Animalier Electricite

Photographer Sharon Wickham has been making remarkable images for many years: still life, botanicals, found elements, people, and architecture. Animalier Electricite is her new series of prints displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art café gallery. Wickham says she was inspired by the Animalier School, where artists and sculptors, active in both Europe and America in the 19th and early 20th century, were more concerned with expressing the essence of their subjects—both wild and domesticated animals—than with rendering them in all their realistic detail. So in this spirit, her large format photographs are not conventional portraits, but are animals in motion.

Wickham hones in on the essential nature of her subjects: the movement of breath, skin, bones, and muscles. She is interested in the nature of existence itself, thus the images not only refer to life, but also to death and push the boundaries between the physical and the non-physical worlds. Between the tangible and the intangible, these are portraits of motion itself, and display an almost painterly gesture that points to a “not knowing”—to a dislocation in time and space—that which constitutes the mysterious nature of all living things.

Wickham is further influenced by her study of Buddhist philosophy. Her methods bring to mind the words of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn:

Mindfulness is the observing mind, but it does not stand outside of the object of observation. It goes right into the object and becomes one with it. Because the nature of the observing mind is mindfulness, the observing mind does not lose itself in the object but transforms it by illuminating it, just as the penetrating light of the sun transforms trees and plants.

Looking at Sharon Wickham’s images reminded me of American photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s early studies of a trotting horse. In her book “River Of Shadows” about Eadweard Muybridge, Rebecca Solnit notes that he was a pioneer in high-speed motion photography. His technological wizardry, using fast motion shutters, captured the speed and dynamism of the times, which were redefined by cross continental trains and the telegraph in the mid-to-late 1800’s. In our day, the internet and digital images have profoundly affected how we perceive reality. With her use of digital photography, Sharon Wickham, prefigured by Muybridge, shows us how elastic the idea of time and space really is, and the constantly changing nature of perception.

Animalier Electricite will be on view through September 3rd, 2007.

Alienated Mass Hysteria

Roots division is a progressive art space. It's conveniently located in the Mission District on 17th St. at Van Ness and the space offers a gallery and artist residency in exchange for community workshops. For two days local residents will be able to witness the current exhibit, Alienated Mass Hysteria at the Roots Division venue.

Why hasn't this space earned its place in the SF art community? Possibly for the lack of publicity? Or possibly because exhibits often turnover so fast, leaving very little time for patrons to attend shows. However, that shouldn’t really stop great works of art from being seen.

In the gallery are Juan Carlos Quintana, Arvin Flores and Jose Guinto. The left walls feature Arvin Flores' work, Quintana is in the center, and farther right is Jose Guinto's. The three styles seem to communicate to each other very well, and the patchwork, textile-like, is woven intricately and meticulously. The pieces are mapped out well, and it’s almost impossible to stop and do something else before going to the next piece. Each work seems to be mounted in a way that leads you to the next. There is a battle between the sacred and profane.

Arvin Flores seems to present a punk-core, nouvelle vague, while Quintana's work is very nostalgic, almost anthropological—evoking birth, and history plagued with rust and washed over time. Jose Guinto's piece, Born to lose II, is so amazing I could just look at it for days on end (image below). Unfortunately, the show will end tomorrow. In reference to Guinto’s piece, it reminded me of how I’ve always wondered how artists like Juan Luna, can create a huge piece like Spolarium and be in that state of mind for months, or for how long it took to create the work. Spolarium is a painting that shows fallen gladiators being dragged to an unseen pile of corpses in a chamber beneath the Roman arena. Just like Guinto’s delicate presentation of a heap of garbage violently rotating to form a cumulus shape, covered in grease as two reckless figures ride it with abandon.

The opening reception was followed by Tsubibo, a Tagalog indy pop/folk/punk band who performed songs that gave meaning to the word "alienated." Alienated Mass Hysteria sounds so alone, just like when The Police sung, “I feel so alone, I feel so alone, I feel so lonely”—so mad, depressing and polite.

Jose Guinto, Born to Lose II, Mixed Media on Paper, 72x120 inches

Juan Carlos Quintana, Please Come Again

Arvin Flores, Horned Dialectic