New Media and the Digital Arts

Works by David Hatcher, Mitzi Pederson, Wayne Smith

Essay by Kevin Killian

Curated by Margaret Tedesco

March 31–April 29, 2006

Opening reception, Friday March 31, 7–10 pm

Queen’s Nails Annex is pleased to present overundersidewaysdown the third in a series of guest curated exhibitions. This current project is curated by Margaret Tedesco and presents the latest work by San Francisco artists Mitzi Pederson , Wayne Smith, and David Hatcher from Los Angeles. Parallel to the exhibition an essay written by noted San Francisco poet, novelist, critic and playwright Kevin Killian.

over, under, sideways, down

backwards, forwards, square, and round

when will it end, will it

when will it end

hey

—From the song by The Yardbirds, 1966

The framework for the exhibition overundersidewaysdown is motivated by the notion of       

“surround sound”—that which conveys an experience where one is surrounded 360 degrees

by sound. The works of the three artists included paraphrase in their articulation and use of materials from drawing, sculpture, sound (i.e., sampling, field recordings, and live performance) to appropriated images and collaboration with formal histories and/or pop signifiers. The elements of origin figure prominently in front and behind encountering an enveloped fuzzy dissonance that tracks and overlaps a heightened sense of time and space.

About the Artists:

David Hatcher is an artist and nutritional psychiatrist based in Los Angeles and Berlin, Germany. Hatcher’s work investigates social, political, economic, philosophical and aesthetic discourse at the level of its material and optical artifacts. His ongoing project Oedipal Manoeuvres in the Dark, examines the visual forms and aesthetics of critical discourse in the West and has been exhibited and acquired in Europe, the US and Australasia in a variety of print and installation formats. His forthcoming book I Don’t Must (Revolver Verlag, Frankfurt, 2006) attempts to facilitate and record dialogue between aesthetic practitioners and protagonists from a range of interdependent fields, including activism around indigenous sovereignty in Aotearoa, New Zealand, the standardization industry in the European Union, the pitfalls of political asylum for citizens of Belarus wishing to leave their culture of origin, identity politics in East Africa and their relationship to the question of militancy and the history of blotter art in San Francisco and beyond. He is currently working as an independent analyst for Los Angeles based non-profit arts organization Art2102, and occasionally lectures and publishes on contemporary art and culture with a particular focus on the Asia Pacific Region.

San Francisco-based artist Mitzi Pederson’s practice revolves around aspects of reconsideration highlighting mistakes or amendments, and bringing attention to that which goes unnoticed. Pederson plays with visual and spatial conditions to confuse perception. Accumulation of elements, use of specific materials, light, and movement creates subtle and constant change. These arrangements explore how accumulated parts exist as distinct entities and simultaneously function as a whole and define tangibility. Pederson utilizes found objects and pre-fabricated materials, such as plywood or cinderblock. The result provides remnants that then manipulate and create a new object. This new altered object maintains a sense of history and former identity, while contradicting the previous perception of that object. The transformation involves meticulous reconfiguration and organization of the materials.

Pederson received her MFA in painting and drawing from California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2004, and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999. Her work has been shown both locally and internationally with a scheduled solo exhibition at White Columns, New York this year. Pederson is represented by Ratio 3, San Francisco.

Wayne Smith is a San Francisco-based artist who works in a variety of media including drawing, scanner-based photography, video and sound. His work has been shown locally and nationally. Smith’s sound work employs  a combination of sampling, field recordings and live performance. Recording as Aero-Mic’d, he has released two CDs: Aero-Mic’d and Under A Sun. A new disc, titled I Think You’re Great, to be released in conjunction with the upcoming show overundersidewaysdown. Smith has co-written several plays with local author Kevin Killian as part of SF Poet’s Theatre, currently his play Manual for a Block has been performed as part of Small Press Traffic’s Poet’s Theatre Festival, and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. He is currently collaborating with Berlin-based artist D-L Alvarez on a new sound/video installation about late-sixties California culture. Smith is an Affiliate Artist at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA.

Kevin Killian is a US poet, novelist, critic and playwright. He has written a book of poetry, Argento Series (2001), two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997), a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1989), and a book of stories, Little Men (1996) that won the PEN Oakland award for fiction. A second collection I Cry Like a Baby was published by Painted Leaf Books in 2001. With Lew Ellingham, Killian has written many essays and articles on the life and work of the American poet Jack Spicer [1925-65] and co-edited Spicer’s posthumous books The Train of Thought and The Tower of Babel (both 1994). Their biography of Spicer, Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1998. He and Peter Gizzi are currently (2006) editing Spicer’s complete poems. For the San Francisco Poets Theater Killian has written thirty plays, including Stone Marmalade (1996, with Leslie Scalapino) and Often (2001, with the late Barbara Guest). He is the film columnist for the new online journal Fanzine. His next book-in fact, his next two books—will be all about Kylie Minogue.

Queen’s Nails Annex is located in the Mission district of San Francisco and serves as a project space dedicated to presenting collaborative, site-specific and experimental works by artists. QNA hopes to challenge both emerging and established artists to work outside their ‘normal’ practice in order to produce unique projects. Queen’s Nails Annex is co-directed and curated by Bay Area visual artists Bob Linder and Julio Morales.

QUEEN’S NAILS ANNEX

3191 MISSION STREET

SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110

415.706.1786 / 415.992.2041

www.queensnailsannex.com

THURSDAY-SATURDAY 12-6 PM