Opening Reception Friday February 24th 7-10 pm and Saturday February 25th 4-6PM The Luggage Store Annex/ Tenderloin National Forest : 509 Ellis St. SF : CA
Tonight is going to be pretty epic as I gather my spirits and do one last thing before leaving the Bay Area for two weeks. A show that I have been waiting to see for years is happening here in San Francisco tonight. Christopher Burch, long time friend, peer, and straight up amazing artist and personality, whom is coming to NYC to show with myself in a week, has a groundbreaking opening tonight here in San Francisco. The culmination of two months in the Tenderloin National Forest Artist in Residence Program will be presented at the Luggage Store Annex with dance performances, and other festivities tonight and tomorrow night. I am very fortunate to be heading back to the east coast later tonight and not have to miss this amazing happening. Burch's art is a testament to the intellect, skill, creativity, craft, compassion, and inspiring nature of a historically explosive line of artists here in the Bay Area and I recommend to anyone that has not been following his work to begin doing so now.
Tenderloin National Forest Luggage Store Annex
Christopher Burch “Somethings ..are (In) the Way of Things”
| Christopher Burch’s visual works combine drawing, painting, flocked damask wallpaper, hand painted silver serving trays, and sculpture to create a haughntinlgy surreal full scale site specific installations. The results are conflating landscapes in which historical, socio-economic and political forces that have shaped and continue to shape American racial geographies, teeter on the edge of madness.Something in the Way of Things, written by Amiri Baraka in 2008, is a disturbingly subtle and dark social commentary probing an existential crisis within the African American experience due to the inability to fully synthesize historical and contemporary racial tensions and realties . Memory and testimony (ultimately language itself) become metaphors for seeing or the inability to see. Baraka exposes, that the borders between visibility (to see, to articulate ones experiences) and invisibility (to not see, to not be able to articulate ones experiences) are at times schizophrenic.
Burch’s project for the TNF A.I.R residency is entitled “Somethings ..are (In) the Way of Things”. During the months of January 2012 and February 2012 Burch will build a full scale, on site, installatioon/environment re-interpreting Amiris Baraka’s poem “Something in the Way of Things.” Accompanying the installation of work within the Luggage Store Annex, the residency will also incorporate literary performances and dance pieces held in the Tenderloin National Forest itself. These performances and recitals will address various personal interpretations of the poem “Something In the Way of Things.” (Hours: Daily 12-5, closed Mondays)
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