SophiaJacob: The End
Featuring: John Bohl, Stephen Booth, Hunter Bradley, Peggy Chiang, Caitlin Cunningham, Chris Day, Dave Eassa, Peter Eide, Alex Ebstein, Noel Freibert, Chris Lavoie, Chloe Maratta, Jessica Marx, Molly Colleen O’Connell, Nikholis Planck, Neal Reinalda, Flannery Silva, Amelia Szpiech, Marisa Takal, Colin Van Winkle, and Elspeth Walker.
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Rock512Devil: Tomago and Occasional Screenings
April 19 – May 17
Featuring work by:
Hanna Hur (http://hannahur.com/)
Steven Riddle (http://steven-riddle.com/)
Clayton Schiff (http://claytonschiff.com/)
Occasional screenings. Opening reception 7:00PM 4/19.
“For there simultaneously occurs upon the earth a very important, inevitable phenomenon that is beneficial in many respects and unfortunate in many others: stratification. Strata are Layers, Belts. The consist of giving form to matters, of imprisoning intensities or locking singularities into systems of resonance and redundancy, of producing upon the body of the earth molecules large and small and organizing them into molar aggregates. Strata are acts of capture, they are like black holes or occlusions, striving to seize whatever comes within their reach. They operate by coding and territorialization upon the earth; they proceed simultaneously by code and by territoriality. The strata are judgements of God; stratification in general is the entire system of the judgment of God (but the earth, or the body without organs, constantly eludes that judgment, flees and becomes de-stratified, decoded, deterritorialized).”
– Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 10,000 BC: the Geology of Morals or (Who Does The Earth Think It Is?)
https://english.duke.edu/uploads/assets/DeleuzeGuattariGeologyofMoralsClean%281%29.pdf
Described above in other words is perhaps a crisis, or momentary realization. Stratification of this kind is quite clear in the work of the participating artists, whose processes and visions congeal on the surface of the image to varied effects. Maybe figure and ground are obscured, because their defining qualities (contour, color, light) are being reattributed to style and judgement. The ground might just be the figure – an image that so clearly depicts it’s own making.
Yeah okay, but a second form of stratification occurs when the means of production have been leveled, neutralized, standardized, whatever and the field of action folds in on itself. It’s a spiral as opposed to concentric circles… the mixing and remixing of form and meaning within the same territory. What if we thought of this type of stratification as Tamago — the Japanese omelet? One eternally growing stratum, it’s accumulating laterally, bending and building helical layers through which flavors can interact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHxGPAajucc
When we look at the omelet on our dish, we see the soft layers of savory stratification. Bits of heterogeneous fruit and vegetable peak out from the layers which all seem the same, comforting yellow.
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Gallery Four: Bessma Khalaf’s solo show Yes, Even You
April 19 – June 7, 2014
Gallery Four is pleased to announce California-based artist Bessma Khalaf’s solo exhibition of video, photography, and installation. Balancing mischievousness and malice, Khalaf’s processes of degradation (burning, eating, smashing, etc.) explore the boundaries of landscape, place, and image. Khalaf proposes that beyond the nihilism of destruction, voids and absences possess generative possibilities, either in nature or in her practice. Figuratively and pictorially, voids carve an ambiguous space in the representation of landscape and the documentation of performance. Entrenched in process, Khalaf mixes mysticism, futility, and endurance when pitting herself against the overwhelming vastness of her surroundings, and the largeness of the romantic landscape. Using both appropriated imagery and in situ events, Khalaf executes performances for the camera such that images and actions break down each other, and occasionally reach a compromise. Khalaf’s images and locations have a strange familiarity, yet anonymity. They’re places that we, as consumers of mass media and living bodies, recognize, yet really don’t know.
Born in Iraq, Bessma Khalaf emigrated to San Diego, California in 1990 just before the first Gulf War. She earned her Bachelors degree from San Diego State University in 2002 and a Masters of Fine Arts in photography from the California College of Art in 2007. She is represented by Steven Wolf Fine Arts in San Francisco, and currently maintains a studio in Oakland, California.
Gallery Four is a 10,000 sq. ft. facility featuring six live/work artist studios and a contemporary art exhibition space. Gallery Four is located in downtown Baltimore’s H&H building.
*Photos by SophiaJacob, Jack Livingston, and Cara Ober
