This Message Has No Content by Embark Gallery

CURATED BY AARON WILDER (SFAI)

The term â&#x20AC;&#x153;THIS MESSAGE HAS NO CONTENTâ&#x20AC;? originates from an error message in an email preview when the Mail App on iPhone and iPad devices does not fully download a message, or when the message only contains an image with no text. Digitally mediated communication has come to dictate the interpersonal space of our present. It is also often how we present ourselves to others. From the narcissism of the selfie to the intimacy fabricated through Skype, Facebook, Craigslist, and the like, to the manipulated language used to define our sense of reality of the world and ourselves, this exhibition seeks to explore the insatiable consumption, marketing-centric representation, and vapidly fragmented social interaction of contemporary culture. Notions of identity and representation will be flattened, pixelated, and replicated; ideas of beauty and normativity in contemporary culture will be dissected and reinterpreted; and experiences of interaction will be simultaneously decontextualized, exploited, and refreshed. This is about more than presenting anecdotes of social message transmission. It is a critical look at how communication is sent and received given the digital platforms of cultural consumption of our present.

This exhibition asks viewers to consider their digital consumption to spark new ideas and dialogue on the subject of meaning via mediated social interactions.

Aaron Wilder, Guest Curator

Installation view.

DAVE BEEMAN (CCA)

Jubilee Church / Puppy Play, 2017. Archival inkjet print.

Jubilee Church / Civil War Re-enactment, 2017. Archival inkjet print.

Dave Beeman is a photographer interested in "invented communities" in the age of digital and social media and explores how our current political, economic and technological moment affects the people and forums with whom/which we relate in the real world, the amount of time we relate to them, and how committed we are to our fellow members within these communities.

Installation view featuring (from Top to Bottom): Jubilee Church / Puppy Play, 2017, Jubilee Church / Silent Disco Pilates, 2017, and Jubilee Church / T-Baby, Bakk-Up & D-Baby, 2017. Archival Inkjet Prints.

LIZZY BLASINGAME (SFSU)

Left: FOMO, 2017. Screenprints. [Right: Dave Beeman. Jubilee Church / Folsom Street Fair, 2017 and Dave Beeman. Jubilee Church / Civil War Re-enactment, 2017. Archival inkjet prints.]

Lizzy Blasingameâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s screenprints react to "Society of the Spectacle" written by Guy Debord and examine our current obsession with social media. Through deconstructing and reconstructing photographs, Lizzy explores the futility of trying to live your life for the sake of documentation.

Detail: FOMO, 2017. Screenprint.

KIRA DOMINGUEZ (CCA) Kira Dominguez’s weavings are about ancestral and ongoing negotiations of approximate assimilation and uses the “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart” (CAPTCHA) as a puzzle through which she explores the complexity of hybrid identities.

Le Petit-Fils d’Hazard, Un Coup de Dés, 2017. Open detail. CAPTCHA: Please Type the Code, 2017. Jacquard woven. Polyurethane tape, cotton, wool, novelty yarn and Le Petit-Fils d’Hazard, Un Coup de Dés, 2017. Jacquard woven images of Pace Dominguez Hultgren at age eleven in cotton, rayon, and novelty yarn. Inkjet printed on organza fabric: computer codes and weave structures. Installation view.

CAPTCHA: Are You a Robot?, 2017. Jacquard woven. Cotton, rayon, handspun wool, novelty yarn.

T2R/LAURA GILLMORE (CCA)

The internet is laughing at you by wedging an ad for laser hair removal between recipes for Steak Tartare and Strawberry Soup. The laser is 65% off, the soup is 15 minutes and the steak tartare 30 minutes (including freezer time). The ad is “powered by” LiveIntent. Live or live? Steak tartare: unlike all others. Strawberry soup: in keeping with the season’s bounty. Laser hair removal: could be the answer for you, 2017. Sculpture assemblage: paper-mache, cloth-mache, cardboard, acrylic scrap, digital video. Installation view.

T2R/Laura Gillmore. Secure New Markets in Paradise, 2017. Digital print: photocollage.

T2R/Laura Gillmore focuses on the absurdity of our consumer society as it intersects with the digital world and how it manipulates our inner desires and personal alienations. Advertisers play with our inner fragilities and emotional value to catalyze our consumption. Gillmore uses lo-fi methods such as DIY crafting and paper-mache to build a contrast to the highly-curated and edited images that we digest everyday.

IZIDORA LEBER (SFAI)

SOFT I, II (skin), 2018. Installation. Digital video and ceramic emergency hammers.

Izidora LETHEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work spans the disciplines of sculpture, writing, video, and drawing. LETHEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main interest lies in extracting and tracing site specific (art) histories to examine their impacts onto our understanding of culture today.

SOFT I, II (skin), 2018. Alternate detail.

RYAN MEYER (UC DAVIS) Ryan Meyer presents “Social Media Suicide” where viewers are invited to interact with the artist’s Facebook profile in any manner they choose. This is one example of how Meyer seeks to explore and understand the mechanics of this continuously transforming world.

Left: Social Media Suicide, 2017. Facebook app on mobile tablet.

Scrim Stories, 2017. Archival inkjet print.Â

TAMARA PORRAS (CCA)

Flip/Swipe, 2017. Archival pigment prints on bond paper, reclaimed wood display.

tamara suarez porras explores the ways in which we try to connect and make sense of ourselves via technology (and often fail at doing so). The works by porras in the show focus on the faulty, vague, or glitched attempts at communication and finding information.

You Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Go (Or Take An Uber) Home Again, 2017. Archival pigment print.

Long-Distance Relationship, or FaceTime in Low Bandwidth, 2017. Archival pigment print.

CONNIE WOO (SFAI) Connie Woo considers herself as a physical constitution - a symbiosis, where anything contradictory co-exists within an agnostic and insoluble context. Concentrating mostly on visual arts such as images and videos, Woo constantly explores the entrance and the exit of individual spiritual continuation.

Market, 2017. Video still.

This Content Is Not Digitized, 2017.Â Digital photography, inkjet print on newsprint.

TOMY CHUHE YAN (SFAI)

What color of emoji are you?, 2015. Inkjet Prints.Â

Tomy Chuhe Yan believes emojis are more than just signs, they are a reflection of our social world, and they have multiple meanings. By looking at emojis, Yan is seeing a lot of changes in our society and how that relates to our sense of personal identity as well as our sense of otherness.

What color of emoji are you?, 2015. Inkjet Prints.Â Installation view.

Acknowledgments

Lauren Dare Marcel Houtzager Matt Lopez 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, Embarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s programming represents the diversity ofthe 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