Themed Art Exhibition at the San Diego Central Library, Uncharted Elsewhere

A free art exhibition in San Diego, Uncharted Elsewhere, features art from Gabrielle Berens, Kaori Fukuyama, Yena Kim, John Oliver Lewis, Leslie Shershow, Eva Struble, Delilah Strukel, Akiko Surai, and Kelly Witmer.

Hi, I’m Bob and this is Art with Bob Pincus. We’re standing pretty close to the entrance to the downtown Central Library Gallery in San Diego, and this space opened in 2013. When they built this library, they dedicated a space here on the top floor to a gallery. One of the reasons that happened is because they already had an established art program in the library system itself and a dedicated space in Pacific Beach previously. So this space here has done exhibitions regularly since 2013.

The new exhibition is called Uncharted Elsewhere, and I would say that it’s a very broadly thematic show It features nine artists, eight local and one from Yucca Valley, so almost local. It really is a show that looks at the way you can see the familiar in unfamiliar ways,

One of the things that I really liked about the show was this idea of looking closely. And looking at things where you, at first glance, you might not think that the work is doing that much, but if you look again it’s doing a lot.

Looking at everything from microscopic life forms to sculptures that seem to suggest extraterrestrial life forms to things with just very intricate uses of ceramic and drawing combined together in a fantastical way. So it’s a show which I think is very accessible and at the same time, I think quite inventive. The work in the exhibition was selected by gallery director and curator Bonnie Domingos, and the exhibition is on view through January 4. So it gives you plenty of time to see it or think about it.

And behind me here is a wall with an installation. The first time they’ve used that wall for a work by an artist who’s in the current exhibition, and this artist is Akiko Surai. These very large biomorphic forms, which look like they sort of floated down to give them a sense of sort of cosmic meaning or quality. They’re quite colorful.
They look almost arbitrary and yet they look very beautifully placed.

The first thing you see when you step into the gallery is a piece by Kaori Fukuyama. And in fact, you won’t see it unless you look up because it’s above your head. And it consists of little resin orbs that are connected to very slender wire or thread. And it creates kind of a field effect. And she says that this piece is kind of based on a memory she had of shadow and light. One of the appealing characteristics of Kaori Fukuyama’s work is to find the magic in small things. And you’ll see there’s many small things within this one piece. And also the idea that if you take time to look, under different conditions it looks different. The light will look different in the piece, say in morning or afternoon because of the pristine quality of the little resin orbs. So you might find that if you visit it twice, you’ll see two different pieces as it were.

That idea of looking closely, that applies to the little painted porcelain sculptures, tabletop sculptures by John Oliver Lewis. You may look at them and think, “Well, these are kind of casual,” because they seem to be kind of just, very casually put together. But if you look closely, you’ll find that they use very elegant curves, lines, layers.

I don’t always like smaller pieces, but when they’re done well, I think what you get from a smaller piece sometimes is kind of a way of having an intimate contact with a work of art that you can’t get from a big piece, which is sort of trying to engulf you or sort of sweep you up in what the piece is about. Kind of a feeling like you really are one-to-one, having a little conversation with the piece. And also kind of carrying yourself imaginatively into what the pieces are about.

One of the things I thought about when I looked at these pieces was a comment from a mid-20th century British sculptor, the late Barbara Hepworth. She said, “Size and scale are not the same thing.” What she meant by that is, the size of a piece obviously is literally the size, and these are small. But if you carry them forward in your mind’s eye, they look like they’re representing things which are large, like terrain or architecture or things which have larger scale than they actually are, literally, in the pieces.

When we talked about John Oliver Lewis, we were talking about small things that make you think of large things. Delilah Strukel’s paintings kind of have the opposite effect. They go from presenting things on a larger scale that actually might make you think of small things like microscopic life forms in some of them. So she’s using organic material, but sort of carrying you elsewhere into a world that might be small, but seen large. Done very well, colorfully, formerly quite elegant.

Then there’s also Eva Struble’s small paintings, fairly small, are places sort of landscape-like with architecture in them, but more brilliantly colored than you would see than in any ordinary scene. In one of those paintings, the space seems very soft and kind of misty.

Almost as if the space is deep, but you can’t tell how deep. And in the other one, the color is sort of brilliantly erupting, which is almost engulfing the architecture in that painting.

In Kelly Witmer’s glass and ceramic sculptures, this idea of an alternate universe takes a different form. The pieces sort of look loosely like faces, female body parts. They look extraterrestrial in certain cases, ritualistic in others. They’re very inventive, they’re comic, they’re witty. Very effective as a kind of almost like, I would say playing off popular culture but being very elegant at the same time.

Gabrielle Berens in another piece uses ceramics on the wall stretching the limits and possibilities of ceramics. And then she uses drawings which are kind of layered out, suspended from the wall. So you see the ceramic pieces behind them. It creates a three-dimensional, two-dimensional kind of interplay, which I think is quite interesting too.

I enjoyed Yena Kim. Her work I think was interesting in the way that she used sort of woven forms to create these big shapes, which looked almost like life forms.

I’d like to return to the title of the show, Uncharted Elsewhere and just talk about art as maybe a kind of form of escape. Which the show certainly features, which is not a bad thing. To have a little bit of escapism can be a good thing. It’s not just about that. It’s also about looking closely and looking more fully. By looking at things which somehow seem a little strange, seem a little elsewhere. And I think that’s what the show does quite well. I think a number of works connect with the theme. And it’s not always easy to do a theme show where the works actually fit the theme. But I think this show does. And so Bonnie Domingos has done a good job of picking work, fits the work in a way that guides you through the show.

Thanks for watching! Please give it a thumbs up if you liked this episode. And please subscribe. And please keep watching for new episodes to come. The next one’s actually going to touch on an interesting subject which is graphic biographies.

Videos on art and art history on YouTube @ArtWithBobPincus

This video was produced and edited by
Matthew Manly Pincus / MP Storytelling