GALLERY ROUTE ONE EXHIBITIONS: 1) Charles Anselmo, Teatro / Moto: Photographs on Paper and Silk 2) Joe Fox, New Work 3) The Introverts Collective, Perspectives: Past, Present, Future: Conversations about Racism

Date: 
Saturday, February 20, 2021 - 11:00am to Sunday, March 28, 2021 - 4:00pm
Sunday, February 21, 2021 - 11:00am to Monday, March 29, 2021 - 4:00pm
Thursday, February 25, 2021 - 11:00am to Friday, April 2, 2021 - 4:00pm
Friday, February 26, 2021 - 11:00am to Saturday, April 3, 2021 - 4:00pm
Saturday, February 27, 2021 - 11:00am to Sunday, April 4, 2021 - 4:00pm
Sunday, February 28, 2021 - 11:00am to Monday, April 5, 2021 - 4:00pm
Thursday, March 4, 2021 - 11:00am to Friday, April 9, 2021 - 4:00pm
Friday, March 5, 2021 - 11:00am to Saturday, April 10, 2021 - 4:00pm
Saturday, March 6, 2021 - 11:00am to Sunday, April 11, 2021 - 4:00pm
Sunday, March 7, 2021 - 11:00am to Monday, April 12, 2021 - 4:00pm
Thursday, March 11, 2021 - 11:00am to Friday, April 16, 2021 - 4:00pm
Friday, March 12, 2021 - 11:00am to Saturday, April 17, 2021 - 4:00pm
Saturday, March 13, 2021 - 11:00am to Sunday, April 18, 2021 - 4:00pm
Sunday, March 14, 2021 - 11:00am to Monday, April 19, 2021 - 4:00pm
Thursday, March 18, 2021 - 11:00am to Friday, April 23, 2021 - 4:00pm
Friday, March 19, 2021 - 11:00am to Saturday, April 24, 2021 - 4:00pm
Saturday, March 20, 2021 - 11:00am to Sunday, April 25, 2021 - 4:00pm
Sunday, March 21, 2021 - 11:00am to Monday, April 26, 2021 - 4:00pm
Thursday, March 25, 2021 - 11:00am to Friday, April 30, 2021 - 4:00pm
Friday, March 26, 2021 - 11:00am to Saturday, May 1, 2021 - 4:00pm
Saturday, March 27, 2021 - 11:00am to Sunday, May 2, 2021 - 4:00pm
Sunday, March 28, 2021 - 11:00am to Monday, May 3, 2021 - 4:00pm
Event Description: 

On exhibit Saturday, February 20 through Sunday, March 28

Virtual Opening Reception: Sunday, February 21, 3pm

 

The gallery is open to visitors Thursday to Sunday, 11 - 5

The exhibition will soon be viewable online: www.galleryrouteone.org

 

Center Gallery

Charles Anselmo, Teatro / Moto: Photographs on Paper and Silk

An exhibition of site-based photographs by Charles Anselmo, “Teatro / Moto” focuses on the abandoned Teatro Campoamor theater in Havana, Cuba, as interpreted in large-scale images on paper and translucent Habotai silk.

Working exclusively with medium and large format film, photographer Charles Anselmo has produced bodies of work based upon industrial complexes, peripheral urban spaces, post-Katrina New Orleans and the derelict military bases of California, consistently working from a platform of social-documentary narrative. Over the course of twenty years and more than seventy visits to Cuba, his largest portfolio has interpreted the unbridled richness of Havana’s unique historical-architectural heritage in its many forms, from Baroque to Neoclassical, Colonial to Nouveau, Deco to Soviet.

An exhibition of new work on paper and silk, Teatro / Moto interprets the textured patinas and fragmented detritus of an abandoned hundred-year old theater. Anselmo writes, “Nestled behind the extraordinary Baroque beauty of Havana’s restored Gran Teatro is the smaller, roofless Teatro Campoamor. For fifteen years I had walked by this remarkable relic, unable to enter due to its barricades and boarded doors. One oppressively humid day in July, 2017, I met the caretaker who had been living in the theater for twenty-four years in what had been a coat-check room. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the inner edifice so magically overtaken by lichen and vines, its wooden stage turned into soil by many seasons of rain. Fifteen-foot tropical palms had been gifted to this interior from seeds driven by the hurricane winds of previous years, the gold gilt peeling from sensuously ornate plasterwork.”

In the exhibit, the theater is both “teatro” and “moto,” referencing its use as a parking garage during the 1990s; the site retains timeless artifacts from both identities. Conveying a vibrant sense of history, social memory and the ephemeral, these social-documentary images address the role of the human witness in an environment that has come to reveal the complex metaphors disclosed with a hidden world of remnants. Anselmo’s photographic practice here portrays a textured, deconstructed landscape of historical fragments and skeletal details that ultimately reference the way in which memory changes our current perceptions as we reconsider the past.

Expressing visual narratives, the theater’s disparate, fragmented realities remain connected to their original identities in these large-scale photographs. Like the unknowable "essences" in Plato's Theory of Forms, structures which began as perfect, idealized concepts are later broken and repurposed under the weight of history to become "phenomena," the sensory representations in everyday life. Anselmo’s nine-foot wide prints on translucent Habotai silk suggest the scale of actual places, capturing the dissonances of Cuba's urban landscape in moments of decline as theaters become outside spaces, and the broken symmetry of grand structure is newly interpreted through decaying forms in a timeless archaeology of loss. In this way, the photographer develops a visual lexicon of desire for the ideal.

Anselmo writes, “My photographs are formally linked by the many visual elements and textures of broken structure and interiors, but ultimately this work is more explicitly concerned with the intersection of memory and social context. The images embrace an attempt to fuse aesthetic forms with social ideas as a way of interpreting the past, photographically captured in the warm palette of decay.”

Exhibiting internationally, Anselmo has presented numerous shows on social themes. Developing collaborations with Cuban arts organizations, he curates U.S. shows of work by famous Cuban photographers, and is Visiting Lecturer at the Havana School of Creative Photography as well as the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, Cuba’s oldest art school. He operates Anselmo Image Works, a photographic art digital printing studio, and continues to photographically explore urban sites which compellingly demonstrate the nascent beauty of forgotten places. About the Havana photographs, Cuban art critic Jorge Luis Aguilar writes:

The Teatro is like that other city, the one we don’t want to see or remember, which exists nonetheless. It is full of what is left behind. In that world, Charles is a compelling seeker. He has wandered Havana's streets innumerable times, like any Habanero. He knows Havana as very few do. He enjoys telling her stories, telling her dreams. His images speak to the Havana that any Cuban experiences each day, with the smiling and the suffering. His huge silk pieces are light, yet abundant in poetry, and each one weighs beauty in both time and memories.

https://galleryrouteone.org/2020/05/charles-anselmo-2/

 

Annex Galley

Joe Fox, New Work

Joe Fox presents a new exhibit of cast sculptures and found object assemblages, interpreting the relationship between our material world of commonplace manufactured objects and the handmade forms they inspire.

Gallery Route One is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Joe Fox. As a sculptor who continues to address the issue of our human presence and our relationship to the land we inhabit, Fox is engaged in the reality of working within the materially based world. Through objects and materials which create a succinct language of visual poetry, his work utilizes both the positive and negative aspects of our material culture to reflect a world suffused in a dual nature encompassing both absurdity and wonder.

Dominant in the exhibit, the pedestal sized pieces began as a continuation of previous pieces that involved casting common objects and geometric forms in cement, concrete, and plaster. Other materials, such as steel, were paired with the cast objects and served to support the physical and conceptual aspects of the work. Common artifacts and household items were sometimes incorporated into assemblages without being transformed via the casting process; for a number of pieces, this led to a new emphasis on the ready-made object.

Alongside the ready-made assemblage works, Fox continued to develop other sculptures involving cast objects. The casting process combines many different skills; all come together in a single moment when the liquid material is poured into the mold. Through casting, objects that were previously hollow become solid. Embodying a new material, Fox’s pieces acquire a unique visual weight as a result of becoming heavier. The familiar object is transformed; assuming a new identity, as objects reference their own ubiquitous relationship to the human world of manufactured things. The commonplace object, once remade, is transformed beyond its original familiar existence.

Given a new life that transcends its previous use while simultaneously becoming a sculptural form, the once-functional object reveals its poetic nature. Fox acknowledges that the industrial nature of fabrication serves as a counterpoint to the handmade labor of his unique castings. The imperfections in his castings amplify the hand-crafted interpretation of the standardized, mass-produced objects, many of which are present in this exhibit.

Informed by the emotional resonance of our material existence, Fox is both inspired and repelled by our material excess and discarded materials, and in this way he is working between two conflicting worlds: one of creation and another of destruction. He writes, “It is the ubiquitous object which represents many of humanity’s greatest accomplishments in science and engineering. As well, the ubiquitous object also contains within itself a predilection for destruction through the mining of resources, transportation, industrial pollution, and plastic waste. In spite of, or perhaps because of these dueling forces, I continue to be inspired by what I regard to be the poetry of materials and liken them to a personal language which I use to communicate beyond the privacy of my inner self.”

https://galleryrouteone.org/2018/04/joe-fox/

 

Project Space

The Introverts Collective, Perspectives: Past, Present, Future:    Conversations about Racism

Created by the Introverts Collective, this exhibit invites the visitor to view systematic racism through the perspectives of past, present and future, by responding/interacting with the installation piece itself.

A new installation at Gallery Route One includes a history and video documentation of "Perspectives: Past, Present, Future," an outdoor installation created in 2020 by the artists of the Introverts Collective. The installation, which included community participation, tells a story of systemic racism in Mill Valley, a small town in Marin County.

The four artists of the Introverts Collective designed Perspectives as an interactive community art project to highlight history, personal stories, and portraiture. The project invited visitors to respond creatively. Three free-standing doors were installed in the Depot Plaza of Mill Valley. The doors served as a metaphor to view systematic racism through three perspectives: past, present, and future. Each door had a simple sketch on the front, to be painted in by the community on Labor Day weekend, 2020. The back side of each door posed a question and community members were invited to write their answers. 

The installation stood in the Depot Plaza for four months, creating the presence of Black portraiture in a predominantly Caucasian space, and generating powerful and productive conversations.

The exhibition at Gallery Route One will include three doors plus photographs and short videos telling the story of the project's inception and creation, focusing on the interpersonal processes of four artists from The Introverts Collective, three biracial and one white.

The Introverts Collective is a proud recipient of The Rex Foundation grant to build a set of doors for Marin City and Point Reyes Station as well. They hold a vision for doors throughout Marin County in order to create productive and healing dialog and local solutions regarding racial justice.

The Artists of Perspectives: Past: Present: Future

Naima S. Dean

Born and raised in the Bay Area, longtime resident of Mill Valley, graduate of Tamalpais High School, San Francisco Public Librarian/Branch Manager and Co-Chair of the Mill Valley Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force. Professionally and personally committed to celebrating cultural, ethnic and racial diversity, utilizing community engagement, implementing raw ideas, creative collaboration, open communication, and employing "space" as a vehicle to obtain access and achieve equity for all.    

Zoe Fry 

Zoe Fry is the founder of The Introverts Collective, and lives and works in Mill Valley, California. Her lifelong meditation and inquiry practice is the foundation for her creative endeavors. She loves building teams and projects that support the visions and creative expression of others.

Winona Nadine Lewis

I am a California coastal native born of two self-expressed artists. My art is a meditation of self-reflection, an energy that moves through me for healing, transformation, and exploration. A dance with myself. Always curious what will come. Opening up to what’s inside.

Sharon Virtue                                                                                                              

Sharon Virtue is a painter, dancer and ceramic artist living in Oakland, California. She has a strong social practice and has worked internationally on creative development projects in Africa, Brazil, Haiti, America and England.  She believes artists are agents of transformation. Her mission is to inspire, encourage and provide access to the greater community in the creation of art.     

www.TheIntrovertsCollective.com

 

Posted by: 
Vickisa Feinberg

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