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Swarm Gallery

August 20 - September 24, 2011

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560 Second Street Oakland, CA 94607
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Invasive Horizon Joseph Smolinski, Climate Shift - Midnight Palms (2011), Ink, watercolor, graphite and acrylic on paper, 22 x 30 inches
Reception Saturday, August 20, 2011 6-8pm Swarm Gallery is pleased to present Invasive Horizon, a duo exhibition of work on paper by Connecticut-based artist Joseph Smolinski and site-specific installation by Oakland-based artist Colin Christy. Sound artist Joe Colley presents a new installation in the project space. Joseph Smolinski never ceases to be amazed with certain things in nature. Living through tragedies of war, natural disasters and developing society, trees continue to regulate our climate, improve our water quality and clean our air. The oldest and largest organisms on our planet survive a history longer than we can remember. In a new series of work on paper, Smolinski represents three major themes in human interaction with the environment: conflict, loss, and power. The first is conflict. "Trepanning " is the act of boring a hole in ones skull. Many civilizations throughout history practiced this procedure, and in some cases it was thought to release demons that haunted the mind. With the abundance of media information and increased global awareness, the Trepanned Skull series is an attempt to release the atrocities and conflicts that inundate daily life. The second is loss. The diptych Had to Sell the Farm examines an agricultural landscape in transition. A once thriving family farm is laid to waste while a vast corporate mega-farm looms on the horizon. This barren land is now home to cellular communication transmitters and radio collared animals. Thirdly, Smolinski explores power through weather he experienced growing up in Minnesota, where winter storms are not taken lightly. As these storms hit, there was always a feeling of awe and wonder mixed with the understanding of potentially grave danger. The Climate Shift series of drawings envision these wintery environments imposed on landscapes that are unfamiliar with inclement weather. Colin Christy's work is a new kind of earthwork that brings consumer-wilderness into focus. It asks the viewer to re-examine a hybrid environments that are subtly altering our idea of "wilderness". Wild and Scenic is the title of an installation that pits native and invasive plants of the American River head-to-head in an ecosystem transplanted from Coloma to Swarm Gallery. The idea of the work arose from a singular question: Can we observe the impact of the American story by examining the growth of a wilderness? The result is a pop-wilderness of sorts, whose cultural roots are as deep as they are shallow. On January 24th, 1848, John Sutter discovered gold in the American River. The event marked a turning point that redefined our boundaries and our history. The westward migration still continues today in pursuit of different kinds of gold: solar, silicone, fame, etc. Every year thousands of people flock to the American in order to recapture that expansive feeling the open country instills. There they are met with retail stores, adventure companies, historical re-creations, and other businesses that bank off the mythology of the land. Ironically, this commercialization of the American is a dominant factor in its preservation. The competition between the plants tells the story of the historical conflict over the land, which grew from the expansion of a free market economy into Gold Country. The result is a pop-wilderness of sorts, whose cultural roots are as deep as they are shallow. Christy's piece will literally live and breathe at the gallery. The plants are coated with bio-luminescent (glow in the dark) pigment that will differentiate the native from the invasive plants. At night, the growing patterns of these plants will be recorded via long exposure time-lapse photographs. Further sculptural modifications will transform the installation into a project that is part art, part science, and part social experiment. It explores the ever-evolving relationship of man and nature that is re-sculpting land we still classify as "Wild and Scenic." PROJECT SPACE Oakland-based artist Joe Colley is a lifelong composer and performer. Using primitive equipment, often chained together in a complex way, Colley explores individual perceptions that arise from simplistic masses of sound. Presenting pure phenomena - dense walls of electrical vibration and resonant feedback - he bypasses the rational mind and taps into the naive energy we all possessed as children, ultimately seeking to enter a state of mystery or suspended time. This installation is the fifth and final project of BUILDING STEAM, a year-long sound program curated by Jeff Eisenberg, Svea Lin Soll, and Aaron Ximm. BUILDING STEAM is in part funded by Southern Exposure's Alternative Exposure Grant Program. Joe Colley