Altered Perception: Sarah Hotchkiss, Lordy Rodriguez, and Susie Taylor
Inspired by the British artist Bridget Riley (b. 1931), who has long been known for her dizzying, vibratory paintings that set the Op Art movement in motion, the exhibition Altered Perception is a tribute to Riley and her life’s work. Altered Perception includes works from three local Bay Area artists: Sarah Hotchkiss, Lordy Rodriguez, and Susie Taylor.
Sarah Hotchkiss’ work explores what might be called the hard-edged abstraction elements of Riley’s work. All the while also exploring how abstraction is a powerful communicating language, whether at the level of early human visual development, like pictures for babies or the universal symbols that games like parcheesi or puzzles provide. In a sense, Hotchkiss helps us to see how Riley’s innovations and legacy has so deeply informed our visual languages.
Lordy Rodriguez’s work is a more hidden albeit direct link to Riley in that the underlying backgrounds that Rodriguez creates to support his political works on gerrymandering, water resources, and geo-politics, are all informed by the visual clues and tricks that Riley developed in her full-color, often pastel-hued, large-scale paintings. For example, in the work Untitled 810 (Catholic Redneck), Rodriguez deconstructs a confederate flag into composition reflecting his upbringing in Texas in which areas where the Klan has known to settle. For Rodriguez and his Filipino family, this increased a feeling of precarity and meant they would have to always take a circuitous route when driving to be sure to go around that town.
Susie Taylor’s loom-based works are stunning color ruminations on the history of tapestries, process, and decoration; informed by weavers of the Bauhaus such as Albers and Albers, Margarete Köhler, Marli Ehrman, and Gunta Stölzl and following in the footsteps of other important weavers whose work transcends traditional presentations, such as Lia Cook, Olga de Amaral, and Sheila Hicks. Yet, Taylor not only builds on those who have come before her, but invents weaving techniques never seen before. Taylor’s works in this instance serve as major statements about abstraction, color, and composition, with bold color blocks and soft transitions that speak to the very nature of perception, let alone the history of weaving and technology.
Altered Perception at the ICA San José has been made possible thanks to lead sponsorship from John Green and Martin Fox. Programs and exhibitions at the ICA are made possible thanks to generous support from the City of San José’s Office of Cultural Affairs; along with significant support from Applied Materials, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; along with additional support from SVCreates. In-kind support has been provided by Kelly Moore Paints.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Sarah Hotchkiss is a San Francisco artist and arts writer. Recent exhibitions include a two-person show at Marrow Gallery, San Francisco; a solo show at Friends Indeed, San Francisco; group shows at Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco; and Guerrero Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in the San Francisco Arts Commission’s public art program and she has attended residencies at Skowhegan, ACRE, KHN Center for the Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. From 2020 to 2023, she co-ran an exhibition space on a 6-by-12-foot billboard in the Inner Sunset called Premiere Jr. She is a senior associate editor for KQED Arts & Culture.
Lordy Rodriguez’s works explore the human urge to locate/define oneself by charting the environment in precise detail. Using the language of cartography, he makes drawings that go beyond map-making into abstracted, imaginary terrain.
One of his earliest bodies of work, the America series, involved redrawing the boundaries and locations of the 50 United States and the cities within them (and adding 5 more states). Subsequent works, including the Abstracted and Geological series, pushed the iconography of mapmaking further into abstraction, omitting the text that is so crucial to cartography. Without text, the map loses its utility, and the void is filled by the viewer’s own biases and experiences.
Rodriguez’s newest works on paper utilize the map as a framework in which to experiment with unorthodox combinations of familiar visual languages from a variety of sources, including advertising, reality TV, fashion, gift-wrapping, and signature images associated with celebrity artists. With humor, craft, and adept analysis of popular culture, Rodriguez shrewdly subverts the fundamental purpose of design – to create something in the most beautiful and functional way – and the fundamental purpose of maps – to locate and transport ourselves in the world.
Susie Taylor (b.1967) combines her background in Art, Design and Craft to create abstract and dimensional textiles. She also collaborates with industry to produce modern, functional textiles that reflect the influence of the Bauhaus on her practice. She received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from UCLA. She has exhibited her work in the US and in international fiber art and contemporary textile biennials in China and Ukraine. Recent exhibitions include Origin Stories at Johansson Projects, Pushing the Limits, A Virtual Shaft Weaving Art Exhibition, Stitch at Andrea Schwartz Gallery, Material Meaning: A Living Legacy of Anni Albers at Craft in America Center, Fiber Art-100 Years of Bauhaus at Art Ventures Gallery and The Fabric of Representation in San Francisco.
Upcoming exhibitions include Weaving at Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students at Black Mountain College Museum, and (not yet titled) invitational exhibition at Momentum Gallery, Asheville NC.
Her work has been seen on Colossal Art and in New American Paintings, The LA Times, American Craft, Fiberarts, Fiber Art Now, The Textile Eye, Complex Weavers Journal, Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, Handwoven, Journal of Weavers Spinners & Dyers and The Bulletin (Guild of Canadian Weavers) magazines.
She has taught at Penland School of Arts & Crafts, Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts and Tyler School of Art. She maintains a studio in San José and is represented by Johansson Projects in Oakland.