Super 8 is a collection of video art in multi-channel formats, selected by a peer-to-peer curatorial process. Eight artists from eight cities across the globe were invited to present their videos, and invited four other artists from their respective cities to join them.
An iconoclastic artist, Nathalie Talec moves between live performance, installation, sculpture, and painting. The One Who Sees Blindly, her first solo exhibition in the United States, brings together many of her recurring themes.
Mark Bradford transforms found material – much of it paper from sources such as billboards and newspapers – into large-scale collages and installations. Included in YBCA’s presentation is the large-scale work Detail, an ark-like sculpture reconstructed from components of Mithra, a piece created in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Also on view at YBCA will be Bradford’s socially charged 2011 work, Rat Catcher of Hamelin, which is composed of components of 50 billboards collected from all around South-Central Los Angeles. This comprehensive survey of Bradford’s career to date is co-presented by YBCA and SFMOMA and will be on view at both venues. Please note that there are separate admission policies for each institution.
At the point where long-held beliefs fall into decline and once-esteemed notions crumble, questions arise about those belief systems. It is at this point that John-Mark Ikeda begins his exploration of the current economic climate. Ikeda deconstructs the iconic business suit — which he equates with the failed economy — stripping it down to its component parts and pinning it to the wall like a specimen, with accompanying business accessories, in an attempt to reconstitute it as a symbol of power.
The rock band on the stage, the athlete on the soccer field, the politician at the podium — all command the attention of huge crowds, not to mention cameras. Audience as Subject, Part 2: Extra Large turns the lens back on the audience, exposing the dramatic and narrative potential of the crowd itself.
The latest Room for Big Ideas installation, Reimagine: That Which We Know But Don’t Realize, explores the ways in which we simultaneously create and conceal meaning in landscapes, and how that process defines us in relation to our environment.
By Aleksei Guerman
Set in 1935 in the fictional provincial town of Unchansk, this was Guerman’s first film to receive wide international exposure. It wryly chronicles the material deprivations and minor satisfactions of communal life during the time in which Stalin’s cult of personality became a routine part of everyday life... and gangsters still ran rampant. Part adventure, part social commentary, and always shot through with Guerman’s signature ironic wit, Ivan Lapshin is a richly complex memory film about a “forgotten” era. (1984, 100 min, 35mm)