Only a Signal Shown: Week 3 (February 15 - 21, 2013)

Only a Signal Shown: Week 3 (February 15 - 21, 2013)

Week #3 Opening Reception: Friday, February 15, 2013, 7–9 pm
Week #3 Dates: February 15 - 21, 2013
Exhibition Dates: February 1 - March 9, 2013
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 12–6 pm

Join us for the Opening Reception of Week #3 on Friday, February 15, 2013, from 7-9 pm. Week #3 of Only a Signal Shown, curated by Michele Carlson, includes work by Mik Gaspay, Ranu Mukherjee, Weston Teruya, and Skye Thornstenson, exploring the ways artists use speculative fiction to reframe existing narratives and media forms.

The artists in this week’s video show create their own inventive and imaginary alternate realities. Without being limited by their histories and visual landscapes, they simply acknowledge a need for a retelling. Some works are more narrative than others, but each appropriates and reforms the visual artifacts of existing stories and histories. These videos offer ambivalent, adventurous, and often absurd speculations about the world around us, reflecting on the effects of colonialism, consumerism, pop culture, and our fantasies and anxieties about post-apocalyptic life.

VIDEO PROGRAM, ONLY A SIGNAL SHOWN WEEK #3:
1. Weston Teruya
Float (Fantastic Voyage), 2007
4:04 min
This work is a departure from Weston Teruya’s typical art practice, which takes the form of drawings and sculptures that examine the built environment, its history, and relation to cultural and social markers. 

2. Mik Gaspay
Terrestrial Discourse, 2012
20 min
Mik Gaspay is an interdisciplinary artist who primarily works with found objects, painting and sculpture. His practice investigates pop-culture, our relationship to common-place objects, and systems of signification.

3. Ranu Mukherjee
Radiant Chromosphere 
(Move Towards What is Approaching)
,
2012
4:59 min
This hybrid film piece includes fields awaiting development, grafted orchard lemons, plums, cherries, pears, grapes, peaches, solar panels, gazebos, Ild Almaden house, winery porch, Sindhi book, rice, incense, bricks, dancers dress, Ganesha object, snake charms, basket, espresso cup, dish rack on table, sleeve, purse, treatment table, iPad, awning, museum brocks, honeycomb, macaws, Califronia pepper tree, turtle, light, color, and space weather.

4. Skye Thorstenson
Nacirema (excerpt) “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” 2013
7  min
Skye Thorstenson layers diverse source materials into an uneasy flickering glob of pop culture; a sort of giddy candy-colored spectacle that is complicated by melodramatic gestures and improvised psychosexual absurdity.