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.