Image Gallery
“In this light and this silence…I listened to an almost forgotten sound within myself as if my heart, long stopped, were calmly beginning to beat again.”
Albert Camus, “Return to Tipasa,” 1953
In This Light honors the essential role that art and artists play in daily life and in confronting and recovering from this shared moment of uncertainty precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic. The exhibition presents new and recent work by four artists selected by McEvoy Arts from The Minnesota Street Project Studio Program at 1240 Minnesota Street—Miguel Arzabe, Alison Pebworth, Charlene Tan, and Richard T. Walker— that underscore the spirit of hope and transformation that comes from darkness. It is presented as a dedicated project space within Minnesota Street Project’s group exhibition Invincible Summer. All artists affiliated with The Studio Program were invited to apply for an artist fee and production funding.
The artists offer a mix of new work created during shelter-in-place, as well as pieces that were to be presented in exhibitions canceled by the pandemic and recent works that hold meaning to these new realities across a range of media. Both Invincible Summer and In This Light are informed by sections from Albert Camus’ essay “Return to Tipasa” (1953), which celebrate the feelings of hope and catharsis which arrive after a period of disillusionment.
The group exhibition draws all of the Project’s tenant galleries and their rosters of artists into a virtual and physical configuration for the first time since shelter-in-place orders took effect in March 2020. While the exhibition was originally envisioned in response to the shared experience of physical isolation and prior to current global protests in defense of Black lives, the artworks on view tap into a spirit of reflection, transformation, and renewed energy that resonates in multi-faceted ways. Together, the exhibitions celebrate artists’ abilities to conjure strength and resilience in troubling times.
In This Light is now available for live viewing by appointment at 1275 Minnesota Street through September 2020. It will debut on the new virtual exhibition platform Minnesota Street Project Adjacent soon.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Miguel Arzabe makes colorful and dynamic abstractions to recover moments of human interconnectedness. Drawing from the cultural techniques and motifs of his Andean heritage, Arzabe produces unlikely intersections between form and content, the nostalgic and the hard-edged, appropriation and authorship, failure and redemption. His work has been featured in such festivals as Hors Pistes, Paris, and in museums and galleries including the Albuquerque Museum of Art; the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive; MAC Lyon, France; MARS Milan, Italy; RM Projects, Auckland; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has held residencies at Facebook, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, and Santa Fe Art Institute. Arzabe holds a BS from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS from Arizona State University, and an MFA from UC Berkeley.
Alison Pebworth is a San Francisco-based artist who engages painting, installation, and social interaction in her work. She has exhibited at Southern Exposure, San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Legion of Honor, San Francisco; the Oakland Museum of California; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; and the New Children’s Museum, San Diego. She is the recipient of awards from The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, The Center for Cultural Innovation, and The San Francisco Arts Commission. She has held residencies at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha; Recology, San Francisco; Ucross Foundation, Wyoming; and Space, British Columbia.
Charlene Tan’s interdisciplinary artworks focus on the immigrant diaspora and its repercussions, post-assimilation identity, and investigations of nationalism and cultural heritage. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, including Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; and Blank Space Gallery, Oakland. She received her BA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Born in Houston Texas, she lived in the Philippines before moving to San Francisco.
Richard T. Walker employs a variety of media including video, music, photography, sculpture and performance. These media are often intermixed to explore and question the experience of the individual within the natural landscape. His work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kadist Foundation, and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K21), amongst other institutions. He has exhibited and performed worldwide including at The Contemporary Austin; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art; The Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; The Times Museum, Guangzhou, China; the Witte De With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Walker has been an Irvine Fellow at the Montalvo Art Center as well as participated in residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He received an Artadia Award in 2009. He received his MA from Goldsmiths College and lives in San Francisco.
In This Light is produced by McEvoy Foundation for the Arts and co-presented with Minnesota Street Project in conjunction with Invincible Summer.