Alterations
Featuring Francesca Pastine in the Front Gallery
Exhibition runs: May 28 - June 14, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, May 30, 6-9 PM
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays - Saturdays, 1-6 PM
At The Lab, 2948 16th Street at Capp Street
The work in Alterations manipulates and recontextualizes the actual pages of the New York Times and ArtForum magazine. Pastine's Artforum Excavations series is an archaeological investigation. Through a process of cutting, slashing and digging, Pastine alters the form of the glossy, oddly proportioned magazine. In this aggressive act of "gutting", she creates a visceral topography of decades of art trends. Re-forming the magazine is also a sly way of manipulating the art scene rather than being manipulated by it. The Invisible Women Series came about from Pastine's continuing investigation into the invisibility of womens' work. She blocks out photographs and text through a process of burnishing the newspaper page with a 9B graphite pencil. The result resembles graphite-leaf with the untouched image embossed on the surface. The women are rendered invisible, and the work of covering them mimics the repetitive and often unseen efforts of household tasks. This process is also employed for the Iraqi Casualty series. Pastine edits the content and imagery of the news story by selectively blocking out large areas of the newspaper. The time-intensive task of burnishing the page with graphite serves as a penance for her impotence in the face of the insurmountable tragedy of the Iraqi war.
Content is reconfigured as a result of Pastine's physical interventions with these print mediums. The sensory process of taking in information is made visceral. In this manner, she draws attention to the physicality of objects that are mentally consumed, and then discarded. Through these alterations, Pastine not only subtly shifts cultural output, she also prompts viewers to engage in an embodied experience of disembodied information.
The LAB, a project of the•art•re•grüp, inc., is supported in part by American Composers Forum, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation; the Danish Arts Council, Gilead Foundation; LEF Foundation; Meet the Composer Met Life Creative Connections Program; Rainbow Grocery Cooperative; The San Francisco Arts Commission's Cultural Equity Grants Program; The San Francisco Foundation; The San Francisco Publicity and Advertising Fund's Hotel Tax / Grants for the Arts program; Potrero Nuevo Fund; vanLobensels / RembeRock Foundation; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Zellerbach Family Fund; and members and volunteers of The LAB. The ideas expressed in this site are not necessarily those of our funders.
For more information on upcoming events at The LAB visit our website at www.thelab.org
The LAB is an interdisciplinary arts organization which supports the development and presentation of new visual, performing, media and literary art. We assist artists in the creation of new work and showcase work of the highest quality by emerging and underrepresented experimental artists. Of particular interest is work which crosses boundaries, encourages evolving artistic and social dialogue between artists and audiences, and develops the culture and community of the San Francisco Bay Area.
