Embark Gallery Opens Spread and Celebrates Expansion

Seven emerging artists explore the theme of growth in updated gallery

Carmina Eliason, photograph of Café con Leche, an ongoing project. "Conversation Residues (Detail Shot)" Herbert Sanders Gallery, San Jose. November 2016

Embark Arts is proud to announce a 300 sq. ft. addition to Embark Gallery. In honor of Embark’s expansion, Spread will explore the theme of growth. Ideas of change, improvement, transformation, transition, multiplying, metamorphosis and/or modification permeate this show. From urban sprawl to illness, mimesis and the social practice of sharing ideas, Spread addresses a variety of subjects through installation, performance and other innovative processes.

Amy Cella comments upon the endlessly duplicated and modified dissemination of images in the digital realm through a mimetic photographic process. Carmina Eliason presents Café con Leche, a social practice project that encourages participants to discuss issues of race and ethnicity in a communal setting, over a spread of coffee, milk and shared stories. Matthew Floriani and Amber Imrie-Situnayake both address the concepts of home and shelter. Floriani’s dilapidated miniature neighborhood evokes issues of gentrification and the uneven distribution of wealth, while Imrie-Situnayake’s installation work aims to blur the line between the domestic and the wild, reminding us of humankind’s impending and inevitable collapse back into nature.

Amber Imrie- Situnayake. Homeland, 2017. Photography printed on canvas, thread, branches, rocks, buckets.

Gianna Paniagua’s large-scale sculptures made of intricately cut paper reflect on the rapid cell growth of disease and the fragility of the human body. On opening night, Paniagua will reveal her process in a cathartic live performance piece. Meganne Rosen’s work explores the fluid relationship between painting and sculpture. Her installation, a “sprawling organism” that consumes the gallery, is site-specific and will be shown for the first time.

Embark Gallery offers exhibition opportunities to graduate students of the Fine Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. We provide a space for an engaged community of artists, curators and scholars, and we aim to expand the audience for up and coming contemporary art. The juried exhibitions are held at our gallery in San Francisco at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

Press Previews by appointment.

Opening Reception: April 7, 6-9 pm

Hours: 12–5pm every Saturday and Sunday, April 8 - May 7

Media Contact: Angelica Jardini, Curatorial Director: angelica@embarkgallery.com

Accepted Artists for Spread and F

Embark is pleased to present the artists for our upcoming shows Spread and F. These shows were juried by Aimee Le Duc, Donna Napper and Sarah Thibault.

Spread 04.07.17-05.07.17

Amy Cella. Installation view of Search and Destroy, Just Be Careful in the Corner and You Move Fast, I Count Slow, 2017. Inkjet prints in 33 black plastic frames.

Amy Cella | SF State

Carmina Eliason | San Jose State

Matthew Floriani | Mills

Amber Imrie- Situnayake | Stanford

Gianna Paniagua | CCA

Meganne Rosen | CCA

F 06.16.17-07.22.17

Tamara Porras. Making a Dad, 2017, Archival Pigment Prints from found 35mm slides.

Whitney Aguiniga | Mills

Keith Daly | San Jose State 

Flavia D’Euros | CCA 

Mattson Fields | Mills

Tamara Porras | CCA

Meganne Rosen | CCA

Embark Expansion to Open in April

We are pleased to announce that Embark Arts is expanding! Embark Gallery will be closed for the month of March for construction as we tear down our north facing wall of the gallery to extend our space to the end of the building! The gallery will grow by a couple of hundred feet gaining another window and the rest of the space will become a new conference room that will be available to rent through Fort Mason. 

We will reopen in the month of April with a celebratory juried show called Spread, named for the growing space and programming that we are rolling our this year! We look forward to sharing our new space with you as well as all of the programs we have planned for its future!

Embark Gallery Opens Get Lost Exhibition

Local Emerging Artists Present Contemporary Perspectives on Queer Identity

Simon Garcia-Miñaur, Welcome to Introduction to Fractal Sex (Video still), 2015, HD video, Single Channel

Inspired by philosopher Herbert Marcuse's notion of "the great refusal," Embark’s latest exhibition Get Lost showcases contemporary takes on queer identity politics. By challenging the representational imagery that queer art is perhaps best known for, these artists present a new understanding of the self through displacement and absence, suggesting that queer activism in the digital age may take more nuanced forms of expression.

The video work of Simón Garcia-Miñaur (SFAI) features the inaccessible body, mystifying the shared sexual experience and using technology to speak to invisibility in queer relationships. These short fiction films deny the viewer access to their preconceived notions of human interaction and sex, further queering the queer body through digital rendering. Courtney Trouble (CCA) also uses techniques of erasure politically, literally grinding up photographs of queer bodies and spaces into dust. Through this transformation of subject to object to abstraction, she takes the medium of photography which is so essential to the history of queer art, and makes it fragile, fleeting and thoroughly unrecognizable.

Izidora Leber (SFAI) presents a textual piece in several forms: spoken word, video and installation. The work, titled A rumination of the queer body in documentary and video making history - and suggestions of how to get lost as a concept for identitarian escape is informed by the idea of hybridity and aims to disrupt normative categorizations of identity. Richard-Jonathan Nelson challenges the assumed roles of black queer bodies via vibrantly colored textiles. His digital collages and soft sculptures refuse heteronormative ideals and present a multifaceted and nuanced perspective on queer masculinity and racial power structures in the queer community.

This exhibition was juried by Avram Finkelstein, a founding member of the collective responsible for the Silence=Death poster, and of the art collective, Gran Fury, with whom he collaborated on public art commissions for international institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Venice Biennale, ArtForum, MOCA LA, The New Museum, and The Public Art Fund.

Embark Gallery offers exhibition opportunities to graduate students of the Fine Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. We provide a space for an engaged community of artists, curators and scholars, and we aim to expand the audience for up and coming contemporary art. The juried exhibitions are held at our gallery in San Francisco at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

Press Preview: Wednesday, January 25 [by appointment]

Opening Reception: Friday, January 27, 5-9 PM

Hours: 12–5pm every Saturday and Sunday from January 28 to March 4, and during the week by appointment.

Media Contact:

Tania Houtzager

tania@embarkgallery.com

Now Accepting Submissions for Spring 2017!

DEADLINE: February 12th!

Embark is pleased to announce 3 new opportunities: two exhibitions for current MFA students and one film and video night, which is open to any and all emerging local artists!

Apply now at Embark Art's application portal on SlideRoom! 

FREE to Apply

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SPREAD

April 7- May 7

In honor of Embark’s upcoming expansion, this exhibition will explore the theme of growth. Embark calls for artworks that address change, improvement, transformation, transition, multiplying, metamorphosis and/or modification. Subjects can include but are certainly not limited to the body, form, technology, politics and culture, or the history of art. For example, consider borders in terms of nationalism and globalization, or the spread of viruses and growth of parasites.

All media will be considered, and large installation pieces are specifically encouraged for this show. Apply now!

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F

May 19- June 18

As students earn their degrees and celebrate their success, Embark explores the theme of FAILURE. Embark calls for a broad range of artworks that address inadequacies, deficiencies, and failings, either personal, political or aesthetic. Consider social or political failures, the failure of the individual in the face of larger structures, or even the failure to fit societal norms. These are just a few examples. All media will be considered, including performance.   Apply now! 

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Frame(s)

Date TBD

Frame(s) is an recurring one night film and video art event at Embark Gallery. Please apply with film or video work under 20 minutes long. We are currently accepting works in a broad range of subject matter and style.

IMPORTANT: For Frame(s) we are accepting submissions from any and all emerging artists who are local to the Bay Area, meaning you do NOT have to be enrolled in an MFA program at one of the 8 institutions Embark serves to apply for Frame(s.)  Apply now!

Embark is accepting submissions until February 12, 2017.

We look forward to seeing your work!

 

Press Release for #simulacra

For Immediate Release: 

October 3, 2016

Embark Gallery Opens #simulacra Exhibition

Local Emerging Artists Question Reality in Provocative Photography Show

Image: Mike Cole. Big Rock, 2015.

Embark Gallery’s newest exhibition, #simulacra, asks how Jean Baudrillard’s philosophical treatise “Simulacra and Simulation” is relevant in the digital era. We live in a visual culture in which it is increasingly easy to participate. Images are all-important, and no longer mere symbols of truth. As Baudrillard predicted, reality itself has begun to imitate what was once its model. This medium-specific show explores signs, memory and documentation from a diverse sampling of perspectives.

Mike Cole and Jacqueline Sherlock Norheim both stray from traditional photography, utilizing the mark of the artist’s hand in two different takes on landscape, one manufactured and pixelated, the other ethereal and ephemeral. Shisi Huang’s video piece addresses voyeurism and the blurred line between public and private realities in an age where we are often being recorded. Marcela Pardo Ariza’s playful photographic sculpture references the unraveling of the meaning of images in the contemporary moment, whereas Qian Zhao’s deliciously colorful prints evoke a surreal nostalgia. Tamara Porras investigates the past without nostalgia, exposing how photographs can take on a new life of their own once those pictured are gone. Shaghayegh Cyrous’ work is planted firmly in the present, taking the form of a live feed from an apartment in Tehran, Iran. The piece references the malleability of time and place made possible by new technologies and questions the nature of reality in an increasingly global world.

This exhibition was juried by Julie Casemore of Casmore Kirkeby Gallery, and Allie Haeusslein of Pier 24 Photography.

Hours: 12–5pm every Saturday and Sunday from November 5 to December 17, and during the week by appointment.

Press Preview: Wednesday, November 2 [by appointment]

Opening Reception: Friday, November 4, 6–9pm

Media Contact:

Tania Houtzager

tania@embarkgallery.com

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"Make America Colorful Again" Coloring Books

We're excited to announce that in conjunction with Humor US, "Make America Colorful Again" coloring books will be for sale at Embark Gallery! Artist Joey Yang will also provide a coloring station at the opening reception, as catharsis for your feelings on the upcoming election.

"I made a Donald Trump coloring book. It's badly drawn because I think it reflects his character." 

Read more about the project on its fundraising page, and don't miss the chance to snag one! Proceeds will benefit the International Institute of the Bay Area, a non-profit that provides high-quality, low-cost immigration legal services to the Bay Area community.