Tonight, May 2nd, at Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco is the opening reception for two exhibitions: Kelly Barrie’s “Parallel Play” and Julio Cesar Morales’ “Forever Now!” The opening reception is 6-8pm and open to the public. If your looking for something to do tonight make your way to Gallery Wendi Norris to check out these promising exhibitions. For more information visit here.
Kelly Barrie, Double Cross Toe Rope, 2013. Archival light jet print. 120 x 85 in. 305 x 216 cm. Courtesy of the gallery.
Kelly Barrie, Digitaria Sanguinalis and Taraxicum officinale Study, 2013. Archival light jet print. 37 x 34.75 in. 88 x 94 cm. Edition of 1 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the gallery.
Kelly Barrie’s work, a material hybrid of drawing and photography, recreates forgotten historical sites by literally walking them out of his head through a performative floor drawing. Using his feet and old darkroom utensils, Barrie moves white photo-luminescent pigment powder across black seamless paper. The light sensitive powder drawing is then documented in small sections using a 35mm camera, digitally collaged back together and outputted to scale as a photographic print. Barrie’s solo exhibition at Gallery Wendi Norris will include three new works which will recreate an archetypal free play apparatus from the last remaining adventure playground in the US which is located in Berkeley, CA. The scale and way in which these photographs are executed play directly on the content of the work. “Double shelter” uses two framed photographs of a shelter to form a second, three dimensional shelter. “Rope Ladder” will hang as a diptych from the top of the wall, allowing the two naked prints to be unrolled like rope ladders until they touch the ground, curling upwards. An image of sewer pipes will hang close to the floor, grounding their upright positions in relation to the viewer.
Julio Cesar Morales, We are the Dead, 2013. HD video with collaborative text by Miguel Caldéron, Soundtrack by Shimomitsu. 13 minutes. Courtesy of the gallery
Julio Cesar Morales, (Untitled Remnants) Wallet, 2013. Fiberbase black and white photograph. 10 x 8 in. 25 x 20 cm. Edition of 3 + AP. Courtesy of the gallery
For “Forever Now!”, Julio César Morales will examine ideas of boundaries, barriers and limits through the media of installation, video, photography and light sculptures. His investigation embarks with a story based on an actual event in the early 1990’s about two brothers crossing the Sonora Desert from Mexico into Arizona. After crossing the border they get lost and run out of water and are left only with two bottles of Tequila meant as a gift to relatives waiting on the other side. The brothers later decide to split up and find help, one of them makes it to a Circle K convenience store while the other is later found dead face down with an empty bottle of tequila. Addressing issues of migration, informal economy, and labor on both personal and global scales, Morales will create a video reenactment that will tell the story through the eyes of the surviving brother, with video footage shot in the actual location of this tragic event. Other works in a variety of media will support and expand on the themes and ideas he unpacks.
