Recology Artist in Residence Program presents work by Nicolaus Chaffin, Bryan Keith Thomas, and CCA MFA candidates Kelley Finley and Deena Qabazard
The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is thrilled to announce exhibition dates for current artists-in-residence Nicolaus Chaffin, Bryan Keith Thomas, and CCA MFA candidates Kelley Finley and Deena Qabazard.
Friday, May 17, 2024 from 5-8pm with performance at 7pm
Saturday, May 18, 2024 from 12-3pm
Tuesday, May 21, 2024 from 5-7:30pm with artist talk by Kelley Finley & Deena Qabazard at 6pm (401 Tunnel), Bryan Keith Thomas at 6:30pm (503 Tunnel), and Nicolaus Chaffin at 7pm (503 Tunnel).
Admission is free and open to the public, no reservation required. All ages are welcome and the site is wheelchair accessible.
Location
Recology Art Studios
503 and 401 Tunnel Avenue, San Francisco
Written by Weston Teruya
Nicolaus Chaffin: Unruin
In creating the sculptural installation UNRUIN, Nicolaus Chaffin has relieved utilitarian building materials of their functional tasks to draw out the intricacies of their textures, shapes, and subtle colors, so that they might breathe, stretch out, and sigh. Gathered from the ruins of construction and demolition, materials are now liberated from their expected role of unremarkable service. Placed within the gallery’s severe mash of cinderblock, bare plywood, and painted drywall, Chaffin’s queerly coded sculptures, in their varied states of rest, invite closer observation of other materials at work, as they hold up the structure around us and serve as the frame for exhibition. The juxtaposition primes us to re-look at the textures, relationships, and potential energy embedded in the everyday.
Bryan Keith Thomas: Patina
Bryan Keith Thomas’s Patina is a maximalist space of ceremony–a site to welcome together ancestors. Throughout the gallery, Thomas creates a dialogue between richly layered artworks and an array of gathered materials–items of power that speak to their past owners and contexts. Each constituent element brings with it connections to people who may not be visible in the space, but who Thomas channels in the process of crafting of these artworks, giving the space a human presence. The resulting collection invites us to enter into relationship with the artist, his work, and the stories and ancestors who occupy the space with us.
Kelley Finley & Deena Qabazard: guide my hands, so i can see you
In guide my hands, so i can see you, Kelley Finley and Deena Qabazard weave together installation, performance, and a publication to give form to their artistic relationship and negotiation with the materials they sourced from the Public Reuse & Recycling Area. Close collaborative work requires deep intimacy and trust because of the vulnerability in the creative process. It is both a professional risk and the hope of imagining new models for living with one another. Over the course of the residency, Finley and Qabazard developed tools for empathetic exchange, not just in verbal conversation or watching one another, but practicing a language of non-visual observation, touch, guidance, and movement. This embodied communication serves as the base for their performance choreography, sculptural process, and conceptual frame.