Collected Shorts of Maya Deren

Right Window artist-in-residence Anne Colvin presents:
Meshes of The Afternoon, Ritual in Transfigured Time and The Very Eye of Night at ATA with an introduction from writer, critic, curator and educator Terri Cohn.

Friday, Aug 21st, 8pm

Maya Deren, the "Mother of the trance film", worked completely outside the commercial film industy and made her own inner experience the center of her films.

"From the early 1940's until her death in 1961, Maya Deren evoked and exemplified the American avant-garde movement virtually by herself. Her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon, set the tone for the decade and linked the movement to the older European avant-garde films of Cocteau and Bunuel" - Cecile Starr, The New York Times.

SUMMER ARTIST RESIDENCY: ANNE COLVIN thru August 10 OPEN HOUSE SUNDAY AUG 9, 1—5 PM

Typically artist residencies are grounded in the notion that to create new work, artists need uninterrupted time and space. During that time artists are usually sequestered in a non-urban environment and are often expected to complete new work for exhibition. Given Right Window’s minimal resources and very publicly situated (and humble) space, the idea of 'residency' could be considered paradoxical and somewhat hyperbolic. Yet, for four weeks this summer, Right Window will explore how the framework of artist residency might work within a public rather than a privileged or private space as exhibition.

To this end, local artist Anne Colvin, whose art practice encompasses many media including photography and video as well as curating and publishing, has been invited to occupy Right Window as artist-in-residence. For her residency she will use two Maya Deren films—Meshes of the Afternoon and Ritual in Transfigured Time—as source material for a new video piece. A pioneering American avant-garde film maker working in the 1940s and 50s, Deren became known for her work with the power of movement and the challenges of space and time.

Like short form performances Colvin's video loops deliver a mesmerizing take on reworked footage. Whether a scene from Godard's Contempt or an isolated in-concert scream from Jim Morrison, abstracted clips coalesce with occasional sound along a tight timeline creating an experience more akin to musical abstraction than a linear filmed experience. Rather than focus on iconic or recognizable scenes Colvin is drawn to the interstitial—or inconsequential—moments and gestures which she extends in time. Shooting off the wall or directly from a monitor, she often creates her own movement within the camera assuming the role of 'choreographer.'

Visitors are encouraged to meet with Colvin during the time of her residency and witness her production process. Colvin will organize a series of events to coincide with her time at Right Window. These will be announced via email. To join this list, please send an email to rightwindow@gmail.com with 'subscribe' in the subject line.

Anne Colvin's work has recently been exhibited at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York; Laguna Art Museum, CA; Lowsalt Gallery, Glasgow; The Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop; Mare Street Biennale 08, Artistspace, London; and Worksound Gallery, Portland. She co-founded the San Francisco project space TART (2004—07) and in the last year has produced three issues of Skank Bloc Bologna, a free-form art and poetry journal. Her recent curatorial projects include The Colony Room, New Langton Arts and I Am Kurious Orange at David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco. For more information, please visit: http://www.annecolvin.com & http://www.tartsf.com

Right Window's Summer 2009 Artist Residency is a project initiated and organized by Karla Milosevich and Chuck Mobley. Right Window is situated at ATA (Artists' Television Access). Support for Right Window has been provided by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program.

June at Right Window

a collaboration by t.w.five

opening reception: june 14th, 2009 from 6 pm to 8 pm

curated by Paula Pereira

Analog Hole, or "Abundance"

by John Neff

Window display on view May 9 - May 31, 2009

Gallery hours with the artist: Sunday, May 10, 2009, 1-5 pm and by appointment

RIGHT WINDOW Gallery
972 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Curated by Cassie Riger

The Analog Hole (or “Abundance”) is a new installation for RIGHT WINDOW Gallery by Chicago-based artist John Neff. The term “analog hole” refers to the difficulty of controlling rights to non-interactive digital media during playback. Coined by the Motion Picture Association of America, “analog hole” was quickly corrupted by the vernacular into “a-hole”. Neff’s recent digital-to-analog photographic process involves shooting digital images, creating hand-collaged acetate internegatives from those images, and printing his negatives as cyanotype photographs (or blueprints.) At RIGHT WINDOW gallery, the artist’s elaborate print-making process embodies the rich possibility offered by the analog hole.

Neff was one of three artists commissioned to create special projects for Photo Miami this year. His project, Father, can't you see I'm burning mixed images of nude male bathers with pieces based on his ongoing series depicting a nautical history of the United States. Exploring transparency and opacity, the bather images, large-format cyanotype prints, were presented on the specially constructed transparent exterior wall of his exhibition booth. The nautical subject – a monitor-bound digital image based on U.S. military photos of the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and a collection of cyanotype reproductions of news clippings about that incident – were shown in the booth's dim interior, a space that was furnished to resemble a makeshift workspace. The project's title, Father, can't you see I'm burning?, was drawn from a Slavoj Zizek text that discusses the relationship between external violence and internal traumas in psychoanalysis, by way of a Freudian dream.

At RIGHT WINDOW Gallery, Neff will apply acetate negatives to the space’s front windows, transforming their panes into interpenetrated representations of an enlarged computer desktop and a small business storefront. Inside the gallery, prints made onto a variety of found fabrics will hang from lines stretched across the space. (Cyanotype prints are, in fact, developed in a water wash). Sorting, washing, folding, and hanging images out to dry, Neff will transform RIGHT WINDOW Gallery into a laundromat of sorts. As with his recent series, Bathers and Other Liquid Pictures (2007), Neff’s new project foregrounds watery studies of nude figures to suggest a return to the primacy of subjectivity in the visual arts.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: John Neff presented a commisioned artist project at the 2008 PhotoMiami art fair in Miami and premiered a new body of work, Basic or Boring Pictures, in a solo project at the 2009 Armory Show in New York with Western Exhibitions. His recent solo shows include Bathers and Other Liquid Pictures at Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Nocturnes for Boston at Proof Gallery in Boston. Neff’s 2006 solo show at Western Exhibitions was reviewed in several publications, including, TimeOut Chicago and Art Papers, where critic Anthony Elms called Neff “the most ambitious emerging artist regularly exhibiting in Chicago.”

Neff’s work has been discussed in Art in America, Artnet Magazine, Frieze, The Chicago Tribune, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Neff’s work has been exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Location One (NYC), and Chicago Cultural Center, Donald Young Gallery, Gallery 400, all in Chicago. His work is in the collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Neff received grants from Artadia and the Illinois Arts Council in 2002 and was a 2007 nominee for The Altoids® Award. His work Neff received a MFA from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 2001. Neff lives and works in Chicago.

RIGHT WINDOW Gallery: RIGHT WINDOW Gallery is a collaboration of twelve San Francisco artists and curators who pool resources to create street level venue for visual art. Because the exhibition space is small—it’s literally the right display window of a Valencia Street store front—the Gallery aims for creative uses of the space. Neff’s exhibition during May 2009 is curated by Cassie Riger. Riger’s last project for RIGHT WINDOW Gallery was Looking But Not Touching, a four-part performance series featuring over 30 artists, writers, and musicians, all free and available to pedestrians on Valencia Street in May 2008.




Above: John Neff, Pornographic Pantograph with Allusions to Juan Sanchez Cotan, (In Progress, Patent Pending), 2004. Installation View. Foreground: Presentation Figure, 2008. Plaster, cement, patching compound, lamp, glass eye, hardware.| John Neff, Father, can’t you see I’m burning?, 2008. Installation with cyanotype prints on paper, clear extruded acrylic, wood, mounting tape, sealers and adhesives, toner, tape and sealers on acetate, office furniture, computer with digital files. Exterior view, Photo Miami, 2008.

March!

A Series of 'Life-like' Mini-Manipulations by Authority Office. San Francisco Edition. (Free)

Opening Sunday March 8th, 6-9pm

Meet the most fantastic troupe ever to wander on to an American stage! Mini-Mud, Mini-Brian & Mini-Gwin delight capacity audiences daily, yet they don’t get a single red cent for any of their work! Hurrah! Each selfless Authority Office representative is a fascinating visual formula of skin colored webbing, limb pennies & strategically placed body hairs - manipulated by an invisible head string that controls their every move. Look! They possess every vestige & appearance of being perfectly normal & perfectly human! If a famous Broadway producer was lucky enough to find himself with a handful of these little ‘uns (willing to work for nothing), he would think he was in a nut factory! Authority Office’s Brian, Mudlynne & Gwin are determined to inform & represent humans with a resemblance that fills one with continuous awe. Join them in the month of March at San Francsico's ATA/Right Window Gallery as they walk, observe & touch items.

Limited edition residual ‘March!’ album unleashed at the end,
of March!

For those admirers outside of the greater San Francisco area, you can virtually masturbate to http://www.authorityoffice.com and/or http://www.youtube.com/authorityoffice

Don't delay!

Cliff Hengst - New Work

CLIFF HENGST
New Work
opening reception February 8th, 5-8 PM
Open on request throughout the month of February 2009

Tea Dance Closing
Sunday February 22nd
12-5 PM

photos of exhibition on Cliff's flickr page