Dear Catastrophe

Please join us for an opening reception of
Stephanie Mansolf's installation
"Dear Catastrophe"
and reading of members of Dodie Bellamy's prose workshop

Sunday, November 8, 2009, 2-6pm
at 4:00 p.m. readings by:

Lindsey Boldt
Mari Collings
Drew Cushing
Apsara DiQuinzio
Maizie Gilbert
Kevin Killian
Sara Larsen
Minnette Lehmann
Anne McGuire
Ron Palmer

Stephanie Mansolf's "Dear Catastrophe" will run from November 8-29, 2009.

Organized by Dodie Bellamy, "Dear Catastrophe" presents a series of Victorian styled treehouse dioramas - an imaginary cityscape - inhabited by humans, gremlins, and warrior cupids. Spike pits are layered in front of the treehouses, mountains behind the treehouses, clouds with battling cupids above the treehouses. In this layered landscape Mansolf explores how a space created for safety can quickly and easily become a threat. The treehouse city is inherently precarious, and its denizens are quickly falling into a chaos of disarray, danger, destruction, and death. Mansolf's startling dystopia draws on influences as disparate as the video game Mortal Kombat, the 1960's Disney film Swiss Family Robinson, and San Francisco's "painted ladies," the Victorian homes that adorn our streets.

Stephanie Mansolf received her BFA from UC Santa Barbara in 2006. During the end of her undergraduate studies Mansolf was commissioned in conjunction with artist Kat Trajano to transform Santa Barbara's chic Presidio Motel into an avant garde and eclectic art motel; a project from which the duo has received wide acclaim. Since then Mansolf has shown in Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Arcata California. Mansolf's practice delves into dark angles between reality and fantasy, investigating matters of human nature, disease, and hybridity through a manifestation of fanciful imagery. Employing gothic and surreal aesthetics, Mansolf creates a carnivalesque landscape where melodrama thrives, and taboo topics can be explored. She currently lives and works in San Francisco California.

FOR IMMEDIATE TIME-LAPSED RELEASE:

Right Window will present “PUNCTUATION: FOUR STOPS, TWO MARKS OF MOVEMENT, ONE GAP, SOME CONTINUATIONS, AND A STROKE, OR EXPRESSION OF THE INDEFINITE OR FRAGMENTARY” from October 4–25, 2009, with an opening reception on Sunday, October 4, 2009, from 2-8pm.


Curated by Chris Fitzpatrick and Kevin Killian, “PUNCTUATION” includes works by seventeen artists—Tauba Auerbach, Bonnie Begusch, Elisheva Biernoff, Deric Carner, Kota Ezawa, Marcella Faustini, Rachel Hornaday, Jason Kalogiros, Dustin T. Kelly, Jasmin Lim, Elyse Mallouk, Rebekah May, Sham Saenz, Carson Salter, Stefan Simikich, Snowden Snowden, Albert Sukoff—in a variety of modes: video; sculpture; artist’s books; painting; prints; a subtle intervention in a 1985 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle; viral typography; photography; vinyl text; The Moonwalk; oracular pronouncements; spatial interventions; theft; Braille; scripto continua; boustrophedon; a straight line drawn and followed.

“As for looking through the Right Window, those few practiced enough in the suspension of disbelief may, by way of their own conjuration, witness a boustrophedonic procession—a dramatic wrapping in forward and reverse of that transparent plane, in and around its glassy panes, until it has been densely inscribed with one pulsing ellipsis after another, over and through one peripatetic alien glyph after its other; for those artists whose works constitute this soothsaying display of wayward scrawl and shapely gates will have pushed every punctuation mark far from the printed page and, in turn, will have sucked them back in, so multiplied, available, and anew,” – L. Farnsworth O’Hara

During the opening, there will be a lecture about “Portable Holes” performed by Post Brothers and readings by poets Donato Mancini, Lisa Robertson, and Jordan Scott. A limited-edition publication produced on occasion of the exhibition will also be available.

Brenna Murphy with Kim Brauer in Psychometry III, 9/6

Opening Sunday, 9/6, 5:00—7:00 PM
Reading by Kim Brauer, 9/6 at 6:00 PM
Exhibition: 9/6—9/30, 2009

Psy·chom·e·try: (sī-ˈkä-mə-trē), Function: noun, Date: circa 1842. The divination of facts concerning an object or its owner through contact with or proximity to the object.

Right Window is proud to present Psychometry III, curated by D-L Alvarez. Parts one and two of this exhibition, which took place earlier in 2009 in Berlin, investigated a film based on a true story about a pilot who accidentally crashes a passenger plane. After the scattered pieces of the plane are gathered, its salvageable parts are re-used in other airplanes and the guilt-ridden ghost-pilot appears on those flights warning of potential dangers. Psychometry III at Right Window spotlights an artist who was herself something of a ghost in the first two segments, Brenna Murphy.

Based in Oregon, Murphy took part in the earlier Berlin installments of Psychometry, yet, within the physical space of the gallery her contributions were invisible. She sent an oblique instruction via a website (http://bucketfactory.com/ghostofflight401.htm) which another participant, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, channeled into an assemblage of everyday objects that held true to Murphy’s coded vision. The collaboration, essentially a work by Murphy, was never physically touched by her or even seen by her until its completion—and then only through digital documentation after the fact.

With Right Window’s invitation to host Psychometry III, Murphy will finally materialize and work directly in the space. Her process is one of intuitive ordering, constructing complex patterned arrangements of banal materials. In using objects that are common, familiar, and don’t bare the marks of longtime use, she still succeeds in maintaining a degree of anonymity and challenges a notion of singular authorship. Her work (http://www.flickr.com/photos/brennaaa/sets/72157607099222958/) is grounded in a conviction that the key to accessing metaphysical realms can be found by concentrating closely on the mysterious materiality of coffee mugs and houseplants.

As part of the September 6 opening at Right Window, San Diego-based writer Kim Brauer will read from her work, Passenger Manifesto (A List in Lists), which was also part of Psychometry I. As she compiles lists of seemingly random choices and details of the everyday routines of flight passengers, Brauer vividly memorializes them.

3-day Right Window artists' shop

Friday Aug 21st - 7-8pm
Saturday Aug 22nd - noon-4pm
Saturday Aug 29th - noon-4pm

100% of proceeds go directly to contributors:
Craig Baldwin, Bonnie Banks, David Buuck, Francisco Camacho, Christine Canepa, Ishan Clemenco, Anne Colvin, Jessica Eastburn, Eufloria, Marcella Faustini, Bruno Fazzolari, Cliff Hengst, Scott Hewicker, Daniel Hipolito, Jo Jackson, Eva Kelly, Elysa Lozano, Anne McGuire, Cheryl Meeker, Rebecca Miller, Karla Milosevich, Tanya Milosevich, Pete Nelson, Paula Pereira, Eugene Robinson, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Ema Sintamarian, Sonny Smith, Wayne Smith, Zachary Scholz, Myrina Turnberg, Kerry Wing and more.

Items include: small paintings, drawings, t-shirts, moonshine, books, CDs, vinyl, posters, prints, DVDs, photos, tools, socks, jewelry, 'zines, HOT CHOCOLATE and more more more. Bring cash or checkbook.

Photos here

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.