Past Exhibitions
I-Object
Laura Boles Faw
Justin Hoover
David Peña Lopera
Kathryn Williamson
Curated by Clark Buckner
June 4-27, 2010
Since the 1960’s, with the rise of performance, social practice, and other ephemeral art forms, the art object frequently has been denigrated as calling only for contemplation or commodity consumption. Many have argued it should be renounced for the sake of a more dynamic, engaged – or even revolutionary – experience. However, in recent decades, such subversive rhetoric has grown shallow. The aesthetic revolutions it once informed have been fully accomplished in the pluralism of contemporary art; and now, rather than subversive, the claim to engage the world often seems to be only an excuse to embrace popular culture and affirm the status quo.
To the contrary, this show, I–Object, aims to celebrate and defend the art object as a site of resistance. Artworks interrupt our everyday involvements, calling for consideration of otherwise obscured phenomena. As objects, they object – articulating limits, failures, and other absences that resist simple social recuperation. And this object character persists even in art forms that originally were celebrated as transcending it – including performance, video, and installation. Despite their affinity with more commonplace artifacts and involvements, artworks distort or disrupt their conventional functions – providing newfound pleasures, compelling different modes of engagement, or indeed calling for contemplation!
While affirming the object character of artwork, this show thus simultaneously explores the diverse forms of objectivity in contemporary art. Justin Hoover’s “Ready Made Revolution,” presents the art object as a political intervention – a bomb! – with the power to provoke panic. Laura Boles Faw’s “Not An Exit” challenges the cliché that art provides a flight from reality, by explicitly refusing any out. David Peña Lopera’s “Form and Function” evokes entropy and death to explore the limits marked by aesthetic and physical form. And Kathryn Williamson’s performances involve transforming herself momentarily from subject to object – simply by collapsing in public.
Christmas Sparkle Magic and the End of All Things Serious vs. the Return of Ancient Night presents new sculpture and animation by Erica Gangsei
May 7-30, 2010
Erica Gangsei rescues forgotten little scraps – packing foam, Christmas kitsch – cast off from the most broken aspects of our global materials economy, and uses them to make her sculptures, dioramas and stop-motion animations. She is interested in the transitional areas whereby a scrap of material, from the most over-literal piece of kitsch to a tiny piece of garbage, becomes something that starts to hold meaning for the viewer. Erica's work questions how much narrative she can impose and still leave a piece open to the imagination.
Purchasing almost nothing, scavenging and salvaging almost everything, Gangsei creates and taxonomizes her own cosmology for us – crafting her own fairy tale universe of little garbage puppets. You’ve never felt sorrier for a piece of kitchen sponge, we swear.
This is Arte Povera meets the Muppets. This is Pokémon’s answer to Richard Tuttle. This is Christmas Sparkle Magic and the end of All Things Serious vs. The Return of Ancient Night presents: Battle for Planet Earth!
21 Projects x 21 Days x 21 Hours
April 7-28, 2010
During the month of April, Royal NoneSuch Gallery hosted 21 Projects, a community based social experiment where 21 projects take place over the course of a 21 day period, and each project was one hour in length. All projects took place in the Royal NoneSuch Gallery, which was empty for the duration of the series, with the exception of two chalkboard squares on the wall for participant use.
Check out the schedule of projects here!
Bitter Harvest
New Work by
Lauren Frances Adams
March 12- April 2, 2010
Bitter Harvest explores Lauren Adams’ research into Afghani poppy fields and the relationship between American military operations, the Taliban, and civilian farmers in Afghanistan’s ‘Golden Crescent’. Adams has documented images published about issues surrounding these topics in popular media, and will re-inscribe the found narratives in a site specific painting on the gallery’s interior walls, resulting in a claustrophobic interior overwhelmed by poppy flowers and human figures. The visual pattern evident in the painting is inspired by contemporary war reporting and traditional wallpaper and ornament design, which visually seduces the viewer while simultaneously assaulting them with hallucinatory images of poppy cultivation in relationship to the international drug trade, the American military incursion in Afghanistan, and the cycle of economic underdevelopment in rural farm areas of the Golden Crescent.
Lauren Adams is an artist residing in St. Louis, Missouri, whose work over the past several years has commonly focused on the relationship between agriculture, class, politics, and labor. An upcoming exhibition at Cosign Projects in St. Louis will feature three textile paintings she has created in the form of flags, reflecting similar work to that at Royal NoneSuch. In Adams’ past works, the artist uses popular historical forms of ornament and craft design, such as the toile du juoy pattern which inspired Bitter Harvest to comment upon contemporary political and social issues. Adams recently attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and is scheduled for an upcoming residency at the Cite in Paris, France. She currently teaches painting at Washington University in St. Louis.
Lending Library
Curated by Dena Beard
February 5- March 5, 2010
The Royal NoneSuch Gallery is pleased to present Lending Library, a group exhibition curated by Dena Beard, featuring tools, materials, and resources from artists Anthony Discenza, Lydia Greer, Desiree Holman, Trevor Paglen, Matthew Rana, Sunaura Taylor, and Andrew Rottner.
Comprised of source materials, Lending Library takes a chance to display a line of inquiry rather than a finished object. Michel Foucault said, “dreams are no longer summoned with eyes closed, but in reading; and a true image is now a product of learning.” The seven artists included in the exhibition demonstrate the labor intrinsic to this learned image, making available their visual experiments and scholarly research. These personal libraries bear witness to the conceptual undercurrents the artists’ projects but also to the aesthetic process of folding pages, scribbling in margins, and other devices of reclaiming information. Lending Library gives us a glimpse onto the research and experiments that inform artistic discovery and opens these source materials for public access.
Renetta Sitoy: The Names Project
The (first and last) names of every person I've ever met that I can recall from memory.
January 8- 31, 2010
The Royal NoneSuch Gallery is excited to present The Names Project, new work by Renetta Sitoy. For ten days in November 2008, the artist sat down at a typewriter and typed the first and last names of all the people she has ever met on individual cards. Having restricted herself from utilizing resources such as yearbooks and the internet to aid her recollections for the first half of the project, she then began researching the 515 recalled names using internet search engines and created typewritten graphs and video to analyze this information. The result of this process, The Names Project, will be presented in the form of a mixed media installation that explores the mind’s limitations in re-creating histories, as well as the extent to which the internet can aid and extend one's memory.
This is the first part in a series called The Memory Projects. The second part is titled The floor plans of every place I've ever lived that I can recall from memory, which has shown at LoBot Gallery in Oakland and was part of the exhibition Home is something I carry with me in San Francisco.
Small Works! Art for Under a Hundred Bucks
December 4- December 24, 2009
Small works! Here's your chance to acquire art that is small and affordable by amazing local artists. Artists include: Alan Disparte, Jessica Eastburn, Kevin Parks Hauser, Aaron Terry, Nicole Kotara, Miguel Arias, Melissa Wyss, Renetta Sitoy, Taylor Vogland Dreiling, Ben Venom, Sarah Thibault, Matthew Cella, Ryan Hendon, Vanessa Woods, Josh Smith, and more!
Carrie Hott and Kevin Parks Hauser: Everything I was I became in memory, 2009; paper, 81/2"x11"
Everything I was I became in memory
work by Kevin Parks Hauser and Carrie Hott
November 6- November 30, 2009
Remembering is a circular act that weaves between the past and present. As memories are formed when they are remembered, and reinvented as they are created, the boundary between now and then is revealed as fluid and elusive. However, with this understanding of memory’s instability comes the ingrained knowledge and feeling of permanence in who we are and what we have experienced. In Everything I was I became in memory, artists Kevin Parks Hauser and Carrie Hott have each created work that visually manifests the act of remembering in order to make the abstract tangible and the indefinable concrete, all while emphasizing the ephemeral nature of looking back. Kevin Parks Hauser explores the role of adolescent memory in present formations of identity while Carrie Hott wonders what motivates our need to create records of the past and the what forms those records may take.
Meghann Riepenhoff: Ali with the turkey, 2009;
C-print, 20"x24".
Making Pictures
Photographs by Elizabeth Bernstein, Molly DeCoudreux, Naomi Miller, and Meghann Riepenhoff
October 2-October 30, 2009
Making Pictures is a love affair with ‘straight’ photography. An exploration of daily life, routine, home, friends, family, and our physical environment. The particular vision of each artist is distinctly their own, but what they share is a desire to walk through the world with their camera, examining the mundane as entry points to the incredible, the indescribable, or the emotional world that exists beyond language.