spread 0 4 . 0 7 . 1 7 - 0 5 . 08.17
Front cover: Gianna Paniagua. I’m Giving You All of Me, 2017. Detail.
spread Amy Cella | SF State Carmina Eliason | San Jose State Matthew Floriani | Mills Amber Imrie- Situnayake | Stanford Gianna Paniagua | CCA Meganne Rosen | CCA Juried by Aimee Le Duc, Donna Napper and Sarah Thibault.
curatorial statement
Embark Arts is proud to announce a 300 sq. ft. addition to Embark Gallery. In honor of Embark’s expansion, Spread will explore the theme of growth. Ideas of change, improvement, transformation, transition, multiplying, metamorphosis and/or modification permeate this show. From urban sprawl to illness, mimesis and the social practice of sharing ideas, Spread addresses a variety of subjects through installation, performance and other innovative processes. Amy Cella (SFSU) comments upon the endlessly duplicated and modified dissemination of images in the digital realm through a mimetic photographic process. Carmina Eliason (SJSU) presents CafÊ con Leche, a social practice project that encourages participants to discuss issues of race and ethnicity in a communal setting, over a spread of coffee, milk and shared stories.
Matthew Floriani (Mills) and Amber Imrie-Situnayake (Stanford) both address the concepts of home and shelter. Floriani’s dilapidated miniature neighborhood evokes issues of gentrification and the uneven distribution of wealth, while Imrie-Situnayake’s installation work aims to blur the line between the domestic and the wild, reminding us of humankind’s fraught and complex relationship with nature. Gianna Paniagua (CCA) presents large-scale sculptures made of intricately cut paper that reflect on the rapid cell growth of disease and the fragility of the human body. Meganne Rosen (CCA) explores the fluid relationship between painting and sculpture. Her installation, a “sprawling organism” that consumes the gallery, is site-specific and shown here for the first time.
Angelica Jardini Curatorial Director
amy cella
I apply an evolutionary iterative process utilizing misused digital technology and mass-produced office supplies to create works, exploring how and why images and our reactions to those images change as they are endlessly duplicated, modified, and presented in different combinations and contexts. I begin by taking cellphone photos of found light/shadows, found spaces, and my own prior artwork – including prior framed products of this overall iterative process, which I re-photograph to incorporate accidental and intentional reflections and printing defects. The photos are printed on standard white non-gloss copier paper, using a Hewlett-Packard Deskjet 3050 printer. The results are framed using identical mass-produced black plastic 8 ½” x 11” document frames, and those framed works are arranged and displayed in a manner unique to each installation location.
Nach Albers, 2017, Inkjet prints in 5 black plastic frames. Detail.
Amy Cella. Search and Destroy, 2017, Inkjet prints in 14 black plastic frames.
Amy Cella. Search and Destroy, 2017, Inkjet prints in 14 black plastic frames. Detail.
carmina eliason
CafĂŠ con Leche is part installation and part socially engaged practice, offered through conversation sessions. During a session, participants mix coffee with milk to match their skin color and then reflect and engage in conversations with others on the topic of skin color. Central to my practice is instigating group conversation with strangers, which are a powerful catalyst for change and social growth by disarming, relating, and connecting. In these events, I begin by inviting participants to enter into seemingly common, yet allegorical social interactions with strangers, using folk games, food, and the power of the kitchen table. Through the course of my projects, strangers reflect together on subjects that are difficult to talk about and share their experiences and stories, as a result complicating and interweaving our social experiences.
Cafe con Leche, 2017. Kitchen table covered with a tablecloth, chairs, coffee, milk, glass mixing containers. Detail. Ongoing project.
Cafe con Leche, 2017. Kitchen table covered with a tablecloth, chairs, coffee, milk, glass mixing containers. Ongoing project.
matthew floriani
I have always felt an immediate connection to the place we call home, a place not only for comfort, but a place for control. But to look closer, to spy inside the cracks and windows might just reflect the erratic and volatile chaos of the outside world. The sense of order, in whatever form it takes, acts as a mask, a sheltering, protective façade, for those who live inside. Delving into the notion of family and plumbing the depths of familial loss, these human-scaled ‘portraits’ of houses convey multiple levels of human emotion. Constructed out of wood, patterned fabric, nails, screws, metal, and thread, these structures are rendered to evoke a sense of comfort and domesticity through the use of fabric as covering/ wrapping, while others are presented in various states of disarray with architectural features broken down and de-constructed. These states of order and chaos are simultaneously present in each house to convey vulnerability in the place we find most contained. A house is never as secure as it might appear.
Matthew Floriani. Shelter, 2016. Wood, nails, screws, fabric, and thread.
Matthew Floriani. Shelter, 2016. Wood, nails, screws, fabric, and thread. Detail.
amber imrie-situnayake
I was raised in an illusion of a house; where the separation of interior and exterior were not distinct. Parts of our home were left unfinished; leaving whole sections exposed to the elements. Wild animals regularly and easily penetrated our attempt at domestic bliss, and the Arkansas wilderness mingled with our home furnishings. The romanticism of raising your children off-the-grid / off-the-land was a step removed from the uncomfortable and isolating reality. In the ‘70s, my mother and father moved into the Arkansas wilderness to raise their children removed from society. As people, we long to reconnect with our wild roots and often idolize the past. In our attempt to glimpse our ancestor’s landscape we interact with man-curated nature, believing it’s wild and untouched. In my work I look to define our natural surroundings by re-fabricating them as domestic goods. I work with historically craft based and domestically ripe materials as a way to relate to the home, the safe, and the secure. My work explores the blurred edge between the domestic and the wild. In my most recent work I’ve been exploring how your socio-economic class greatly construes your interactions with nature.
Amber Imrie-Situnayake. Resting Together / Facing Away, 2016. Watercolor and embroidery on canvas.
Amber Imrie-Situnayake. Homeland, 2017. Photography printed on canvas, thread, branches, rocks,buckets.
Amber Imrie-Situnayake. Pow-Pow, 2017. Wool roving, rubber armature.
gianna paniagua
I create papercut sculptures rooted in my experiences living as a heart transplant recipient. Past and present experiences force me to see the body as fragile and capable of rapid decay. Through papercutting and a layering of materials, I explore themes concerning dualities of the human body: strength vs. fragility, growth vs. decay, and unique vs. patterned. In my cutouts, I place an emphasis on the physical, delicate nature of the body and, conversely, its abilities for healing. By incorporating meditative papercutting into my practice, I allow myself to enter a mental state of healing while creating repetitive, obsessive images. I am fascinated by cellular growth patterns, and how illness can be viewed as “patterns gone wrong.� I see our bodies to be a contradictory object that is both the most familiar and most foreign to us. While we know ourselves best when we are functioning "normally," we are lost as soon as we find ourselves in a state of illness. Growths, unusual movements or sensations, and new physical symptoms are familiar yet unknown. We look to doctors as the masters of the bodies we possess. Thinking of this phenomenon, my works are pushed into states of disarray that welcome inquisition and curiosity towards the unfamiliar.
Gianna Paniagua. I’m Giving You All of Me, 2017. Handcut paper, hair, tar gel, acrylic paint.
Gianna Paniagua. Limiting My Own Growth, 2017. Handcut paper. Live performance on 04.07.17.
Gianna Paniagua. Manmade Cave, 2016. Handcut and burnt paper, paperclay, beeswax, wood, acrylic paint.
meganne rosen
My work is an examination of the hierarchy of painting and an exploration of my personal history. I am interested in the relationships between artifice and reality; kitsch, craft, and art world culture; and texture and color. I investigate how objects can both arouse nostalgia for the past and examine the contemporary context of painting. Soft, torn, layered, complex, gestural, composed. Definitions of painting are fluid, and much of my practice involves challenging and exploring the potential of that fluidity. I’m interested in the ablation of color as a signifier of death and decay, of cultural entropy. When I started painting this piece, I was thinking about toxicity and gesture. As the palette gradually intensifies, the presence of the white, needle-felted growths becomes more aggressive. They start in the seams and then encroach outward reaching for the color to consume it. For now, the color remains defiant and vivid. The piece breaches the wall and extends into the path of the viewer, asserting its presence.
Meganne Rosen. Growth, 2017. Acrylic, oil, canvas, wool.
Meganne Rosen. Growth, 2017. Acrylic, oil, canvas, wool. Detail.
acknowledgments
LAUREN DARE MARCEL HOUTZAGER AIMEE LE DUC MATT LOPEZ DONNA NAPPER SARAH THIBAULT BROOKE VALENTINE FORT MASON CENTER FOR ARTS & CULTURE SARTLE.COM THOR, ZEUS & JASPER
Embark Gallery 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 NICOLE APONTE | EDUCATION DIRECTOR ANGELICA JARDINI | CURATORIAL DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER SQUIER | PROGRAMS DIRECTOR
embarkgallery.com | 2 Marina Blvd | Bldg B, Ste 330 | San Francisco | 94123