My Certain Fate

I'm happy to announce and participate in an upcoming group exhibition curated by Timothy Buckwalter. Hopefully we'll get some cross bloggery going closer to the exhibition dates.

I think he's done an excellent and ambitious job in selecting artists from across the land. That's a lot of artists to deal with! Links below to most of the participating artists.

From Timothy - an explanation:

I made my first mix tape in 1979 while staying up late trying to record Pink Floyd’s runaway hit song “Another Brick In The Wall, Part One.” The 45RPM had been sold out at the local record store for weeks. Lying on the floor with my RadioShack portable cassette player – its microphone jammed against the clock radio’s speaker – waiting for Pink Floyd to come on, I realized that I could go beyond recording that one contemporary song of rebellion. I was soon jotting onto tape anything that evening that seemed connected to that song: Blondie’s Heart of Glass, Billy Joel’s My Life, M’s Popmuzik, The Knack’s My Sharona, Herb Alpert’s Rise and Don’t Bring Me Down from ELO.

Combining photography, painting, sculpture and text-based works in My Certain Fate, I've crafted an exhibition that mimics the dynamic behind the mix tape – a genre I falsely believed that evening I had invented, but which is in fact a popular element within youth culture. Since the mid-70s the creation of a mix tape has been seen as an expression of the individual compiler's taste in music. And, of course, as a gift, it has often been put forward as a tentative move toward creating some kind of emotional relationship with the tape's recipient.

Featuring more than 65 works from 28 U.S. and international artists, My Certain Fate explores and connects the feelings emoting from each piece to create an overarching narrative. Bubbling to the surface of a photo is a mysterious tale of yearning and denial. A drawing begins to crack under the weight of its own smugness. A crisp Minimalist painting offers a space to breathe, a break in the mix. Lurking beneath a sculpture is a less than obvious tale of redemption. The title for the exhibition is excerpted from one of my favorite songs, That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate on Mission of Burma’s 1982 album “Vs. “ –- a track that exudes a boatload of melancholia mixed with the possibility for love through self-sacrifice.

Included in My Certain Fate are works from John Altoon, Angela Baker, Val Britton, Martin Bromirski, Manuel Dominguez Jr., Bill Dunlap, Sacha Eckes, Sylvia Fragoso, Tammy Harper, Kevin Parks Hauser, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Michelle Lewis-King, Joe Macca, Michael Macfeat, Rob Matthews, Mike Monteiro, Marlon Mullen, Christopher Saunders, Jen Siska, Dean Smith, Brian Stechschulte, Katy Stone, Rebecca Whipple, Billy White, Jim Winters, Douglas Witmer, Michael Zahn, and Nina Zurier.

A catalog -- with an essay by DJ and blogger Heidi De Vries, poetry by Suzanne Stein, and a conversation between myself and painter Michael Zahn – will accompany the show. Included will be a mix CD.

Location: Pharmaka - Los Angeles, CA

More soon.