BORDERLINE

January 22 - March 13, 2021

Angels Gate Cultural Center

San Pedro, California

Friday, January 22nd, 6:30pm - 8pm PST Online
Virtual Opening Reception with Discussion and Q&A

Click the link above to view the replay of the artists and curators of Borderline coming together for a virtual opening reception with exhibition tour, live discussion, and Q&A.

View the online catalog and virtual gallery tour at Angelsgate.org.

Works by: Janna Avner, Michael Chang, Evelyn Contreras, Christian Franzen, Richelle Gribble, Gottfried Haider, Julian Lombardi, Ariel Maldonado, Mandy Palasik, Allison Peck, Gazelle Samizay, Weng San Sit, Joshua Thomen

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

Borderline

Written by guest curators: Mahsa Farhadikia, Mandy Palasik, Brandi Sjostrom, Naomi Stewart

We live in a world that is rapidly moving toward uncertainty. Against a backdrop of increasing instability, society’s current state of unpredictability is epitomized by both the pandemic outbreak and the socio-political movements for racial equality that obligate us to consider which side of history we shall choose to reside - “right” or “wrong.” This uncertainty strongly correlates to the concept of a borderline. However, the overall implications of an uncertain condition go beyond recent events. Our formerly binary understanding of the world has been challenged since the emergence of Einstein's revolutionary theory of relativity and the achievements of Postmodern thinkers, undermining the foundations of “truth” as a solid and certain entity. As such, the discourse of contemporary art has been grounded in eclecticism, where uncertainty and ambivalence have evolved as critical characteristics, continuing to infringe upon the traditional borderlines of art classifications.

A borderline breaks the uncertainty by defining a division between two distinct (often extreme) conditions, while simultaneously undermining the certainty of territories by occupying an in-between space. The concept of a borderline alludes to a vague situation. It signifies a gray zone, a limbo, where things are neither black or white. Similarly, the obscurity of the boundary informs the uncertainty of our world’s realities and vice versa. How are the borders that define our uncertainties being broken down or redrawn as we continue to examine them?

Borderline explores the notion of the border both as a metaphor for our lived experience and as a tool to define territorial boundaries. The works in this exhibition investigate such ideas by showing the blurriness of these boundaries, the defiant trespass into adjacent space, the breakdown of conventional barriers, and the exploration of new territories.

This exhibition facilitates parallel dialogues of stigmatized identity, designated space, and medium specificity. These distinct themes simultaneously exist within and move beyond their respective predefined borders. These explorations challenge conceptual associations by delicately and ambiguously transcending established borders.

As a society, we continue to evolve from these transitional waves of uncertainty as part of the human experience. Borderline encourages the transgression of conventional boundaries and celebrates the liberated ideologies that result from these defiant explorations. As the cracks in the façade of certainty continue to deepen more than ever, challenging the boundaries of knowledge and examining the theoretical foundations that shape these philosophies will help us to better understand the times we live. Thus, exploring the nature of a borderline will provide a novel perspective in navigating this era of uncertainty.

PERFORMANCES

Transmuting (The quiet will speak - Movement O)

Transmuting (The quiet will speak - Movement X)

For Transmuting (The quiet will speak - Movements X & O), I incorporated dance, text, and video to create two ritual performances, whose video stills were then displayed on plexiglass boxes to echo a zoetrope or analog moving image. The performances use the archetypes and timing of the lunar cycles to design a spell for the collective: the new moon (X) reflects shadow aspects that need to be released, and the full moon (O) embodies futurisms that seek to be birthed.

These rituals explore human time as a malleable, subjective, and impressionable substance. New moon and full moon are not finite beginnings and endings but two portals feeding into each other in an infinite cycle or spiral. At this moment, the collective is experiencing a phase in which historical truths and future potentials are being simultaneously revealed and compressed onto the present. A human energy body can act as a focal point between earth and astral, past and future planes. This project investigates the collapse of borders and the transmutation of timelines through movement, presence, and energetic intention and projection, beginning with my actions and continuing with those of potential viewers.

Dis-integration (Bound by higher law), is a sculpture consisting of 54 feet of rope wrapped with cord, yarn, and mixed media. This object is the result of a spell—each inch of its length is a symbolic stand-in for one mile of the Wall on the Mexican border. As I wrapped each inch of rope, I repeated the spell, an invocation calling back each mile of the Wall. By tying each "mile" to an inch rope, the energy of the Wall is negated and bound, initiating the physical retrieval, return, relinquishing of the border land back to its former state and its true stewards.

These works deal with aspects of humans’ relation to time, space, and land, as seen through the lens of alternative histories, potent symbolism, and radical futurism.

STATEMENT

Incorporating movement, video, and self-representation for the first time, I planned a series of eight ritual dance performances over the course of 2018. For each performance, whose timing and themes were loosely based on the eight holidays of the pagan calendar, I created clothes (‘Wearings’) and props. Seeking out remote areas in nature (primarily the Mojave desert), I filmed myself conducting the movement-based rituals. Each time, I non-verbally explored questions about my body's relationship to the land, as a woman, as a foreigner and a familiar, and an individual consciousness.

In awe of the desert's energetic force, I wondered if I would be able to use my body as a conduit to translate that energy. I sought resonance between myself, a very small tuning fork, and my host, the vast and aged energy field of the Mojave desert. I wanted to reclaim the masculinist concept of 'landscape.’ Dropping ever further into the knowledge that the landscape is not ever separate from me, I felt the insanity of considering land as an object to act upon. The land is my body and vice versa: as within, so without; as without, so within. Though not a new or original idea, I felt the need to express this principle through my particular lens at this moment in time, which calls for widespread healing and deeper understanding.

From the eight video performances, I chose video stills to exhibit in the gallery. Each performance is represented by four images placed one on each side of a square plexiglass box, a display mechanism more akin to a zoetrope than a frame. Along with these images, I created an installation using rope and vinyl. I see the rope sculpture as a continuation of the performances, visualizing the energetic connections and shifts I experienced. The wrapped rope becomes a drawing or painting, or even a timeline. But also, I literally saw these colorful, striated lines weaving through the desert sky (and attempted to make this a reality in Performance 8). To me, the rope is a concrete representation of the energy—connections, vibrations, wavelengths—linking all consciousness.

The silver vinyl mimics the silhouette of the metal lattice surrounding the patio of the gallery. This gesture literally brings the ‘outside in,’ but also intends to bring the viewers’ gaze to the outside, where they might recognize the gorgeous native plants and generous architectural detail of the courtyard. In retrospect, the gallery’s courtyard—its energy and presence—may have been what spurred this entire body of work.

In addition to the images and sculptural installation, I produced two text pieces on black plexiglass that encapsulate the ethos and ecology of the project. The texts read "Language is home" and "Everything is people." They are embossed on black mirror plexiglass to position the viewer in the work, their surroundings, and their literal self-reflection. The text pieces serve to situate the performances within wider philosophical and ethical questions as a way to open collective mental space toward envisioning a radical future.

Visioning—Language is home. Words build worlds. Every word is a vibration. Every word spoken is a spell. Histories erased and erected, vistas emerge and disappear, species named and wiped out, cultures thriving and suppressed, futures projected and dismantled—all from what we speak into being. Reality as we experience it is constructed through the language we choose for its image. Our landscape can be one of abundance or deprivation, depending on how we place ourselves in resonance.

Visioning—Everything is people. Every ‘thing’ has consciousness. Considering the anthropocentric flavor of most human dealings, it might be revolutionary to call everything ‘people.’ Would an animal, rock, patch of land, resource, element, or material be more valued if it was referred to as a person? Can we recognize the personhood of everything (including everyone) in existence and then dismantle the hierarchy that positions humans as the most important organisms on the planet?

Mending—Landscape within is landscape without. My understanding of the natural world is that it is not separate from my body. Nothing is separate, but it seems more outlandish to say that a mountain and my body are the same. And we are. What I do to my body, I do to the land; what I do to the land, I do to my body. This installation materializes an abstract ideation of unseen forces constantly at work in our surroundings. Hands mend auras. Ropes become connective tissues. Black shapes are mirror-portals.

Moving—Knowledge is eternal within the body. Speaking of the body as land, human, animal, mineral, material forms. I seek resonance with the landscape. I prepare and perform eight rituals over the course of the year. Each time, a distinct vibration is achieved. Moving in the vastness, I attune myself to the energy—I lay my personalized energy to rest, asking the land to absorb and transmute. If I am empty enough, I can hold the frequency of the place. The success of these exercises varies widely. Still, the knowledge is in my DNA, the land is in my body, and I need only hold the desert in my mind’s eye to become its spaciousness.

PRESS RELEASE

from the outsidein

guest curated by Sam Hopple

(Los Angeles, CA) Los Angeles Valley College is pleased to announce from the outsidein, featuring the work of Hunter Buck, Allison Peck, and Katie Shapiro and organized by guest curator Sam Hopple.

Exhibitionruns Feb. 13 - Mar. 14, 2019

Reception for the artists: Wednesday Feb. 13, 6-8p

5800 Fulton Avenue, Valley Glen, CA 91401

“I think of landscape as a material site but also as a nexus of images that accumulate around the site itself.” -Zarhouie Abdalian (Mousse Magazine; issue 27).

Using the gallery space as a laboratory for exploring ideas of place, memory, and the capturing of moments in time, this exhibition focuses on contemporary work related to landscape from artists using site-responsive methods and non-traditional materials. A photograph, a transfer, a ritualized act; by placing these "visual recordings" of the natural world into the ‘white cube’ environment, they are acting as a catalyst for experimentation. Can the viewer feel and experience place, or does the work simply remain a souvenir of the geographical?

Hunter Buck’s large-sale rubbings from his Shadow Sitesseries replicate the texture of the rocky coast of Hawaii and the landscape of Ithaca, NY. These works are laborious to create, and the physical gesture of the mark making fully engages the body. Using graphite, charcoal, and acrylic paint, Buck’s compositions spark a curiosity in the human connection to the land. His repetitive motions and the resulting transfer act as a tool to record not only the land, but the artist in space and time.

Over the course of the year, Allison Peck has begun to incorporate movement into her practice. Based upon her own understanding of and resonance with landscape, Peck has made eight performances at various natural sites around the Los Angeles basin. Stills from these sessions of ritual movement, as well as two text pieces and several related sculptural works, will be on view in the gallery. The text pieces reflect the ethos and ecology of Peck’s work. The sculptural elements are a continuation and materialization of the rituals, visualizing the energetic connections that occurred with her body moving through space.

Katie Shapiro’s photographic sculptures source imagery from craters, the earth’s scars made by the impact of destructive cosmic happenings. Stemming from a body of work shot in Utah’s High Desert, Shapiro is redefining the function of the photograph through experimental practice. Having recently completed a residency at Bullseye Glass in Los Angeles, she uses a screen printing process to transfer her images onto kiln fired glass. The repetition of this process results in the build of a densely layered image. These sculptures speak to Shapiro’s interest in the vortex, the invisible sources of energy in the universe, and how craters expose the vulnerabilities of trauma on the earth’s surface.

Portland 'Pataphysical Society (PataPDX) is pleased to announce INTER/MISSION, a two person exhibition with installation work from Los Angeles-based artist Allison Peck, and videos from Washington D.C.-based artist Rives Wiley. This exhibition was curated by S/PLI/T, a Portland-based curatorial group co-directed by Sam Hopple and Taryn Wiens.

Exhbition Dates: October 6–November 3, 2016
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12–4pm and by appointment

A closing reception will take place November 3rd from 6-9pm

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: 

Rives Wiley (riveswiley.com) makes videos of figures positioned in elaborate built environments that blend the real, surreal,and virtual. Their behaviors walk an uncomfortable line between restraint and repetitive action that recalls the pull and push of social conventions on ourselves. 

Allison Peck (allisonpeck.com) intervenes in individual sites, adeptly using languages of material, shape, and color to break down any pretense of a gallery as place-less, as a way to explore notions of space and our positions within it. For this exhibition she will install site-specific work in conversation with the space, the curators, and fellow artist Wiley. 

Both Wiley and Peck work with ideas of environment: Wiley creates fictive environments to mirror the influence of our own social and virtual settings, while Peck forces us to confront the immediate environment of the gallery space. Each artist points to our agency, or lack thereof, in the ever- present context of our surroundings.

More info at http://splitprojects.weebly.com/intermission.html

ABOUT THE CURATORS

S/PLI/T produces two-person exhibitions in established and alternative art venues and vacant spaces. By introducing emerging artists with conceptual depth and contemporary concerns to new viewers, S/PLI/T encourages artistic practice at a critical stage while inviting the community to connect around fresh and vital work. S/PLI/T encourages accessibility and cross-disciplinary engagement through interpretive materials, interviews, public events, and a published catalog. 


The name S/PLI/T describes a duality that is present in the two-person exhibitions and implies two pieces of a whole. We are interested in the dialogue that can take place in the space(split) between different art practices.


S/PLI/T is co-directed by Sam Hopple and Taryn Wiens and is based in Portland, Oregon.

splitprojects.weebly.com

TEXT by Allison Peck

The Hidden Singer

The gods are less for their love of praise.

Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing

but its own wholeness, its health and ours.

It has made all things by dividing itself.

It will be whole again.

To its joy we come together –

the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten,

the lover and the loved.

In joining it knows itself. It is with us then,

not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire,

but as a little bird hidden in the leaves

who sings quietly and waits, and sings.

~Wendell Berry

Screens and scruples, blue and pink, eyes closed, seeking in space

Listening for a true song, in-between this and that, emanating from the deep

I consider the ‘Pataphysical, and absurdist theater, while playing with plastic junk

How to be tongue-in-cheek, when I feel all fist-in-hand

Uselessness is freedom? Uselessness pokes holes in the usefulness of the world’s bureaucrats,

technocrats, autocrats

Holding up the mundane and ‘particular’ to look more closely, to see the whole for the particles,

the songbird, calling us back

Alfred Jarry carves out a realm for the inexplicable, ineffable,

to hint at dimensions behind these two, three, & four

The only real things unnamed, unimaginable

And so the truest aspects are ‘Pataphysical, metaphysical, quantum physical, and not physical at all

Still, imagining how we can live here is the greatest game that everyone plays,

thought-forms taking vibration-shapes

Imagining a universe not dulled by violence, not ruled by sleep-walkers,

            to act from the kind of oneness that banishes fear

How to say oneness in a way that is reasonable

it has so many names—infinity, spirit, universe, source, quantum field, divinity

The most unknowable expression of existence, mostly felt, rarely understood, never seen with eyes

We have more evidence lately – two black holes colliding, rippling space-time

The largeness of cosmic music sings through the inter/connected, multi/dimensional web to touch

us—            

That is to say, we can’t forget the vastness from which we come

the human-centric system devised to oppress

the nature-created system designed to be, to free, to light, to love

Dreaming of a world where animals are family and nature is home

We have a mission, an inter/mission, an inter/state-of-becoming, forget what we know:

Inter /act /change /cede /cept /cession /connect /communicate /course /fere/ /face /est /dict /galactic /im /ject /lude /lope /mediate /mingle /mitten /nal /nalize /planetary /play /polate /pose /pret /racial /relate /rogate /rupt /sect /sperse /state /stice /twine /urban /val /vene /view /weave

Can you not see that little light up there?

Where?

There!

Where?

Over here!

You still in bed?

Wake up, sleepy-head!

We are of the going water and the gone.

We are of water and the holy land of water.

~Kate Bush  (from “Waking the Witch”)

The Waterwheel

Stay together, friends.

Don’t scatter and sleep.

Our friendship is made

of being awake.

The waterwheel accepts water

and turns and gives it away,

weeping.

That way it stays in the garden,

whereas another roundness rolls

through a dry riverbed looking

for what it thinks it wants.

Stay here, quivering with each moment

like a drop of mercury.

~Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

(Balkh, Khorasan, 1210 — Konya, Anatolia, 1273)

Meditations on loss

Cycles, wholeness, spinning, turning

Tears under a microscope

Too much, too many leaving us too soon

We find a way through,

The potential is there.

Rumi enters each place of worship – a temple, a church, a mosque – and sees one altar.

I think about the chapel; I visit this place quantumly.

I feel sunlight slanting through windows. An old quiet. Particles dancing down light beams.

I sense its intimacy, its peace. The dream of everyone carrying it with them.

Of being empty enough for the space to fill us up. Of finding magic again.

Of being vulnerable and open where love can find us.

Of making a bendable, flexible, radical future, when movement and bodies and thought and loving will be without boundary or limitation.

A future that embraces all sentient beings.

Turning towards transformation as the only practice of hope.

Language is home and we build worlds with it.

Testament
Installations by Shiva Aliabadi and Allison Peck

Opening December 12, 7-10pm

This exhibition is rooted in the action of observing and responding. We think of Elephant not as an empty space to be filled, but as a place imbued with the energy of its resident artists and of all those that congregate each month to take in curious objects. 

Colors, patterns, gestures, and forms are taken up, turned over, and reflected in Aliabadi and Peck’s sculptures and ephemera that briefly inhabit the space. There will be many places to start and no points of origin. As they create from within and among the frames of the gallery, the lived space, the neighborhood—bringing the outside in and putting the inside out—Aliabadi and Peck also build on each other’s practices, maintaining fluidity and flexibility as one acts and reacts to the moves of the other. A kind partnership. A progressing interaction.

Aliabadi and Peck’s work reflect a site-responsive, back and forth process where gestures reflect, influence, and generate each other. The artists use each other’s practices as frames for their respective installations. Both separate and together, their works reveal precarious testaments to the gallery space.

The exhibition will be on view Saturdays, 12pm-4pm and by appointment. www.elephantartspace.com


www.shiva-aliabadi.com
www.allisonpeck.com

PRESS RELEASE:

Please join us for the opening reception of Intimate Irregularity, an exhibition by Allison Peck in partnership with the ReDiscover Center.

Reception: Saturday, November 8 from 6-8p

On view: 9/15/14 – 1/1/15, Saturdays 11-4p

Location: ReDiscover Center, 12958 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

Intimate Irregularity addresses the site as a whole. When the artist first encountered the ReDiscover Center, she was drawn to its physical idiosyncrasies and imperfections. She was also drawn to the mission of the center, which resonated deeply in terms of repurposing materials to create something new—a practice that informs much of her work as an artist.

This exhibition uses both new and repurposed materials to reveal and honor the center’s ‘flaws.’ Using plastic, vinyl, and house paint, the artist recreates gestures found in the art center, such as meandering lines from water damage, re-imagines gestures from its surrounding environs, such as the paint roller marks of covered graffiti, and uses them to embellish the walls and windows of the center’s main room. She also chose to engage with a practice she calls ‘institutional improvement’—cleaning, patching, and painting as she moves through the space.

Not unlike the Japanese traditions of wabi-sabi and kintsugi, these types of actions call attention to aspects of imperfection, impermanence, and unfinishedness within the art center and seek to lend visibility and positivity to these qualities.

THE WAVE

To give you back this wave

I would have to give back

the black spaces

fretted with film of spray,

darker and deeper than the mind

they are emblems of

Not only the creator fury

of the whitest churn

the caldron of all life

but the blankness underlying

Thinking of the sea I think of light

lacing, lancing the water

the blue knife of a radiant consciousness

bent by the waves of vision as it pierces

to the deepest grotto

And I think of those lives we tried to live

in our globed helmets, self-enclosed

bodies self-illuminated gliding

safe from the turbulence

and how, miraculously, we failed

                                   Adrienne Rich, 1973