Currently on view at 2nd floor projects in San Francisco is a two-person show with Genevieve Quick and Jasmin Lim with an accompanying chapbook by Susan Gevirtz. Falling under the general rubric of science-fiction meets altered perception, the work in the show rests in a place that blurs present awareness of time and the body’s location in space – literally and metaphorically. The work pushes at the visual known by presenting alternatives be they real or fictitious.

On view are hand-painted anaglyph drawings of space and under-water suits by Genevieve Quick from the series, AstroAquaAnaglyph. Ideally, the drawings should be viewed with 3D glasses for the full visual effect and trick on the eye. However, it could be said that these drawings are equally successful without the glasses because they are immediately recognizable as 3D images, which calls to mind the nostalgia of 1950s cinema houses full of viewers taking in the newest technology phase common for sci-fi flicks during that era. Noting that 3D imaging and even sculpture can be made electronically now, these drawings are a testimony to hand-made replication of machine production – an inverse of the instantaneous lie that technology perpetuates. Also on view by Quick is a film mash-up of sci-fi films that center around relationships between deep space and sea explorations as a means to address issues of human reliance on technology and a quest for the beyond.

Genevieve Quick, AstroAquaAnaglyph: Apollo, 2013. Ink on paper, 51 x 30 inches. Courtesy of 2nd floor projects.

Genevieve Quick, AstroAquaAnaglyph: Scaphandre, 2013. Ink on paper, 51 x 30 inches. Courtesy of 2nd floor projects.

Jasmin Lim’s photographs document and then shift intangible and ethereal phenomenon of depth perception and movement. In mobius clouds, minimal and somewhat stark, landscapes of what appear to be the desert are intersected with more of the same in fragmented collage that appears to be resting perpendicular on the surface. The viewer is inclined to bend and crane to see the alternate surfaces that are intersecting the main image, creating a simultaneous recursion and absence. Also on view is an ethereal piece titled, sheer. A milky, translucent train of sheer material glides underwater, trailing softly along the current of the water in the portrayed in this ambiguous lake or river scene. Strangely at home, yet also clearly inappropriate in this natural setting, the material encroaches while at once intervenes – a blatant human touch masking as a pale comparison.

Jasmin Lim: Mobius Cloud, 2013. Pigment print, 6 x 9 inches. (Edition of 5). Courtesy of 2nd floor projects.

Jasmin Lim, Sheer, 2013. Pigment print, 27 x 36 inches. (Edition of 5, framed). Courtesy of 2nd floor projects.

In addition to the visual work in the show, 2nd floor projects issues limited edition chapbooks that thematically align with the curatorial focus of the exhibitions. Susan Gevirtz’ “HYPERBOREA or Bermuda Triangles I Have Known,” is a complex, poetic chapbook that includes appropriated excerpts from Jasmin Lim, amongst others. Reading like a journal, and an historical archive, the chapbook chronicles the traverses of space and sea, commenting on the repeated strangeness that occurs when humans attempt to negotiate these vast spaces. The vastness of both the sea and space are each confining in the limitations that they inherently impose on those who try to navigate through them, while at the same time they are embedded with sublime potential. The exhibition and the accompanying chapbook provide alternate perceptions to the vastness of uncommon space just out of human grasp, but not in the least bit inaccessible in the mind.

This exhibition is on view through November 13th, 2013.

For more information on “I Want to Step Across” and “HYPERBOREA or Bermuda Triangles I Have Known” visit 2nd floor projects, San Francisco.

-Contributed by Leora Lutz