SHOW DESCRIPTION
DZINE Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of X Materia, a collection of solo presentations and a group exhibition with works of art in various media concerned with material, materiality, place and source. Curated by Philip Bewley, the exhibition features work by 18 San Francisco Bay Area artists, with a number of commissioned works created exclusively for the show. The evening will feature performances by San Francisco’s RAWdance, inaugurating the company’s six-month residency at DZINE.

Within the group exhibition are nine artists whose bodies of work constitute solo presentations within the larger context of X Materia. Exhibiting artists with solo presentations include: Catherine Mackey: Coalescence: The Urban Narrative; Heidi McDowell: Remembrance; Jerry McLaughlin: primal inquiry; Jason O’Rear: SANDUR; Jenny Phillips: Fog and Fire; Carrie Ann Plank: Equation, Matrix, Substrate; Lucky Rapp: X; Rachelle Reichert: Field Work; and Georgina Reskala: Disremembering and The Original Copy. Other exhibiting artists in the group exhibition include: Sue Cretarolo, Austin Forbord, Howard Hersh, Sasinun Kladpetch, Barbara Bryn Klare, Yoko Kubrick, Silvia Poloto, Nikki Vismara and Victoria Welling.

X Materia features works of art in various media concerned with material and place. The show explores these themes through: the direct engagement of earth-bound materials such as carbon, wax, graphite and salt; an examination of the disparate meanings attributed to location and landscape: from the awe-inspiring natural world, to those urban in-between places often overlooked; an examination of the social dynamics of those who inhabit a place and the impersonal perspectives by drones and surveillance satellites; and the very building blocks and underlying mathematical equations that govern all things.

The title for this presentation, X Materia, takes its name from the Latin, “Creatio ex Materia”, or creation out of matter, or material; the premise being that existing material is transformed into something else – not unlike the process of artistic creation. This idea has been the subject of theosophical debate, and even in scientific inquiry (what came before the Big Bang?). The letter ‘X’ is unique in that it contains numerous contradictory definitions – the known and unknown – of location (“X marks the spot”) and as the unknown variable (in algebraic equations), and so much more. The “X” for the purpose of this exhibition represents how each artist, through works of art in various media, addresses the numerous and often contradictory issues associated with material and place.

The opening night party celebrating X Materia is on October 26 from 6-9 PM at DZINE Gallery and is free and open to the public. Prosecco and hors d’oeuvres will be served.