Sally
Szwed and Dan Phelan have curated a temporary, public art
show which will be opening this Sunday at that expanse of
underpasses at the intersection of Potrero and Cesar Chavez
in San Francisco. The temporary exhibition headquarters they
are calling "The Big White Truck Gallery" will be
parked next to the baseball diamond on Potrero heading south
right before Cesar Chavez. It should be a fun, unusual event.
INTERIM
INFILLS
With
Site-specific public art by:
Torreya
Cummings, Nina Elder, Alicia Escott, Chris Fitzpatrick,
Julia Goodman, Justin Hurty, Cameron Kelly, Elyse Mallouk,
Raphael Noz, Brandon Olsen, Weston Teruya, Jessica Tully,
and Imin Yeh
Opening
Info:
Sunday
June 21, 2009 5-8:30pm
The
Big White Truck Gallery (Exhibition Headquarters) will be
parked along the side of Potrero Ave. heading south (on the
last block before Cesar Chavez)
Because
the exhibition is sited over a relatively expansive area,
the opening headquarters will be held in the back of a big
white truck parked along Potrero Ave. all the way at the end
next to the baseball field. Inside the van will be site maps
and documentation of the various projects.
The
Bay Area is full of beautiful and functional public space.
However, there are spaces that while technically both “public”
and “functional” fail to coincide with our perceptions
of what is desirable and recreationally useable. As the
urban network expands and highways are built, crisscrossing
in mid-air, bisecting neighborhoods and skewing horizons
into abstract zigzags, the underneath and in-between spaces
become more plentiful, but in their dark, damp shadiness,
not necessarily more attractive to the common pedestrian.
A
major junction off of highway 101, the intersection of Cesar
Chavez and Potrero, (once the site of Bonnie Ora Sherk’s
historic public work, “The Farm”), is a surreal
tangle of asphalt, whirring automobiles, and dark acute
angles where cement meets earth littered with trash and
discarded drug paraphernalia. Urban planners have attempted
to make this concrete jungle traversable by implementing
narrow walkways and footbridges, but have neglected to explore
its potential as more than a thoroughfare, and one best
avoided at that. The highway underpass is but one example
of the abundance of potentially useable civic zones that
exist as simultaneously available and seemingly off limits.
This peripheral space represents the often present boundary
between potential and actual accessibility.
INTERIM
INFILLS is an exhibition that will not only explore this
particular underused and underappreciated urban matrix,
but also the general defining process of public space in
any city. The exhibition responds to this strangely beautiful
transit zone by creating stopping points throughout. These
projects will be temporal or permanent, subtle or eye-catching,
objects or performance/projections, silly or contemplative—but
will all be site specific and installed without permission
(or dare we say Guerilla-style).
INTERIM
INFILLS is a Zero Capital project curated by Sally Szwed
and Dan Phelan. for more info on this global non-profit
visit: www.zerocapital.net
Questions?
contact Sally Szwed at sallyszwed@yahoo.com or Dan Phelan
at boatwerks@gmail.com |
