Accepted Artists for This Message Has No Content and Rule No Rule

Embark is pleased to present the artists for our spring 2018 shows This Message Has No Content and Rule No Rule. 

Kira Dominguez. Le Petit-Fils d’Hazard, Un Coup de Dés, 2017. Jacquard weaving and inkjet print on organza. 

This Message Has No Content

02/03/18-03/10/18

Opening Reception: Friday, February 2nd

Dave Beeman // CCA
Lizzy Blasingame // SF State
Kira Dominguez // CCA
T2R/ Laura Gilmore // CCA
Izidora LETHE // SFAI
Ryan Meyer // UC Davis
Tamara Porras // CCA
Connie Woo // SFAI
Chuhe Yan // SFAI

This Message Has No Content is curated by Aaron Wilder.

Joseph Ferriso. Spiral Doorway, 2017. Acrylic on plywood. 

Rule No Rule

03/24/18-04/28/18

Opening Reception: Friday, March 23rd

Amy Cella // SF State
Yangyi Chen // SFAI
Joseph Ferriso // Stanford
Sean Howe // Stanford
Charmaine Koh // CCA
Emily Meisler // SFAI
Leslie Samson // SF State
Ans Li // SFAI

Rule No Rule was juried by Elise Boivin. 

Accepted Artists for Neighbors and This Is A Test

Embark is pleased to present the artists for our fall shows Neighbors and This Is a Test. These shows were juried by Micki Meng and Clea Massiani. 

Neighbors

09/22/17 - 10/28/17, Opening Reception: Friday, September 22nd

Shari Paladino. Habitas, 2017. 

Artists:

Christopher Marin | CCA

Amy Nathan | Mills

Shari Paladino | UC Berkeley

Keyvan Shovir | CCA

This is a Test

11/10/17 - 12/16/17, Opening Reception: Friday, November 10th

Judit Navratil. Gazdagrét // Budapest, 2015. Video.

Artists:

Mengmeng Lu | SFAI

Judit Navratil | CCA

Oberon Strong | SF State

Cristina Velazquez | SFAI

Embark Partners with the Headlands to present Grad Fellow Show

The 2016-2017 Headlands Graduate Fellows explore the modes and methods of art practices in a multitude of ways. 

Saturday, May 20th through Wednesday, June 7.
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 21st, 1–4PM.

No End in Sight presents the work and practices of Headlands’ 2016–17 Graduate Fellows. In the spirit of the organization’s history of encouraging artistic exploration and experimentation, this exhibition travels the path of an idea to fruition, taking various routes and perspectives. What happens when we begin to understand an art practice as an evolution rather than a result-oriented endeavor? Whether it be with meticulous research, collection of scientific data, sketches as preparation for acts of chance, the organic development of the handmade, thinking through digital culture via analog devices, or the act of autobiographical documentation, No End in Sight asks fruitful questions rather than presenting final answers.

Curatorial Statement

By Tania Houtzager & Angelica Jardini

In an increasingly commodified art world, No End In Sight aims to refocus our attentions from the product to the process of seven artists who have been thinking through their own practice and its place at the Headlands Center for the Arts. This exhibition reveals how these artists approach problems, think through complex subjects, and eventually decide how best to present their findings and creations to the public. While their results are quite varied, Shannon Abac, Jose Figueroa, Kunlin He, Cy Keener, Nicole Lavelle, Holden Schultz, and Angela Willetts all take us on conceptual journeys through their unique modus operandi.

Nicole Lavelle, 2017

Inspired by Headlands’ coastal location, the work of Cy Keener and Nicole Lavelle both probe for information from the land and the sea. Keener roots his process in scientific research and the poetic ephemeral. His handmade buoys, launched into the ocean and tracked by GPS, are designed to send measurements of waves and the color of the sky back to his studio. Prototypes, sketches, molds, and photographs show how the artist developed his objects, and how they remain in open-ended progress. Lavelle also utilizes research in her practice, on both cultural and personal levels, to create compelling narratives. Using an old family cabin as a starting point, Lavelle interweaves facets of her own life into an interpretive investigation of land use, housing, culture, and community in Marin County. Her experimental visual essay will turn social practice project as she performs a live lecture in which she guides the audience through the complexities and eccentricities of this site in contemporary California.

Kunlin He, 2017

Like Keener and Lavelle, Kunlin He and Jose Figueroa use fact-based research to reimagine the historical through a personal lens. Kunlin He focuses on Headlands’ military history, interweaving Chinese folk tales with his findings to question preconceived notions of fixed chronology. The result is a unique amalgam of fact and fiction, presented via traditional Chinese ink painting techniques and contemporary installation. Jose Figueroa similarly explores personal history through autobiographical paintings that act as a vibrant diary, providing insight to the artist’s inner life and thought process. Together, the paintings become a symbolic archive, full of talismans of specific places and times that simultaneously form the basis of a potentially life-long project.

Holden Schultz, 2017

Angela Willetts, Shannon Abac, and Holden Schultz each explore the potentialities of their mediums. Willetts tests the boundaries of objects and subjects in video documentation methods of her performance practice. Through the relationship between her body and various materials, she deconstructs the binary of the self and other, and opens a dialogue with endless possibilities. While her performances originate as dedicated tasks, the act of doing subsumes her original goals. Abac also explicitly presents the effects of working processes in her large sculptural vessels with accompanying maquettes. The elements of chance and risk are clearly rendered, presented as the results of experiments with an array of materials, thus expanding the definition of ceramic art. Schultz disassembles and reconstructs obsolete technology—including projectors, cameras, and scanners—into functional objects, ultimately reimagining the ways that photography might provide new ways of seeing. At its most powerful, Schultz’s work presents a reinvention of image creation through an ingenious hybridity of the old and new. His work, like all of the artists’ works in the exhibition, is dedicated to imagining new paths, connections, and horizons.

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About The Graduate Fellowship Program

Headlands’ Graduate Fellowships is a year-long studio program for recent MFA graduates in partnership with esteemed Bay Area academic institutions. Graduate Fellows are given the support of a private studio, public presentation opportunities, and participation in Headlands’ peer-to-peer community of local, national, and international artists.

This event is part of the Headlands's off-site program series while their campus is currently closed to the public for construction on The Commons. The Headlands is co-presenting and collaborating with several Bay Area cultural organizations and partners; see all off-site events here.

Embark Gallery Opens Spread and Celebrates Expansion

Seven emerging artists explore the theme of growth in updated gallery

Carmina Eliason, photograph of Café con Leche, an ongoing project. "Conversation Residues (Detail Shot)" Herbert Sanders Gallery, San Jose. November 2016

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 comments upon the endlessly duplicated and modified dissemination of images in the digital realm through a mimetic photographic process. Carmina Eliason presents Café 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 and Amber Imrie-Situnayake 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 impending and inevitable collapse back into nature.

Amber Imrie- Situnayake. Homeland, 2017. Photography printed on canvas, thread, branches, rocks, buckets.

Gianna Paniagua’s large-scale sculptures made of intricately cut paper reflect on the rapid cell growth of disease and the fragility of the human body. On opening night, Paniagua will reveal her process in a cathartic live performance piece. Meganne Rosen’s work explores the fluid relationship between painting and sculpture. Her installation, a “sprawling organism” that consumes the gallery, is site-specific and will be shown for the first time.

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. The juried exhibitions are held at our gallery in San Francisco at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

Press Previews by appointment.

Opening Reception: April 7, 6-9 pm

Hours: 12–5pm every Saturday and Sunday, April 8 - May 7

Media Contact: Angelica Jardini, Curatorial Director: angelica@embarkgallery.com

Accepted Artists for Spread and F

Embark is pleased to present the artists for our upcoming shows Spread and F. These shows were juried by Aimee Le Duc, Donna Napper and Sarah Thibault.

Spread 04.07.17-05.07.17

Amy Cella. Installation view of Search and Destroy, Just Be Careful in the Corner and You Move Fast, I Count Slow, 2017. Inkjet prints in 33 black plastic frames.

Amy Cella | SF State

Carmina Eliason | San Jose State

Matthew Floriani | Mills

Amber Imrie- Situnayake | Stanford

Gianna Paniagua | CCA

Meganne Rosen | CCA

F 06.16.17-07.22.17

Tamara Porras. Making a Dad, 2017, Archival Pigment Prints from found 35mm slides.

Whitney Aguiniga | Mills

Keith Daly | San Jose State 

Flavia D’Euros | CCA 

Mattson Fields | Mills

Tamara Porras | CCA

Meganne Rosen | CCA