Kevin Slagle, the proprietor of Oakland's Ego Park gallery, doesn't keep regular gallery hours. He has no curatorial assistants, no board of directors and no calendar beyond a couple months into the future. Kevin also likes to surf and play soccer - sometimes just as much or more than he likes putting on art shows. And sometimes he just plain doesn't have a good idea for anything to do at Ego Park, and there is a lapse in programming. But when Kevin is inspired with a good idea, Ego Park somehow manages to emerge from semi-obscurity to shine with surprising brilliance and present amazing shows and events. These moments have drawn large crowds, pleased art goers and earned Ego Park a place at the center of the East Bay art scene (Ego Park voted "Best in the Bay" in the SF Guardian, 2002).

It has been a while since Kevin has pulled out all the stops for an ambitious Ego Park show, but there have been the sound of elves tinkering during the night and the stars seem to be lining up for Ego Park's next show, opening Friday, December 10th to be a winner. The show, entitled "40 Winks / Mini-Theater" is a show of video work curated by San Francisco-based artist Sue Costabile. Sue is a musician and visual artist who is best known for her intricate and compelling video projections, which she usually shows live in collaboration with experimental electronic musicians. Having, as she says, "failed as a VJ", Sue uses a custom-made method of manipulating small objects on a light table, which is filmed from above with a firewire camera layered and composited live in software. Her exquisite visual manipulations have earned her invitations to perform all over the world at festivals such as Mutek, Sonar and Ars Electronica.

Kevin originally asked Sue to see some work for consideration for a show he was thinking about for Ego Park that involved constructing one-person viewing environments for videos. Sue handed Kevin a DVD she recently finished - "Mini Movies" a collaboration with the Berlin-based electronic musician AGF. Immediately recognizing the strength of the work, Kevin asked Sue for curatorial recommendations, and when those came in droves, he eventually just passed the curatorial decisions off to her, and focused his energy on building what he began calling "mini-theatres". "I know what I'm good at," Kevin says, "I wanted to put on a video show and make these little viewing environments, but I actually don't know a whole lot about video, and I realized that Sue had all these connections with these amazing artists, and I knew it would be so much better if I just passed it onto her."

Indeed, recognizing one's limitations and being able to spot talent is an asset to any curator. Kevin is wise to trust his artists. Realizing the power of networking, he gives them a lot of leeway to expand the network outwards as they see fit. The result is a chemistry that couldn't be achieved by one person. Many of the great shows that gained Ego Park attention in it's early days were collaborations with Aisha Burns, an artist, curator and graphic designer who seemed to be imbued with a superhuman amount of energy (and has since relocated to Brooklyn.) "Aisha had great ideas. And she knew all sorts of people. I used to call her "The Center of The Universe" because everybody seemed to revolve around her. I just kind of let her go. I made the shows possible, built stuff and enabled things." In the days of Aisha's involvement with Ego Park, there were indeed some great shows. Highlights have included a show of Canadian screen printers Seripop, Brian Janusiak's sweaters (knit in designs created by a custom-made keystroke tracking software), and performances by musicians such as Matmos, Experimental Dental School, and Cocorosie.

Kevin seems to have picked a star in Sue Costabile, who in turn invited fellow Bay Area video artist Scott Arford to co-curate show that includes work by the UK duo Semiconductor (currently in residence at the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley), Josh Clayton, C.E.B. Reas, and Barney Haynes. Music at the opening will include sets by DJ's Sutekh, Safety Scissors & Kit Clayton, and a live performance from Eats Tapes. If it seems that music is taking center stage in this show, you are perhaps not far off the mark. Music and art have always had a close relationship. Fused most obviously at art openings, on record sleeves, at concerts and screenings, these two siblings of art forms often walk hand in hand together. I often find it odd that there still exist separations and distinctions that place boundaries around what is perceived of as "art world" and what is "music scene", as if these two art forms live parallel but separate lives. Perhaps they could be said to suffer from a sort of typecasting: Art as the more intellectual, heady, perhaps sometimes even "snooty"; and Music as less highbrow, more emotional, less involved in a critical discourse, and more what people do when they're drunk or on drugs. "40 Winks" is a show that seems to combine the art world and the music scene in an admirably organic way. With Sue Costabile and Scott Arford (both musicians and artists) at the center, it makes sense that these talents are reflected in their curatorial network. Some of the artists in the show are established gallery artists with long exhibition records, and some, although well known in the music scene, rarely show work in an art gallery setting.

If music and art are separate art forms, but as I propose, siblings, I see art and music as possessing a sort of Luke-and-Leah relationship: that of having been separated at birth, cultivating slightly different interests and skills, and finding themselves later in life hopelessly attracted to one another (and somewhat restrained by conventions) Perhaps to use a more traditional analogy: they are two sides of the same coin (the coin I suppose being whatever the fuck it is that we choose to do with our minds, hands and free time). In any case, it will be a joy to see a show that flips the coin so artfully.

Installation of Mini-Theatres for "40 Winks" at Ego Park