lack of, searching for happiness through material possessions. My photographs and assemblages are critically thinking about ideas surrounding what is real, and what is, in fact, artificially constructed for mass consumption.�
Every Good Idea I’ve Ever Had, 2019. Archival pigment print. OPPOSITE PAGE PAGE L TO R: The Growth of Things, 2019. Couch Surfing, 2019. Just Do It, 2019. Archival pigment prints.
HANNAH WAITERS (cca)
“When something dies bad it doesn't stay in the ground. Heaven simmers into tear drops, chairs fall over and drawers fall out. I draw in memories to depict what could have been. My work moves forwards and backwards in time, in that I am collecting objects of the past to uncover lost stories. This exhibition of sentimental artifacts work to chime like a diary. This work is important in that it emphasizes how objects perform theatrically to communicate sorrowful histories of longing in poverty. I am creating counter narratives for what could have been. Thinking through ideas of post memory and passing hope through generations by the use of memorabilia. My filled in memories behave in a gestural way to give life to unlikely archives. My work seeks to uncover the life, the history, the power, the grief and joy of memories that have slid into silence. This body of work animates how to forage an epic tale, out of something that would soon be forgotten. These ephemeral works are fragments of the past. The objects presented are representations of heavenly souls of ancestors that hope to not be forgotten. These things are metaphors for what has landed. And when things fall, must we immediately reach to pick them up or can we leave the pieces where they land to see what grows?�
My First Home, 2018. Oil paint on photo album page.
The Baby Shower, 2018. Oil paint on photo album page
MENGJIAO ZHANG (sfai) “In becoming an artist I have learned you can appreciate and love a place but still question it at the same time. From childhood to adulthood, my point of view towards zoos changed completely. “They don’t speak our language” is a photographic project that looks at the constructed landscape of the zoo and animals. Through documenting spaces inside zoos, I conceptualize how people idealize animals, their living environments, and nature itself. Through my photography I am learning the complicated relationship between nature/animal and human - it is contradictory of the zoos that they preserve species and serve educational purposes, with the exchange of putting animals in cages. However, this idealization somehow presents the human's optimism towards nature, and how human’s creations aim to simulate it.”
the future zoo, 2018. Archival pigment print.
zoo lights, 2018. Archival pigment print.
YOURONG ZHAO (sfai)
“My work challenges the notion of art as commodity, and points out the absurdity of our sped up, distilled down culture. Through my work, I subvert emojis typical meanings and make them ironic and sarcastic. Body language is important to communicating subtle details, but in an automated society these get left behind. Our lives become shallow and outwardly only express and show off a handful of emotions. Success is measured by likes on Instagram. Our personal accomplishments mean nothing without the approval of our followers. I express the dilemma of having a traditional conversation within the digital age. My work represents how our collective obsession with these new modes of communication have changed the core function of conversation. It has created an artificial happiness that social media, big corporations and government propaganda sell to us. To combat this artifice, I have created “Happiness, Inc.” to challenge the norms we have come to accept. By mimicking the marketing and branding that other large corporations use, I point out the absurdity that outward happiness is the key to success. It leaves the viewer wondering if what we have been sold is real.”
Happiness to Go, 2018. Souvenir pins on wire.
CONNIE ZHENG (uc berkeley) “My work is interested in material accumulations and entanglements, diasporic place-making, the creation of new language around apocalyptic moments, and the political potentials enabled by fantasy as a means of community-building amidst climate change. In many ways, I see my current body of work as a “backbend” in the visual culture around ecological disaster. The video installation “The lonely age” is an attempt to grapple with the tragedy of climate change using the embodied language of play while also holding firm a refusal to trivialize or downplay the greatest ideological crisis of our time: it is an uncomfortable strain, a surrender to the language of improvisation and the embodied knowledge held in the body — especially as it comes into contact with objects both familiar and strange. The title “The lonely age” originates from naturalist E.O. Wilson’s coinage of the term Eremocine — the age of loneliness — to describe the incomprehensibly enormous loss of our planet’s biodiversity as a consequence of rapacious ecological plunder, petrochemical industry and agricultural monoculture. Wilson, and others, have also pointed toward the chilling impacts of defaunation, specifically the extinction of countless insect species, all of whom act as “a case study in the invisible importance of the common.” One of the major questions driving this film project stem from this research and inform the sense of optimism that underpins it: How can we use our current ecological crisis to imagine a new “commons” and more equitable ways of living and relating to one another? While I made all of the costumes and props in the video, and directed, edited, wrote and partly shot the film, I see it as a truly collaborative project, which deeply informs the optimism of this project for me. The seeds in the film are collectively made, collectively foraged, collectively imagined, collectively archived, and collectively grown; even
the film shoots are, for me, experiments in how we might create temporary communities amidst present and future climate disaster. I don’t see this project as a mindlessly optimistic endeavor. As Rebecca Solnit writes in “Hope in the Dark”, “hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act…Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists” (p. xiv). The video and material experiments of “The lonely age” are therefore my efforts to embody this articulation of hope.”
The Lonely Age (Part I), 2019. Single-channel HD video with sound. 11 min 47 sec. Composite of stills.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Lauren Dare Marcel Houtzager Matt Lopez Brooke Valentine Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture Sartle.com Thor, Zeus & Jasper
Embark Arts offers exhibition opportunities to graduate students of the Fine Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. We provide a space for an engaged community of artists, curators and scholars, and we aim to expand the audience for up and coming contemporary art. A non-profit gallery, Embark’s programming represents the diversity of the talented artists studying at eight local artinstitutions: San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, California College of the Arts, Mills College, San Francisco State University, UC Davis, San Jose State University, and Stanford. The juried exhibitions are held at our gallery in San Francisco at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.
Tania Houtzager || Executive Director Angelica Jardini || Curatorial Director