Curated by Shirley Watts, the exhibition, ALTERED STATES, explores the convergence of man-made technologies with natural systems, how digital screens impact our perception of the world and the beauty that is revealed when artists consider these questions.
Featuring artists Erin Espelie, Megan Gafford, Susan Schwartzenberg, Erica van Loon and Gail Wight, who each present a nuanced and distinct perspective on the theme with works spanning video, sculpture, drawings, digital images and time based art.
In the Main Gallery:
Inspired in part by Wallace Stevens poem “Tattoo” Erin Espelie’s short film “ (A Net to Catch the Light)” mixes footage of orb-weaving spiders, retinal laser surgeries and a dissected recording of Steve Jobs to reflect on how light emitting diodes have come to dominate our field of vision.
Megan Gafford’s mutated daisy sculptures—created with a machine used to treat cancer and save lives—tap into our fears of war and nuclear radiation.
In the mid 20th century Dr Peter Witt experimented with dosing spiders with pharmaceuticals to study the resulting web weaving. Gail Wight’s Under the Influence drawings, inspired by Witt’s work, are meticulously crafted, drawn with graphite and then burned into the vellum using a magnifying glass.
In the garden:
The juxtaposition of Susan Schwartzenberg’s Mammillaria cactus image and Erica Van Loon’s meditative sound installation of a narrator describing the dissection of a brain, creates a captivating sensory experience that complements the works in the main gallery.
ALTERED STATES opens April 28 and runs through June 9, 2023.
30 MAY 2023
SHIRLEY WATTS
in conversation with
RIMMA BOSHERNITSAN
OVERVIEW OF ARTISTS
Erin Espelie is a writer, editor, and filmmaker, with degrees in molecular and cellular biology from Cornell University and experimental and documentary arts from Duke University. Her films have shown at the New York Film Festival, the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival, the Whitechapel Gallery, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.
Megan Gafford is an artist based in New York City who repurposes unsettling scientific tools like radiation and cybernetics to create work that mixes eeriness and elegance. Gafford has shown at Galerie Robertson Arès (Montréal, Québec), SITE Gallery Houston (Houston, Texas), David B. Smith Gallery (Denver, Colorado), the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, Colorado), and the Backyard Ballroom (New Orleans, Louisiana). Her essays have been published by the Tilt West Journal, Quillette, Arc Digital, and Areo Magazine.
Susan Schwartzenberg is a senior artist at the Exploratorium, where she leads the development of the Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery. She has been a curator, photographer, designer, and artist, and served as director of media for the museum. Susan was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of Art, and Stanford University. As a photographer and visual artist, she has received numerous awards, and has taken part in residencies and exhibitions worldwide. She is known for her public art, including works at Stanford University and San Francisco’s McLaren Park.
Erica van Loon is an artist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She has exhibited and worked as artist in residence at Klingt Gut, Hamburg (DE), Fondazione Baruchello, Rome (IT), Banff Center for the Arts (CA), NAIRS contemporary art centre (CH) I-Park Foundation (USA), LABVERDE Arts Immersion Program in the Amazon, (BR) ARCUS Project, Moriya, Japan and Teatro di Palazzo Grassi, Venice (IT).
Gail Wight is Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University where she focuses on experimental media. Her work has been exhibited internationally in venues including: the Natural History Museum, London, UK; the National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK; and Foxy Productions, New York City, NY. Collections include: MoMA, Yale University, San Jose Museum of Art, Seville’s Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo; Rene di Rosa Foundation; and Berkeley Art Museum among others. Wight was nominated as a Visionary Pioneer of Media Art by Ars Electronica in 2014.
Shirley Watts is an artist and designer creating gardens throughout Northern California. She launched Natural Discourse in 2012 as a series of symposia, publications and site-specific art installations that explore the intersections of art, science and the humanities within the framework of botanical gardens and natural history museums. As a curator, she collaborates with international renowned artists including Chris Doyle, Courtney Egan, Debroah Oropallo, Andy Rappaport, Sandra Osborne and Mia Feuer.