http://www.sfbg.com/2012/02/14/old-house

NEW VIEWING HOURS: SATURDAY February 11th,2012  2-7pm

Amir Mortazavi and David Kasprzak are pleased to present the opening of Highlight Gallery’s first project space, 3020 Laguna Street, a collection of sight-specific installations created in a residence in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow District, on Saturday January 28, 2012. Featuring a set of works formed solely from the materials of a residence sharing the same address as the title, the exhibition takes its inspiration from the works of artist Gordan Matta Clark. Matta Clark’s investigations into unused or forgotten residential spaces—calling them “nonsites,” a term he adopted from his mentor Robert Smithson. These liminal spaces included alleyways, median strips, and small portions of commercial and residential architecture. Matta Clark purchased these sites to become the medium of many of his works and as exhibition spaces for projects from his peers.

Working in this tradition, artists Jeremiah Barber, Randy Colosky, Chris Fraser, Christine M. Peterson, Yulia Pinkusevich, Jonathan Runcio, Jesse Schlesinger, Gareth Spor, and Andy Vogt  were invited to inhabit a modest residential space built in the 1800s. This site has been home to a number of residents over the last 150 years—fulfilling the dualistic role as both a practical shelter and a symbol of dreams and ideologies, as written about by Roland Barthes. Now slated for demolition due to structural instability, the artists were invited to enter the space, to set entropy in motion with perhaps a more sensitive hand and a “tool belt conceptualism.”

The artists have responded to this specific history of the building through many forms, excavating the literal scars contained within its walls, investigating the history of the site’s residents and the craftsmen who create residential structures, projecting their own histories and identities into the space, and enacting these investigations through the purely cathartic act of destruction. Please join us on Saturday, January 28^th, for the opening of the exhibition—or perhaps more accurately, the wake of this site.

Data Mass Projection

“Data Mass Projection” is an installation created out of telephone and data wires found throughout the Laguna Street house. The found wire was taken down and stripped of its grey outer coating to reveal the multi-colored inner strands, that comprise each telephone wire. The installation serves as metaphor for a spectrometer like visualization of digital data and information surrounding us at all times. This data is anchored in and released through a single point of projection, bouncing a wave like form throughout the space, redefining the parameters of the architecture. Color sequencing algorithm is applied to the pattern, which also account for digital noise or moments of interference.

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More about the artist curators and project please visit http://3020lagunast.com/

Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Awards Exhibition

What: Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Awards Exhibition

When: August 17, 2011 – September 16, 2011

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday, 12 – 7PM. Saturday 12 – 5PM.

Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)

How much: Free Admission

SOMArts Cultural Center and The San Francisco Foundation present a focused look at the future of the Bay Area visual and media arts landscape.  Frontrunners is a survey of new work from the recipients of the competitive Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fellowships and the Edwin Anthony and Adelaine Bourdeaux Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts. The exhibition identifies young artists whose work connects directly to the pulse of emerging trends and showcases the work of promising visual artists from regional Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) programs working across disciplines.

The exhibition will include an accompanying artist talk & social, Lesser But Vital Practices (August 30th, 5:30 – 7:00PM). Moderated by SOMArts Curator & Gallery Director Justin Hoover, exhibiting artists will discuss the evolution of their artistic practice through the exploration of individual and cultural identity. A selection of these talks will be released on the SOMArts YouTube channel in early September.

The public is invited to celebrate with the Fellowship winners at a special closing reception (September 16th, 6:30 – 9:30PM) featuring food & DJs.  During the awards ceremony at 7PM,  Fellowship tuition awards, plus one additional
Juror’s Choice tuition award, will be presented to all exhibiting artists.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS INCLUDE
Andrew Chapman, Stanford University
Li Chen, San Francisco Art Institute
James Coquia, California College of the Arts
Christine Elfman, California College of the Arts
Joel Frudden, San Francisco Art Institute
Stephanie Halmos, California College of the Arts
Joey Izzo, San Francisco State University
Adam Katseff, Stanford University
Michael Koehle, Mills College
Senalka McDonald, California College of the Arts
Kate Nartker, California College of the Arts
Toyin Odutola, California College of the Arts
Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, University of California, Berkeley
Kari Orvik, University of California, Berkeley
Maya Pasternak, California College of the Arts
Christine Peterson, California College of the Arts
Yulia Pinkusevich, Stanford University
Michelle Ramin, San Francisco Art Institute
Amy Rathbone, University of California, Berkeley
Helene Schlumberger, California College of the Arts
Sofia Sharpe, Mills College
Elia Vargas, San Francisco State University
Rachel Weiss, San Francisco Art Institute

ABOUT THE MURPHY & CADOGAN FELLOWSHIPS
The Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships, administered by The San Francisco Foundation, provide a varying number of annual tuition awards of $3,500 to MFA students in support of exploring and developing their artistic potential in digital art, illustration, film/video, hybrid practice, installation, mixed media, painting, photography and sculpture.

ABOUT THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION
The San Francisco Foundation is the community foundation serving the Bay Area since 1948, granting more than $800 million over the past ten years. Through the generosity and vision of our family of donors, both past and present, The San Francisco Foundation awarded grants totaling $76 million in fiscal year 2010. By focusing on policy, advocacy, community organizing, and systems change, the Foundation addresses community needs in the areas of community health, education, arts and culture, community development, and the environment. In response to the economic downturn, The San Francisco Foundation is focusing funding on safety net partners, job creation and training, and foreclosure response and neighborhood preservation for the next two years.

The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) presents its annual Modulations festival in San Francisco: an 8-hour marathon of sound art installations and live electronic music. The event begins with interactive and kinetic sound installations by Trimpin and his students; evolves into a sit-down concert of electronic music; and ends with a dance party, with performances by CCRMA artists and guest performers Wobbly and Sutekh.

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/modulations/

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/modulations-2011

SOMArts is located at 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA

Yulia will exhibit her Icarus Kinetic Fan at this event!

Stanford University, 1st year MFA Exhibit

“Heretical Hierarchy”

Featuring works by : Yulia Pinkusevich,Andrew Chapman, Yvette Deas, Rhonda Holberton, Adam Katseff.

January 11-February 13th, 2011

Opening Reception January 13th 5-7pm

Thomas Welton Art Gallery (Stanford University)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday- Friday 10-5pm

Hours are 5:00pm-11:00pm Daily.

Paypal: The New Medici? By Diana Rico

Michelangelo had the Medicis. Diego Rivera had Rockefeller. And Yulia Pinkusevich has Paypal, her trusty email list, and a large dash of inventiveness to propel her artistic vision forward.

On April 3, 2009, at 6 pm, Yulia will be suspended high above the lobby staircase of Warehouse 21, a community arts organization in the currently hot Rail Yard district of Santa Fe, New Mexico. There she will create a large-scale charcoal drawing covering much of the upper wall and corner of the 40-foot space. What makes Yulia’s project
especially intriguing to the wordARTist is the way she set about raising funds. A couple of months ago she sent out this email:

I will create a large scale drawing directly on the wall. The wall will be rigged for climbing and I will be suspended by a harness. The performance will consists of me negotiating the vertical space while drawing an image with charcoal and tape. The action of drawing and climbing will leave marks from my body along with marks
made by my hands, leaving a trace of physical struggle that will become an inherent part of the drawing and image.

I have begun rigorous training for the performance and am seeking sponsorship for this project. I need to raise money to pay for the space and equipment rental, setup, filming and production costs. If you, your organization. or any others you know of might find this idea interesting, amusing, or would simply like to see it realized, please take a minute to donate as much or as little as you can. Every dollar counts! I have set up a quick pay pal link for your generous donations!! DONATE NOW (via PayPal). The new piece will be a natural extension of some of Yulia’s past explorations, largescale charcoal drawings either directly on walls or suggesting walled enclosures: “This is the first fundraiser I have initiated,” she told the wordARTist. “Most of the people who donated are friends and know me personally–except one art organization from NJ and DC. This was a nice surprise! Yes indeed it is strange territories that I am sailing, since I am not into asking for money! But in the spirit of this project and knowing how difficult it would have been to realize it without the help of others, I decided to be bold and simply write an email. I figured people would just delete it if they are not into it.”

Yulia has also obtained help from Kevin Jaramillo, a world-class climber and filmmaker from New Mexico “who helped me with the rigging of the wall to be safe and climbable. Also he showed me how to use the various devices/equipment to help me move around. He was very kind to donate his time and equipment to the project.” Filmmaker Kristin ten Broeck, studio director and founder of New Media Films, is also donating time and efforts to collaborate with Yulia on a video of the performance, to be premiered in Cambridge, MA, on April 30. In addition to these in-kind donations, Yulia has raised some $1200.

Her whole enterprise strikes me as being so in keeping with the spirit of these times. As the old infrastructures crumble around us, more and more we are reaching out to community for support, as well as inventing new ways of accomplishing our goals. The wordARTist loves Yulia’s out-of-the-box thinking for raising funds, which puts her
squarely in the vanguard of a new breed of artist entrepreneurs that the New York Times recently identified in the article “Shifting Careers: Making Artistic Careers Lucrative.” Yulia says, “I am hoping, now that others are involved, that this project will be good enough to make people feel that it was a worthy cause to contribute to. It’s a fine line
between silly and serious.” I’d say it’s just plain inspiring

THE Magazine: JUNE 2008, Critical Reflections
by Anthony Hassett

While thumbing through a recent edition of Art#!*&% magazine I found myself becoming increasingly agitated. There seems to be a widespread timorousness in the art world these days, a need to express aggrandized ambitions, trivial confusions and gutless mysteries. Granted, the gouging careerism that powers the considerations of many artists (and the mandarins who support them) can lead to the production of something interesting. For the most part, however, what we find ourselves left with is a tremendous amount of skill undermined by impoverished imaginations. I am not bewailing the breakdown of some past artistic authority. My problem is in the fact that eternal sameness presents itself as the eternally new. In the recognition of that fact there is most certainly a way out.

From time to time one comes across an artist who refuses to be institutionalized by the assumptions of his or her mentors, by the transcendental nonsense of the art market, nor by the very weird over-therapized psychology of practicing artists themselves. In the contemporary art world, work featuring (or even originating from) the darkness and desperation of current “American” realities is about as popular as toenail parings. But imagine if, during one of your happy art-walks, you came across something with the power of Goya’s fitful creative explorations of violence, something that craved and succeeded in capturing the denied and willfully resisted underpinnings of your own prosperity. Such is the power in the work of Wurlitzer recipient Yulia Pinkusevich, now showing at the Loka Art Space in Taos New Mexico. In this series of charcoal and beeswax images on paper, the artist imagines the full force of institutional domination, both mental and physical, right at the point where it meets the oblique acquiescence of the outside world. Fear has never been absent from the human experience, and city building has always contended with the need for protection from danger. But this can be turned upside down to give us a glimpse of the dangers lurking in our midst, not only in urban institutional design, but also in the power structures that work as a lens for perceiving the world. In these works, we seem to be looking through and into a picturesque labyrinth, immersed ever deeper in claustrophobic ideas of captivity, incarceration, isolation, and a degenerative moral force masquerading as restoration, or some such utilitarian philosophy. Even so, the paradoxical substance of this work is that, on closer inspection, we realize each dark corridor possesses a door, or a structural alternative -a way out of what otherwise feels like confusion and despair.