The migration to a hybrid experience of life, one that combines the physical and the digital worlds, is well underway. The newest RBI installation, New World, New Sequence, channels the intersections of organic and engineered experiences in our era of ever more mediated realities. Using sound and sensory exploration, live projection, painting, sculpture, and interactive online resources, it asks what our shared responsibilities should be in the freer new world that is emerging.
Swedish-born artist Nathalie Djurberg’s unsettling avian menagerie takes flight this fall at YBCA. Using actual bird species as inspiration for her sometimes grotesque forms, Djurberg explores physical and psychological transformation as well as pageantry, perversion, and abjection in avian society. In addition to the wild flock of more than eighty freestanding bird sculptures on view, the exhibition also includes five animated films, in which avian psychology is superimposed upon human behavior with extraordinary results. Her clay animations are set to music and sound effects by her partner and collaborator Hans Berg.
Nayland Blake was one of the pioneers of performance art in the Bay Area in the 1980s. His work often explored aspects of the queer urban lifestyle. Though now based in New York, his most recent work is a return to his earlier processes from that period, where materials and spontaneity generate sculptural works that are informal, precarious, nonsensical, and odd or uncanny. For his upcoming solo exhibition at YBCA, Blake will create spontaneous sculptures using his life as the catalyst. Also included in the exhibition are a DJ booth stocked with Blake’s collection of over three thousand LPs, which visitors will be invited to spin; and the recreation of a mural by Chuck Arnett (1962), which decorated the wall of the Tool Box, a leather bar in what is now San Francisco’s SoMa district.
William Cordova works in installation, performance, sculpture, film, photography, and drawing. He focuses on architecture and landscapes, and reconstructs, reconsiders, and reconnects past events to reveal their relevancy in today’s social climate. Creating ephemeral monuments, Cordova sees the visual arts as a platform for discussing our common experiences, needs, and struggles.
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! Join YBCA and 2,000 of our closest friends to watch the 2012 election returns. Indulge in a luxurious massage and let go of the stress that has been culminating since January. Experience the joy, strength and talent of local artists — who also happen to be children and youth — performing with the San Francisco Rock Project and Destiny Arts Center. And either celebrate or drown your sorrows as we wait for the final results.
Sep 25, 2012 – Jan 13, 2013FREERoom for Big IdeasPublic Programs
Oct 27, 2012 – Feb 17, 2013YBCA GalleriesVisual Arts
