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ARCHIVE 2006
April 22 - June 18, 2006

E.V. Day
Intergalactic Installations

 

 

Like the recesses of deep space, in April 2006, CAF’s will be transformed into a dark, cosmic extent—punctuated with two large-scale sculptures glowing in green. E.V. Day’s exhibition at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Intergalactic Installations, presents three suspended sculptural installations that synthesize the history of Cold War technology, the design aesthetics NASA prototypes, and a post-feminist super-woman discourse to suggest the potency of that which is elusive, obscured or mysterious.

Current exhibition artist

EV Day
Stealth, 2003
8.5’ x 6’, Edition of 3
Green and clear monofilament and fishing tackle under blacklight
Courtesy the Artist and Carolina Nitch Contemporary Art, New York, NY

In Stealth and Black Hole, Day employs monofilament and hardware to render her subjects in a style reminiscent of blueprints, engineering drawings and CAD renderings. Stretching from gallery floor to ceiling, these glowing works seem to hover above the gallery space—an apropos depiction of two scientific marvels that drift at the edge of human detection. In brilliant contrast to the darkened main space is Astral Glide, an installation of several resin-coated white chicken eggs with red blood veins suspended from the ceiling in a cascading swoop. These sperm-like forms have a jeweled radiance, at once dripping with virility and alien fascination.

Like the health diagrams of high school science classes, Day both de-mystifies and consecrates these biological and scientific elements of life. Intergalactic Installations re-invests sexual tension and mystery, as the artist deconstructs the elemental processes of female biology and allure.

According to Roberta Smith of the New York Times, “ Ms. Day's work is one of the latest examples of the suave, entertaining political art that has succeeded the more didactic efforts of the early 1990's. Instead of moralistic combinations of image and text, the viewer is treated to clever visual jokes that can trigger a host of amusing readings.” E.V. Day shows with Carolina Nitsch Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art, New York and Deitch Projects, New York. This exhibition represents the artist’s first solo museum exhibition on the West Coast. The artist was the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. In addition, her work has been featured in numerous venues including the Whitney Biennial (2000), Henry Urbach Architecture Gallery, NY (2003) and in group exhibitions at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica, CA (1999) and at Henry Urbach Gallery, NY (1999).


see press release

Bloom Projects

Jesse Bransford
Of Two and Three

 

 


Artist Jesse Bransford will create an installation at CAF, Of Two and Three, which mines an iconographic mélange of mythical figures, classical portraiture, heavy metal album covers, and contemporary comic books. CAF’s Bloom Project’s space will hold a newly commissioned wall mural, whose tromp l’oeil effect applies scientific rationality and balance to the fantastic and aberrant.

Bransford1

Jesse Bransford
Proposal Image for Of Two and Three (The Left and Right Hands II),2006
Courtesy the Artist and Feature, Inc., New York, NY

In the CAF’s Glassbox gallery, Bransford presents a large-scale drawing, Of Two and Three, suggestive of official emblems or seals
from a fantasy guild. Employing clean lines and a limited, specific palate Bransford renders in a meticulous detail two large figures holding aloft a single vase, from which hang crowned snakes. In Bransford’s realm, these diverse elements hold symbolic equivalence, fusing seamlessly through the visual language of symmetry and balance.

Bransford is a Professor of Art at New York University. He has been included in solo exhibitions at Feature
Inc, New York, Gallerie Schmidt Maczollek, Köln, Germany, Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami FL and Shaheen
Modern and Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH and group exhibitions at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,
San Francisco, White Columns, New York and many others. Bransford is a contributor to the art
publication Werewolf Express.

see press release

Salon series exhibitions

J. Morgan Puett
in collaboration with Iain Kerr and others...

AN EX-ODE TO THE CORPOREAL CONVERSATION:
A Salon for the suit — a boutique for the conversation

 

 

Beginning in April 2006, CAF’s Norton Gallery will transform into a moveable feast of programs, interventions, and opportunities for public engagement, as it launches a new series of artist projects entitled Salon. By inviting artists to create participatory work that blurs the boundaries between gallery visitor and artist, CAF has asked artists to address the tradition, begun in the living rooms of the 18th Century French women, to employ the interaction of a diverse group of literary, artistic and cultural figures to foster an open, transitory, and discursive space.

Morgan1

J. Morgan Puett and Iain Kerr
Installation image from
That word which means smuggling across borders, incorporated, 2006
Exhibition at Mass MOCA, The Interventionists: Art in the Public Sphere

Artist J. Morgan Puett in collaboration with Iain Kerr and others will launch Salon with an interactive installation and intervention. From a barn/studio on Mildred’s Lane in Beach Lake, PA, the artists will host a series of dinners, informal lectures and tutorials that will be linked through a real time web feed into the Contemporary Arts Forum. Two screens on opposite sides of the gallery will project from the Mildred’s Lane Farm. The interior of the Norton Gallery will be transformed into a fitting salon that will seamlessly fit into the barn/studio in Pennsylvania and host daily events and informal chats with the artists and their guests.

Puett and Kerr work collaboratively as “that word which means smuggling across borders, incorporated.” This business questions the intersections of art, commerce and collaboration and has recently exhibited at the Mass MOCA.

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