May 11 to June 30, 2016
Reception May 12, 2016 at 5:30 pm
*The gallery will be closed on May 30, 2016 in observance of Memorial Day
Housed within the Video & Time-Based Media program of the California State University Stanislaus Art Department, the Building Imagination Initiative is a uniquely service learning oriented, interdisciplinary, academic and research program. The Building Imagination Initiative is offered to students who wish to gain core industry experiences through a project based, integrated learning environment which has strategic partnerships with leading non-profits. Dedicated to creative applications of digital technologies and targeted service learning opportunities within Modesto, CA and the greater Central Valley, the Building Imagination Initiative is a highly innovative research program which focuses upon the low quality of life rankings of the Central Valley and the re-imagining of its future as a metaphorical bridge for social struggles endemic to humanity itself. Faculty and students representing interdisciplinary interests create a unique academic environment dedicated to realizing individual artistic intentions while creating a collaborative structure for critical thinking and the understanding of media ecology.
July 1 to August 13, 2016
Skin Ego: an exploration between boundaries, nature and the imaginary
Rebecca Weisman is a Vermont based video installation artist whose work uses body, performance, site specificity, and the natural world to explore hidden or psychological dimensions of reality. Known for both her single-channel videos, and large-scale video installations, she weaves together ideas about the body, gender, psychoanalysis, landscape, and non-human life. Her installations use video, sound, and sculptural objects to tell deconstructed stories that are often fragmented, process-based, and rich with free-associations.
Lida Winfield is a Vermont based dance artist. She develops and creates dances that are quirky, provocative, and physically honest. Lida challenges herself and her audiences to participate in dance as an open dialogue. Her dances tell stories, ask questions, explore limits, and celebrate beauty in what is awkward, raw, and vulnerable. She is inspired by the human capacity to cope, to imagine and to transform. Her work is informed by wilderness, socioeconomic divides, disabilities, access, the search for place or home, the magical and the quiet details of everyday life.
August 22 to September 24, 2016
Reception Thursday September 8,2016 at 5:30 pm; Artist Talk at 6:30 pm
As an activist, educator and artist of Native American, Xican@ and queer roots I have found community and culture to be my greatest artistic inspiration. To create with the collective minds of unique individuals is a practice that brings to me a great spiritual catharsis; a feeling of joy and power tied to the realization of what people working together can accomplish when in harmony: a home, a shared reality, justice, and healing. As such, my art practice is primarily tied to mediums that necessitate community participation: filmmaking, video art, performance, large-scale installations, and curating. The looks of my work are as diverse the communities who create them, but most contain a sense of macabre, camp, Xican@/Native sensibility: A feature length, all drag sequel to the 1984 Chicano classic La Bamba; A projection mapping video aimed at the floor displaying a shadow entombed in flowers and candles made as memory to our fallen trans and queer Latin@ brothers and sisters who have been largely ignored by society; a marathon Dia de los Muertos dance party and VJ installation set to the music of all dead musicians complete with an Eazy E pinata. As a result our creative collaborations are mutual investigations into the unknown depth of our cultures, identities, desires, fears, joys and communities. See his work at: www.vimeo.com/RobFatal
October 1 to October 27, 2016
Reception Thursday October 13, 2016 at 5:30 pm; Artist Talk at 6:30 pm
Alyssa Lempesis works from imaginative speculation on uncanny ecologies. Her work merges the natural and the fantastic to create animated scenes of a world that exists somewhere between the unknown and the familiar, the present and the future.
Lempesis received an MFA from University of California at Davis (2014) and a BA at University of California at Berkeley (2012). She is an artist and educator living and working in the East Bay. Recent solo exhibitions include Aggregate Space (Oakland), Diablo Valley College (Pleasant Hill), and Alter Space Gallery (San Francisco) as part of the Jail Cell Residency Program.