NEWS:

THREADS

Join Queer Cultural Center and an amazing international group of talented visual/media artists for the opening of our art exhibition, Threads.

Threads is not just about fabric and costume but also how queerness weaves the threads of our physical, social and moral existence together into a multi-dimensional fabric of community and our selves. What are the threads that bind, mend and sometimes unravel this spectacular fabric? How do we fashion, perform, subvert or display queerness in our art and lives?

Opens June 7, 2009 @ 3pm
SOMArts & the Queer Cultural Center
934 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA

More information here.

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SISYPHUS OFFICE

Alex Clausen, David Fullarton, Alice Shaw, David Keating, Elysa Lozano, Joe McKay, Brion Nuda Rosch, Susan O’Malley, Ryan Thayer, Lindsey White
organized by Jonn Herschend

Based out of Skydive, the artists involved in the project are collaborating with businesses and offices around Houston in order to centralize art as an integral and necessary distraction in our day to day life.

The artists and offices involved in Sisyphus Office are working physically and conceptually with the notions of existentialism, romantic capitalism*, artistic romanticism and deadpan slapstickism as a means to examine and probe the artifice that keeps us clinging to reality and distracted from the void.

Sisyphus Office is about punching the clock, and then punching it again…but harder the second time. It’s about Laurel and Hardy helping out in a business. It’s also about transcending the mundane through the beauty and absurdity of distraction and repetition, like watching paper being fed into a printer, or waiting for a file to upload. It’s the comedy in the tragedy of the day to day… and then waking up again to do the same thing all over again the next morning.

Skydive
Houston, Texas
May 8 - June 27th 2009

Progressive opening May 8th:
4-6 Houston Decorative Center
5120 Woodway Suite 3029
6-8 at Skydive
3400 Montrose Suite 907 (and nearby locations)
Performance by Skydive musicians Chin Xaou Ti Won opening night.

For more inofrmation, please go to: theskydive.org

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Territories at Invisible Venue

Project Description: For this collaboration with Invisible Venue (IV), Alex Clausen chose to investigate the idea of how outside forces influence the space. In its current iteration as an alternative project space housed in a domestic setting in West Oakland, an urban area with a complicated history and economic challenges, IV is constrained by a number of parameters, such as safety and economics. Focusing on sunlight as a metaphor for these types of uncontrollable outside forces, the artist tracked the daytime movement and patterning of natural light in the project space. These calculations, recorded with string and tape, became the volumetric outlines for a site-specific sculptural form. Furthering the metaphor of this work as the physical manifestation of outside influences, the sculpture dominates the space in a way that challenges the viewer's ability to navigate the room or to view the work in its entirety.

Invisible Venue, Oakland, CA.
For more information, please go to: www.invisiblevenue.com

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Desire to Fly Alexander La Riviere

In a joint project with Susan O'Malley and Alex Clausen, Alexander La Riviere, proprietor of Faber's Cyclery and bicycle accident investigator of San Jose, CA, shared the story of bicycle innovation and its associations with freedom @ The Spare Room Project in San Francisco.

Since childhood, La Riviere's life has been intimately entwined with the two wheeled machine. Faber's Cyclery has not only been La Riviere's home and business for 30 years, but the building itself has over a century of history. The cyclery has been in continuous operation since 1921, making it one of the oldest bicycle shops in California and the United States and a significant part of the landscape of downtown San Jose.

Desire to Fly from Alex Clausen & Susan O'Malley on Vimeo.

An installation, including a historical time line, antique bicycles, an audio recording and a video portrait of La Riviere, accompanied his talk at the Spare Room Project.

More information: thespareroomproject.net

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CASUAL LABOR FEATURED on SHOTGUN REVIEW

Read review here.

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Work Featured at Casual Labor @ The Kala Art Institute

Built with John, 2008

Built with Lisa, 2008

built with jayson, 2008

From top: Shawn's shoes (2006), Mara's and Steve's Landing (2006), Lupe's patio (2006)