marvelous-real — Jeremiah Barber

Bring to Mind
Sisal, custom armature, modified chair
48”x120”x66”

Lo Real Maravillosa
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
San Francisco CA
2015

This two-person solo exhibition featured new sculptures and videos (Barber) and new multimedia codices (Rojas Contreras), alongside ten years of collaborative works made in performance. The works push together and pull apart, drawing connections between our shared interests (mirrors, death, and the quality of presence that can be felt in objects) but also highlighting our widely different backgrounds. From the press release:

“In their solo exhibition Rojas and Barber mythologize their personal histories—Rojas explores the story of her grandfather, a medicine man in Colombia, while Barber reimagines the boundaries of the body and its limitations in a series of sculptural and video works. Lo Real Maravilloso is a diverse look at extrasensory occurrences in the everyday through narrative storytelling and visual art installation.

The new works I produced for this exhibition were inspired by exploring the energy that objects carry from their previous owners. Tools stuffed with burning incense, incomplete body casts, and various forms of binding with string all appear to speak of ways in which we impress ourselves on the world. They are echoed in the immaterial presences and transfigurations that are part of Rojas Contreras’ storytelling.

Lo Real Maravilloso was curated by Sanaz Mazinani and supported by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Above:
A Speculative Machine
Artist's journal, rope, calibration weight, bricks, plumb bob, plaster
96”x80”x72”

Speculation Sequence
Artist’s journal, copper, ceramic and stone
42”x60”x60”

Lapses series
Three HD Videos, 12-28 min each
Lighting by Kija Lucas