This weekend I visited Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento and spent time in both of the really interesting gallery spaces. Currently on view are works by Juan Sorrentino and Miguel Arzabe in an exhibition titled Las Cosas Que Pintan / Painting in an Expansive Field and photographs from a new series by Richard Gilles, titled California Valley: Wonderful Today...Fabulous Tomorrow.
In the Axis gallery, Richard Gilles' photographs of a dilapidated California cover the walls and take you on a tongue and cheek journey through the failings of what LIFE magazine called "one of most valuable lands on Earth." In the sixties California Valley, located in the Carrizo Plain, was advertised as being, more or less, the new American dream. The land was infertile and these photographs picks up fifty years later in California Valley. As one quote states, "it's where mobile homes came to die."
Pictured are mobile homes, ruins of small houses, half made pools and other projects. Many of the photographs are framed in white and the white walls of the gallery contribute to this sense that you are looking into these mobile homes on the decaying remains of lost homes and fruitless dreams.
Throughout the exhibition, there are quotes on the walls, many of them being positive press for the project in the sixties, like rhe "wonderful today...fabulous tomorrow" referenced in the title. These quotes really put the photographs in perspective, but also gives a kind of dark humor to the whole situation.
This is to be the first part of a series by Richard Gilles and I look forward to seeing the rest. California Valley will be on view through May 31 where there will be a closing reception and artist talk, which I plan to attend.
To enter the other gallery, one must step through the large installation, Respiro by Juan Sorrentino. I was immediately fascinated with the physicality of the piece, stepping through a maze of bamboo and wires, with a light bulb at the center. I was not expecting it when the light bulb started to glow and a deep hum started to emanate from the piece. It was eerie and somewhat awe inspiring, which was only added to the other pieces in the room.
One of the things I loved most about this exhibition was how everything seemed to relate and have a dialogue with one another. To the left of Respiro, speakers embedded in canvases, Sound Canvases also by Sorrentino, murmured the voices of people discussing paintings. The fact that they were discussing paintings but were also paintings, well canvases, is a very interesting idea.
Tubes by Miguel Arzabe was a very painterly painting, but when you walked around the hanging canvas, it became apparent that paint was also being projected on the back of the canvas. A discussion is being had of "what is a painting?" Is a painting something you paint on a canvas? Can a painting be a projection of paint if the projection is on a canvas? This dialogue continues in other works by Arzabe as well. Sin Titulos / Untitleds, for example, is a video projection of people taking a blank canvas in the wild and placing trees and branches in front of it, and zooming in on it so that it looks like a painting or photograph.
Las Cosas Que Pintan / Painting in an Expansive Field will be on view through May 17.
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