March 24 – April 23, 2016
FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTION: April 1st from 6-9 pm
At the waterfront along the SF bay & Sonoma coast, the sea worn remains of who knows what perilous voyages & ancient adventures turn up strewn along the shore, mixing with the fag-ends, detritus, & plastic bits of the Pacific trash gyre. Gina Telcocci and Alan Azhderian deftly pick over the remains, & conjure up concoctions that evoke shifting characters and moody states.
“Ghosts & Other Spirits” is the title of an installation by Telcocci. She describes it as a “convening of some of the characters & attendants that have emerged out of my imagination”, and out of her experience of the urban/wild bay environment… Using drift-plywood collected along the East Bay waterfront, she finds scruffy suggestions of narratives and distant characters. The use of recorded, motion-operated sound combines with an odd assemblage of wall-mounted and suspended sculptural objects in this mysteriously engaging installation.
Alan Azhderian’s beachcombing becomes a dynamic meditation. The process begins with a leisurely drive to the coast, then immersion into the vast and unruly landscape. Then a shift in focus to the scavenger hunt for materials & objects that resonate. As Azhderian says, these are “…castaway materials with their variety of patinas, surfaces, (affected by time and circumstance) that trigger other associations and evoke other shades of meaning.” After undergoing transformation in Azhderian’s studio, the resulting assemblages become rhythmic, seductive, & nuanced fields.
Telcocci and Azhderian, both faculty members at Santa Rosa Junior College, share a sensibility that embraces the ordinary, beat-up, time-worn discards of previous planetary tenants. Both treat their collected materials as formal elements in aesthetic vocabularies that celebrate beauty, as well as flux, decay, and regeneration.
The exhibit will be at GearBox Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave in Oakland from March 24, 2016 to April 23, 2016, with a reception on Friday, April 1st.
The GearBox is open Thursdays and Fridays from 12 to 6 pm and Saturdays from 11 am to 5 pm. GearBox Gallery is also open 6-9 pm the First Friday of every month as part of the Oakland Art Murmur Art Walk.