OVERUNDERSIDEWAYSDOWN
This current project is curated by Margaret Tedesco and presents the latest work by San Francisco artists Mitzi Pederson , Wayne Smith, and David Hatcher from Los Angeles. Parallel to the exhibition an essay written by noted San Francisco poet, novelist, critic and playwright Kevin Killian.
over, under, sideways, down
backwards, forwards, square, and round
when will it end, will it
when will it end
hey
-From the song by The Yardbirds, 1966
The framework for the exhibition overundersidewaysdown is motivated by the notion of ′surround sound′ - that which conveys an experience where one is surrounded by 360 degrees of audio. The works of the three artists included paraphrase in their articulation and use of materials from drawing, sculpture, sound (i.e., sampling, field recordings, and live performance) to appropriated images and collaboration with formal histories and/or pop signifiers. The elements of origin figure prominently in front and behind encountering an enveloped fuzzy dissonance that tracks and overlaps a heightened sense of time and space.
About the Artists:
David Hatcher is an artist and nutritional psychiatrist based in Los
Angeles and Berlin, Germany. Hatcher′s work as an artist investigates
social, political, economic, philosophical and aesthetic discourse at the
level of its material and optical artifacts. His ongoing project Oedipal
Maneuvers in the Dark, examines the visual forms and aesthetics of
critical discourse in the West and has been exhibited and acquired in
Europe, the US and Australasia in a variety of print and installation
formats. His forthcoming book I Don′t Must (Revolver Verlag,
Frankfurt, 2006) attempts to facilitate and record dialogue between
aesthetic practitioners and protagonists from a range of interdependent
fields, including activism around indigenous sovereignty in Aotearoa,
New Zealand, the standardization industry in the European Union, the
pitfalls of political asylum for citizens of Belarus wishing to leave
their culture of origin, identity politics in East Africa and their
relationship to the question of militancy and the history of blotter
art in San Francisco and beyond. He is currently working as an
independent analyst for Los Angeles based non-profit arts organization
Art2102, and occasionally lectures and publishes on contemporary art
and culture with a particular focus on the Asia Pacific Region.
San Francisco-based artist Mitzi Pederson′s practice revolves around aspects of reconsideration highlighting mistakes or amendments, and bringing attention to that which goes unnoticed. Pederson plays with visual and spatial conditions to confuse perception. Accumulation of elements, use of specific materials, light, and movement creates subtle and constant change. These arrangements explore how accumulated parts exist as distinct entities and simultaneously function as a whole and define tangibility. Pederson utilizes found objects and pre-fabricated materials, such as plywood or cinderblock. The result provides remnants that then manipulate and create a new object. This new altered object maintains a sense of history and former identity, while contradicting the previous perception of that object. The transformation involves meticulous reconfiguration and organization of the materials.
Pederson received her MFA in painting and drawing from California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2004, and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999. Her work has been shown both locally and internationally with a scheduled solo exhibition at White Columns, New York this year. Pederson is represented by Ratio 3, San Francisco. For more information visit, www.ratio3.org.
Wayne Smith is a San Francisco-based artist who works in a variety of media including drawing, scanner-based photography, video and sound. His work has been shown locally and nationally. Smith′s sound work employs a combination of sampling, field recordings and live performance. Recording as Aero-Mic′d, Wayne released two CDs: Aero-Mic′d and Under A Sun. A new audio recording, I Think You′re Great, to be released in conjunction with the exhibition overundersidewaysdown. Smith has co-written several plays with local author Kevin Killian as part of SF Poet′s Theatre, his play Manual for a Block has been performed as part of Small Press Traffic′s Poet′s Theatre Festival, and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. He is currently collaborating with Berlin-based artist D-L Alvarez on a new sound/video installation about late-sixties California culture. Smith is an Affiliate Artist at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA.
Kevin Killian is a US poet, novelist, critic and playwright. He has written a book of poetry, Argento Series (2001), two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1989), and a book of stories, Little Men (1996) that won the PEN Oakland award for fiction. A second collection, I Cry Like a Baby was published by Painted Leaf Books in 2001. With Lew Ellingham, Killian has written many essays and articles on the life and work of the American poet Jack Spicer [1925-65] and co-edited Spicer′s posthumous books The Train of Thought and The Tower of Babel (both 1994). A biography of Spicer, Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance in 1998 , to be published by Wesleyan University Press. He and Peter Gizzi are currently (2006) editing Spicer′s complete poems. For the San Francisco Poets Theater Killian has written thirty plays, including Stone Marmalade (1996, with Leslie Scalapino) and Often (2001, with the late Barbara Guest). He is the film columnist for the new online journal Fanzine. His next book-in fact, his next two books—will be all about Kylie Minogue.
′I Think You′re Great′
limited edition essay composed for exhibition overundersidewaysdown
by KEVIN KILLIAN
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