San Francisco Foundation & SOMArts Cultural Center present
The Annual Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020 Artist Catalogue Curated by Kevin B. Chen
This catalogue was made possible with the support of: San Francisco Foundation SOMArts Cultural Center Kevin B. Chen Andrew Wilson Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo Designed by Cherish Chang
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San Francisco Foundation & SOMArts Cultural Center present
The Annual Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020 Murphy Awardee Gregory Rick, Stanford University Cadogan Awardees Alexandru Salceanu, Mills College Amy Elkins, Stanford University champoy, University of California Berkeley Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien, San Francisco State University Consuelo Tupper Hernรกndez, California College of the Arts Dominique Birdsong, San Francisco Art Institute Fred M. DeWitt, University of California Berkeley Gabriella Grill, Stanford University John Joseph Contreras Romero, San Jose State University Leonard Reidelbach, San Francisco State University Monica Valdez, San Jose State University Zhongyu Yuan, California College of the Arts Curated by Kevin B. Chen Jurors Kevin B. Chen Andrew Wilson Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo 2
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Table of Contents
06 Introduction 07
Alexandru Salceanu, Mills College
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Amy Elkins, Stanford University
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champoy, University of California Berkeley
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Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien, San Francisco State University
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Consuelo Tupper Hernรกndez, California College of the Arts
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Dominique Birdsong, San Francisco Art Institute
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Fred M. DeWitt, University of California Berkeley
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Gabriella Grill, Stanford University
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Gregory Rick, Stanford University
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John Joseph Contreras Romero, San Jose State University
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Leonard Reidelbach, San Francisco State University
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Monica Valdez, San Jose State University
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Zhongyu Yuan, California College of the Arts 4
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Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
Introduction
The Annual Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition surveys new work from the 13 recipients of the competitive Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award and the Edwin Anthony and Adalaine Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarships. The awards are designed to further the development of Bay Area MFA students and foster the exploration of their artistic potential in hybrid practice, installation, mixed media, painting, photography and sculpture. The Jack and Gertrude Murphy Award is given to one MFA student of exceptional caliber with great artistic promise. Edwin Anthony and Adalaine Boudreaux Cadogan both experienced financial challenges as art students and understood the great difference scholarships can make in the early phase of an artist’s career. The winners of the Cadogan Scholarships each receive support for their MFA studies. All awardees benefit by receiving mentorship from exhibition curator Kevin B. Chen and SOMArts Cultural Center. Introduction
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Alexandru Salceanu MILLS COLLEGE
My artistic concerns revolve around micro and macro tensions: between power and vulnerability; fear and resilience; cultural identity and the homogeneity of globalism. These themes arise from my childhood in Communist Romania and my assimilation into the culture of the United States. My family lived under surveillance during the regime’s most repressive period. After the revolution, we managed to immigrate to the U.S. where we experienced the complex levels of being “aliens.” In my graduate work, I am exploring different facets of immigration through several projects in a variety of media—photography, video, social practice, and mixed media. With these projects, I investigate the quiet characteristics of resilience and dignity present within pervasive cycles of great struggle. Couture is a mixed-media tapestry that centers on the effects of mass migration and globalization on folklore and identity. It contrasts the uniqueness of a handcrafted 7
Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
Couture, 2020 Acrylic, oil printer ink, cotton, canvas, vinyl canvas. 10.75’ x 5.75’
object with the mass production of a global “ethnic” style and the appropriation of traditional designs by large fashion houses. AlieNation is a photographic installation juxtaposing the essence of movement portrayed through time-lapse star trails with laws that operate on a different trajectory, counter to the human reality of migration. It examines the parallels between the nativism of the early twentieth century and its current iteration. The installation is paired with audio testimonies of the “alien” experience. Witness is a collaborative video project and a form of social practice. The participants tell their own stories, in their own language, and hear the power of their recorded testimonies. Through a partnered approach in editing, they have agency over their portrayal. This project, to be presented online, links stories and makes them accessible to a global audience. This is a durational project with the hope that it will eventually take a life of its own. Alexandru Salceanu
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AlieNation, Ongoing Digital photographs Clockwise from above: 90”x60”, 10”x60”, 10”x60”, 10”x60”
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Alexandru Salceanu
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AlieNation, Ongoing Digital photograph Detail
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Witness – Gladis and Jose Cartagena, Long-term series Video still 5:22 Alexandru Salceanu
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Holding Pattern, 2020 Pigment Print on Adhesive Fabric, Stop Motion Animation on two 13” Clear Tech Televisions, Pigment, Print on Cotton, Used Prison Uniforms, Stainless Steel Hangers, Industrial Steel Pipes and Fittings. Overall installation 18’x8’ (8’x8’x10’ prison cell specs from corner)
Anxious Awareness from the installation Holding Pattern, 2020 Pigment Print on Cotton hung over Pigment Print on Adhesive Fabric 31.25”x41” 13
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Amy Elkins STANFORD UNIVERSITY
As an artist, I am interested in the complex nature of gender as well as the psychological and sociological impacts of mass incarceration in America. I have been researching and creating work on these topics since 2005, the year a close family member of mine was sent to a federal prison in California. My approach is seriesbased, steeped in research and oscillates between formal, conceptual and documentary. For the site-specific installations, Holding Pattern and Motherless Child, I utilized countless catalog images of prison uniforms to examine the dizzying and dehumanizing effects of binge incarceration in a nation that on any given day holds over two million people in state, federal and private prisons while generating over $1 billion annually selling products and services created behind bars. Using prison uniforms originally designed to classify, flatten and strip individuality, ironically often made through prison labor programs, I created intricate patterns and text pieces that wallpaper the dimensions of the average prison cell, animations that move in calculated synchronicity on transparent televisions and portraits that intentionally obscure facial features. Through this process, I sought to better understand the ways in which carceral spaces produce what Foucault termed ‘docile bodies’ through twenty-four hour control and surveillance over the uniformed men, women and children entering these systems. Amy Elkins
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Choreographed Control 1 and 2 from the installation Holding Pattern, 2020 Stop Motion Animations on two 13” Clear Tech Television Overall installation 18’x8’ (8’x8’x10’ prison cell specs from corner) 15
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When the current Shelter-in-Place Orders went into effect in March of 2020 I was forced to abandon longplanned portrait shoots, travel and work in progress in my art studio. I found myself quarantined alone in a 340-sq-ft apartment on a mostly abandoned campus. With very few resources available and human contact nearly impossible, I turned to myself to create daily cyanotype self-portraits as a means of documenting the passing of time while confronting the vulnerabilities, anxieties, and complexities of being in indefinite isolation during a global pandemic. My working title for this ongoing series (170+ days and counting) is Anxious Pleasures.
Motherless Child, 2020 Digital Chromogenic Prints in wooden frames hung over Pigment Print on Adhesive Fabric Dimensions vary from 10’x9’ to 15’x18’
Mother and Young Children from the installation Motherless Child, 2018 Digital Chromogenic Print 20”x24” Amy Elkins
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Top: Detail from Anxious Pleasures (the first 60 days) Bottom: Anxious Pleasures (the first 60 days), March 30th – May 28th, 2020 Cyanotypes on Cotton 10.75’x3.75’ 17
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From top to bottom: Detail from Anxious Pleasures (the first 60 days) June 3rd, 2020 - Day 79 July 20th, 2020 - Day 126 August 22nd, 2020 - Day 159 Cyanotypes on Cotton 8.5”x11” Amy Elkins
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champoy
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
I am an interdisciplinary artist, educator and performer and also currently an MFA cohort at the UC Berkeley Art Practice. Born in the highlands of Bukidnon, a landlocked province in the island of Mindanao, Southern Philippines. I have been based in the US/Turtle Island since immigrating in 2002. My drawings and paintings exhibit varied elements from comix, organic patterns and a humorous sense that is lifted from personal cosmology and ancestral visions mixed with commentaries on advertising and consumer culture. The site-specific installations that I create are personal inventories of fragments from a historical perspective that is constantly shifting. Usually starting off from points where the colonized and colonizer blurs out, they then become improvisational sites in which the constructed and the readymade are used to question materiality and our making of the world through language and knowledge. My arrangements strategically invites the viewers to look deeply into what is made present or absent, what is visible and not visible, and asks them to move into the space with a heightened awareness of their body and senses. 19
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My most current work is centered around merging installation, line, video, and performance in countering the dominant narratives of empire mainly through uplifting my own stories. This ethno-autobiographical approach allows me to inquire and look deeply into the multitudes that I inhabit and the complexities that come with it. Within the privileged position as an artist I am also able to assert and ask questions about what it means to have self-representation as part of an evolving Filipinx diaspora —to see and be seen as someone who not only produces objects but is also produced as the object.
That Which Pales In Contrast To...( What Is The Work and Who is It For? ), 2020 Mixed media/Installation champoy
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That Which Pales In Contrast To...( What Is The Work and Who is It For? ), 2020 Mixed media/Installation
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That Which Pales In Contrast To...( What Is The Work and Who is It For? ), 2020 Mixed media/Installation champoy
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A Citizen, 2020 Live performance, Worth Ryder Gallery
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Clockwise from top: Self-Portrayed-Performed, 2019 Digital print hassle-free procedures dedicated to the absolute empire of the self, 2019 Oil, acrylic, collage on paper 42”x60” can the subaltern speak artspeak?, 2019 Oil, acrylic, mixed media collage on paper 11”x14” champoy
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Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
As an urban Mapuche, born and raised in Chile, I seek to interrogate the way in which memory, culture, and race function in relation to Indigenous contemporary identities. My art reflects on feelings of sadness, nostalgia, and dislocation. Unlike emotions, feelings and mood, as states of being, allude to something constative, unintentional, and non-performative. These places where I happen to find myself, with sustained duration and temporality, lead me to create narratives that interrogate the status quo and notions of diaspora, resistance, and colonialism. My practice is not bound to a specific medium, rather the ideas inform the material choices. My process is often engaged with the archive and critical theory as resources that help me to address reality. I use fibers and reference textiles as another form of writing that connect past and present. My work also involves the multiple and repetition to emphasize the presence of others and the collective. When confronting the problem of representing the unrepresentable or translating to provide cultural access, I resist the tendency toward consensus and transparency and advocate for the right to remain opaque. 25
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Todas las balas se van a devolver (All bullets will be returned), 2019 One hundred pieces of hand cut out paper Dimensions variable Title was borrowed from Escuela Popular de Cine, Chile.
Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien
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Kallfü Füdo (Blue umbilical cord), 2020 Pigment print 27
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Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien
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Invisible Forces (detail), 2019 Drum, gold leaf, rope, paper, wire, and glue 72”x143”
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What is your name? Say it again, 2018 Pigment print 48”x17” What is your name? Say it again, combines Mapuche textile imagery and hidden text in the form of a question repeated ad nauseam.
What is your name? Say it again (detail), 2018 Pigment print 48”x17”
Claudia Huenchuleo Paquien
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Consuelo Tupper Hernández CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
My work is an effort to make the limits of our own convictions a fertile ground for questioning the status quo. Starting from the idea that knowledge is a neverending negotiation, I explore the restraints of our thinking processes, the uses and failures of language as a mediator and our attitudes in front of what we feel incapable of understanding. I come from a research background, which has convinced me that knowledge is much more about transmission than it is about anything else. In this sense, and inspired by situations where communication is critical such as daily conversations, debates and social uprisings, my work examines how thin and disrupted are the lines that connect our thoughts to those of others. I work from my own need to (un)learn and to embrace ignorance as an opportunity, seeking to question biased models of thought and therefore challenging the presumed neutrality of what we simply call “information”. In this vein, I create manuals, maps, lists and dictionaries not for them to be clusters of answers but rather routes to further questions. Where does certain knowledge come from and why do we stick to it? How much of what we consider valuable knowledge depends on imposed social, political and/or economic structures? Is what we know shaped on purpose? Is it arbitrary? Is it necessarily true? 31
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Notebook (manual), 2019 Ink on paper 8”x11” (open) Brochure with brief explanations of every sign used consistently in my notebook.
Making art means to me learning how to learn and how to have an agency within that process. Above all, and despite the strength with which today’s world pushes us to cynicism, I do believe that facing the limits of what we know is a powerful tool to finally liberate knowledge from the burdens of elitism, convenience and capitalization. Consuelo Tupper Hernández
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Map of the world in alphabetical order, 2020 Digital image 27”x39”
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Consuelo Tupper Hernรกndez
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Above: 100 Right Nows, 2019 Vinyl text on wall 100”x120” List of 100 actions carried out both nationally and internationally during the first two weeks of Chilean social uprising. Left: Pie chart I, 2020 Digital image 10”x10”
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From top: Instructions I, 2020 Pen on paper 4”x4” (each) Family Tree, 2019 Pen on paper 24”x72” Memory based Tupper-Browne family tree made with my 77-year-old housemate, whom I met the day I moved into his house and was introduced to me as my father’s cousin although I’d never heard of him before. Consuelo Tupper Hernández
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Dominque Birdsong SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE
Madness, 2018 Acrylic paint on wood panel 4’x5’ 37
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The current body of work/ Installation is an invitation, an invitation into my reality, I want to invite the audience into a space that is filled with vulnerability and vagueness. I chose to create this installation with just one color, red. I chose red to emphasize the state of my emotions, like anxiety, impulsiveness, and rage. Though red evokes different emotions for others, this is what it evokes in me. The words and phrases written on the walls are words that describe my existence. I want the words and phrases in my work to speak for me, so I don’t have to be verbally vulnerable. Every piece that in this space is having a conversation with each. Though they can all stand as one, they flow better as a whole. My current, past and future work is described below as a manifesto. I am for art that is Jean Paul Sartre, one who is trying to come to term with an over whelming existential crisis. Art that is melancholy, a feeling for a piece of art I have yet to create. I am the living embodiment of a Lars von Trier film, specifically “Melancholia”. I am art like a somber night. I am an Artist that looks for meaning of my existence in everything. I am that plastic bag floating in a busy street. (American Beauty). An artist that fails to see any beauty in the world. I am for art, inner desires we cannont commit in our controlled civilization. I am art that is banal like an abstrast painting. I am the child burning ants with a magnifying glass. I am the loneliness that feels a crowed room. I am for art “Riding with Death” by Jean Micheal Basquiat. I am the something that is messing in a card game seen through the eyes of Paul C Zanne. An artist that is filled with the absurdity and fragility of human existence, depicted in “Walking Man I” Alberto Giacometti. I am vapid, as vapid as a Micheal Bay Film. I am “Wanderer above the sea fog” always dwelling on self-reflection, for art that is always self-searching, and for art that is always looking for meaning. I am for art, laying in soft grass on a breezy day. Art that forms the bond between child and mother. I am for art of “The Kiss” (Klimt), the art of love that cannot be explained, that love that cannot be disrupted. I am the woman in solitary at a cafè, consumed and lost in her own thoughts. (Edward Hooper, Automat)”. I am “The Scream” (Edvard Munch) art of the iconic being of a painting quickly reproduced and rapidly becoming stale. An artist that romanticizes the idea of wanderlust. An artist that is always lost, scared, lonesome, and consumed in the unknown of the future and the world around and beyond us.
Dominique Birdsong
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Above: The Self Triptych, 2019 Oil paint on wood panel, concrete and acrylic paint on wood panel 4’x3’ Left: A Room Pt.2, 2020 Mixed media Studio installation in SFAI Studio Space
Dominique Birdsong
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Clockwise from top left: Consciousness, 2018 Acrylic paint on wood panel 3’x5’ Extant, 2019 Acrylic paint on wood panel 3’x2’ Temporality, 2018 Acrylic paint on wood panel 3’x5’ 41
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A Conversation, 2019 Ceramic figure combined with concrete on wood base
Dominique Birdsong
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Fred M. DeWitt
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
I am an African American interdisciplinary artist with a disability who is researching and exploring ways to deconstruct notions of white supremacy as it is promoted in early American art. My research at Berkeley places materials as a cornerstone of cultural liberation. Coffee, cotton, gold, clay, sugar, ground pigments are just some of the elements I use as a means of cultural renewal. My artwork reveals how Black bodies are repositories for trauma—Black bodies are commodities; even Black joy is commodified. My most recent work tries to depict the violence enacted on Black bodies without directly showing violence. A seemly endless loop of Black men and women are harassed, beaten and killed over and over again on social media platforms. Black death is a spectacle, a sideshow. As an artist do I have a responsibility to address these complexed social issues; more to the point, how can I document the struggles of urban life without adding to the traumatic terror, the horror of this American reality? Can this be done with abstraction and if so, how do I keep the work accessible? What are the materials which mark this space and time? What are the materials most associated with Black destruction? My art practice incorporates painting, sculpture, and performance art. My most recent paintings fuse Asian woodblock printing techniques, with Western oil painting. 43
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I use ink, oil and natural pigments on paper, wood, silk and canvas to create hybrid motifs. I’m a narrative history painter who explores parallels between 19th century artistic expressions and present-day realities. My artwork is a reflection of the life I have lived. The work is about the fears and trials of being an African American man with a disability. The work is about the challenges of urban life and the beauty of our united human conquest.
Deposition Natural pigments, Sumi ink and glue on paper mounted on wood 48”x36” Fred M. DeWitt
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Lady Leads The Revolution Oil on canvas 60”x72” 45
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Fred M. DeWitt
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Top:
Bottom:
Death On A Pale Horse Natural pigments, Sumi ink and glue canvas
The Hunter and His Dog Natural pigments, Sumi ink and glue 72�x60�
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Above: The Witness, 2019 Natural pigment, Sumi ink and glue on canvas over wood panel 48” x 96” Right: Spirit Catcher, 2019 Wood, gold Leaf, 400 glass vessels, sea water, coffee, flowers, candy, ceramic sugar bowls, and rope Performance, Piece: 144” x 48”, 144” x 48”, 48” x 96”
Fred M. DeWitt
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Softsoap, 2020 Plastic soap bottle, wire 4”x2”x6.75”
Still Strawberries, 2020 Strawberries, strawberry basket, copper, solder Dimensions variable, Basket is 4”x3”x4.5” 49
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Gabriella Grill STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Seat cushions on a thrift store shelf, boxed-up clothing from my grandmother’s garage, an earring that lost its pair, and antique dinnerware—secondhand items are artifacts of modern day consumerism, the fast fashion industry, and the cyclical nature of style. These items are normally seen as static relics of the past. Through sculpture, I highlight the memory embedded within these discarded fossils, and give the objects renewed energy. I manipulate old clothing by cutting them into scraps and stitching them into new forms by hand. I embed jewelry in concrete. I cast etched dishware in brightlycolored silicone. Working with multiple objects in any one work, I create inclusive memorials. When an object is discarded, I facilitate its evolution. A dish found in a Philadelphia thrift store that is no longer used for eating is freed from its role as a tool. Stripped of its function, it can now be reconfigured. In my work, the dish retains a record of its past and becomes an element within a composite sampling of many dishes sharing similar stories. Together, the dishes reflect a cultural phenomenon of how people value belongings over time. My sculptures emphasize cycles: the cycles of fashion trends, the cycle of reuse, the cycle of archaeological rediscovery, and ultimately the cycle of life. The story inscribed in the lives of objects is much like the story of human aging. Both humans and objects confront age, time, value, and a proclaimed period of peak vivacity. My rejuvenative monuments for and of devalued inanimate objects celebrate history, life, and new beginnings. Gabriella Grill
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Sriracha Chili Sauce, 2020 Plastic Sriracha bottle, wire 3”x3”x9” The works Softsoap and Sriracha Chili Sauce are made from empty plastic bottles and wire. I have created armor for the plastic bottles by weaving wire and wrapping the wire around the plastic until the original bottles are completely enveloped. As we know, plastic does not easily decompose and unrecycled bottles will remain on the earth for hundreds if not thousands of years. The bottles in my kitchen will likely outlive me multiple times over, and yet have already fulfilled the function for which they were created. I have drawn these bottles into my practice as I grapple with my carbon footprint and concerns about my own contributions to waste. With these new works, I laboriously created a hardened shell around the bottle that fortifies the longevity of the bottle’s life, and preserves these bottles of my past as a part of my consumer experience. While the wire literally creates a hard exoskeleton around the bottle, the craft and labor also protect it. The single-use bottle is no longer a manufactured disposable item, but is instead a unique object, crafted and labored. 51
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Curio, 2020 Glass, solder, concrete, shells, chain, pearls, jewelry 12”x24”x12”
2 Gal. Jug, 2020 2 gal. plastic water bottle, paper, beads, glue, paint 14”x14”x15” Gabriella Grill
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Above: The Astronomer, 2018 Plaster, lamp, silicone 24”x30”x30” Left: Weftage, 2020 Wood, twine, clothing, seat cushions, bark, sticks, leaves 72”x96”
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Entanglement, 2019 Clothing, fabric, earring, wood, batting, vinyl 96”x96”x24”
Gabriella Grill
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Gregory Rick STANFORD UNIVERSITY
My father went to prison when I was 7 for attempted murder. Although loosing my dad was rough, he left me books on history and art. Art was a bastion of light after I returned from Iraq, and helped me deal with the externalities of war. I tell stories that reflect my story but are not totally personal and are still in dialogue with the wider world. I explore the internal though the external and vice versa. Where myth gives voice to the underbelly, the lumpen in tandem with displaying the familiar and grandiose. My work tethers together seemingly opposing ideas as I teether between the personal the historical and the political. 55
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Port Chicago, 2020 Painting on Canvas 76”x65”
Anger and Wisdom, 2020 Painting on Canvas 68”x65” Gregory Rick
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A boy and his Father, 2019 Accordion book 72”x 18”
Gangster, 2018 Painting on canvas 9’x12’ 57
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Islandwana, 2019 Painting on paper 36”x30” Gregory Rick
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Bury my Heart at 38th and Chicago, 2020 Painting on canvas 80”x65” 59
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Gregory Rick
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John Joseph Contreras Romero SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
Writing about my work my first instinct is to talk about my experiences as a Veteran of the Afghanistan war; a firstgeneration college student, a son of immigrants but what I am really most interested in addressing within my work are ideas of access, violence, power and the breaking out of one’s place or position. How can spatial artwork talk on behalf of or engage with or address populations that are seen as outside of the norm? What makes an artwork legible and to whom? I’m interested in talking across boundaries, accessing populations that don’t get heard, talking on behalf of and with people who are not in the so-called “mainstream.” I’m troubled by the failure to talk about real issues, close up—I want to bring the conversations around to reality, to talk about experiences of homelessness (something I’ve myself experienced), gun violence, domestic violence, and military might. I want to further my explorations into the role art can play, express complex conversations and move beyond personal battles. I hope to enrich my creative investigations in trauma, memory, loss through my exploration of sculpting. My enthusiasm and drive to produce artwork comes directly from my personal experiences and moved beyond them into larger conversations of access. 61
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When thinking about the importance of being a Spatial Artist, I think about the ideas and motivation that people had when they built the Statue of Liberty, The Golden Gate Bridge, and even the Olympic Black Power Statue at San José State University. The immediacy these beautiful marvels had given people with the ideas of freedom, hope, connection, and injustice is an everlasting virtue of our society. Spatial Art in society brings us wonderment and gives us the ability to see how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go in this ever-changing landscape.
Cannon Fodder, 2019 Laser Cutter, Plywood, Hot Glue 6’x8’; Figures 3’x2’x10” John Joseph Contreras Romero
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What We’ve Built, 2019 Wood lathe, Bat: Ashwood, Balloon: Basswood 3’x1’x1’
ART Initiative Book, 2018 Skateboard decks, diamond braid nylon paracord rope, wood stain 6’x3’x2”, Skateboard 8.25”x3’; 16’ of cord 63
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To Be or Not To Be, 2020 White mannequin head, M3 mask headband, molded face mask, disposable latex, thread, bullet shell casings
John Joseph Contreras Romero
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Under One Sun Pt. 3 of 3, 2019 Iron rebar, bronze, BEHR paint, TESTORS enamel 6’x4’x3’ 65
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Clockwise from top: America vs America, 2018 Medium-density fiberboard, laser cutter, hot glue, fishing string, assortment of bullet shells, American flag 3’x5’x2½” Opposite of War, 2019 Metal Lathe, bronze, Wood Lathe: Tennessee Cedar wood 10”x1”x1” Ladders of Success, 2018 Redwood branches, red deck screws 5’x6’x10’ John Joseph Contreras Romero
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Leonard Reidelbach SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNVIERSITY
Presenting: An installation of paintings, prints, and textiles. Opulent pattern and figurative imagery reflect moments of queer and trans community, crusing, and connection. A painting told in POV of the moment of lez pulling up a net. Crabbing as togetherness, sustainability, and autonomy. A pool house from my POV as a production assistant at a porn shoot. An edition of silkscreens where each layer is varied in a choose- your- own- adventure vibe. Variation and repetition in the party. A wallpaper using a design inspired by a floral arrangement that Nicole Shaffer built for a queer bathhouse party in Fall 2019. The arrangement functioned not only as a lavish decorative element but also to physically separate bathers from the heterosexual front desk worker. The installation culminated in a private dinner party. Leonard teamed up with lez md to make a picnic basket filled with foraged culinary delights. Models Maryama Null and Titania Kumeh were present to experience these pleasures at the creative direction of Angel Castelleon. Nicole Shaffer’s floral sculptures embellished the setting. The performance was documented by photographer Rich Lomibao. The Picnic Show is a prototype for a collective spirit refuting capitalism. It is a luxury experience that cannot be 67
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purchased and available for the people we chose. Presented in an opulent basket made of painted textiles and rich with foraged food, the bounty of the land and sea around us becomes political resistance. We use these (aspects of San Francisco nature) to celebrate our community and find new ways to connect in a hyperdigitalized age, during a pandemic. Leonard Reidelbach is a painter and printmaker with a background in community arts programming. He holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and is a current MFA candidate at San Francisco State University. lez md is a Black culinary historian, multimedia artist, and wild foods enthusiast. They are a formally trained chef and have worked in many white “fine dining� establishments, but they no longer offer their skills to the elite. Visit the collaborators on instagram: Leonard (installation, production) @justhavefunandbeyrself, Rich (photo) @rich.lomi, lez (culinary arts) @didyouwritethatdown, Nicole (floral) @nicolekshaffer, Titania (model) @titaniaartmodel, Angel (style, direction) @angelonurpillows, Maryama (model) @weathered_freek
The Picnic Show in collaboration with lez md, Rich Lomibao, Nicole Shaffer, Maryama Null, Angel Castelleon, and Titania Kumeh, 2020 Digital photograph of performance Leonard Reidelbach
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All: The Picnic Show in collaboration with lez md, Rich Lomibao, Nicole Shaffer, Maryama Null, Angel Castelleon, and Titania Kumeh, 2020 Digital photograph of performance Leonard Reidelbach
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Above: Wallpaper, 2020 Watercolor for risograph print on paper 14”x10” Left: Poolside, 2019 A varied edition of 45 unique silkscreen prints with gouache embellishment on paper 15”x12”
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Net Painting, 2019-2020 Gouache, wax, and acrylic on neon yellow cotton 50”x36” Leonard Reidelbach
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Monica Valdez SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
I am interested in creating objects constructed out of fragments from everyday reality. Picking from parts of reality: whether it be pastries, plant-life, clothing, architecture, and then transforming them into something other than what we are used to seeing. Aiming to create some sort of unknown sculptural presence in a pictorial realm. Also, transforming these objects into something twisted and unusual, in order to re-orient ourselves with very familiar objects. For instance, the painted objects allow for a more personal orientation with the everyday world. In this way, the relationship between the known and the unknown world of objects is what I find fascinating. My process: taking apart forms, abstracting forms we enjoy and are so familiar with, in order to express a more personal understanding of the world we live in. Furthermore, drawing from aspects of architecture connected with a walk in a grove, and witnessing a dead tree wrapped up in fungus. Experiencing the heaviness and solidness of an intense color of a flower and mixing that with the roundness of a soft fondant wedding cake. When I think back about experiences it is the characteristics that have become memorable. These aspects form a whole image in my work derived from reality and transformed into something that even I can’t recognize at times. 73
Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
TVC 8, 2018 Acrylic and gouache on paper 15”x20” Monica Valdez
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NMR 3, 2019 Acrylic and gouache on paper 26”x40” 75
Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
Right: TVC 5, 2018 Acrylic and gouache on paper 15”x20”
Below: TVC 6, 2018 Acrylic and gouache on paper 20”x28”
Monica Valdez
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Object 1, 2020 Acrylic and gouache on paper 15”x20” 77
Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
NMR 4, 2019 Acrylic and gouache on paper 26”x40” Monica Valdez
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Zhongyu Yuan
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS
I look closely at the space between the individual and thesurrounding world. I believe that self consciousness is the key factor separating one’s self and others, and is reinforced by the structure of today’s society. In answer to the spectacle of this era overwhelmed by modernization, I relate minimalism to zen culture, endeavor to recover the echo of nature, and survive in this isolated social environment. Regarding human society and civilization as a boundary between individuals and the world, my art practice becomes a method to maintain the fragile connection between people and life. I make multimedia installations with simple colors and a range of scales. Generally site-specific, these works occupy the space with film-like visual language including light and tone to emphasize the atmosphere of the unfamiliar. Artificial materials are integrated with geometric shapes and grids to complicate original understanding, and create both surreal and uncanny scenes. My installations include multiple parts unifying to shape a series of confusing monuments. Underscoring the idea that experience is the most significant according to existentialism, I begin my works with concepts, while focusing more on perceptual experience and treat art as the playground—to escape from daily life for both artists and audiences. I take art as a way to abandon efficiency, bring the dream to reality, and return the artificial world to the aesthetics of nature through making absurd stages and monuments. By simulating the natural landscape, I raise this topic of isolated consciousness, wandering in an indifferent world, and becoming the multitude through shared frustration. 79
Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
Timid Spectre, 2019 Multi-media installation, acrylic glass, leaves, paper 150�x150� Zhongyu Yuan
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Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
Clockwise from top left: W∞d, 2019 Multi-media installation, oil painting on canvas, yarns 36”x92”x124” Partner, 2020 Multi-media installation, plaster, sand, stone, plastic 64”x48”48” Partner, Detail Zhongyu Yuan
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Above: 丼 Donburi, reacting to city’s call for self-quarantine, 2020 24”x16”x36” Multi-media installation, travel case, letters, metal
Left: 丼 Donburi, detail
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Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards 2020
丟 Donburi, detail Zhongyu Yuan
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