Recently closed: the group show Expanded Field at MacArthur B Arthur, curated by Jackie Im and Aaron Harbour. Crack local curatorial team Im and Harbour put together five fantastic Bay Area artists, told them to play with the space of the gallery in some way, and then set them loose in MacArthur B Arthur's converted storefront. Amy M. Ho chose to construct an eyebending white curve in one corner that actually eliminated the corner entirely, while Torreya Cummings installed a piece in which you peered through wood slats to glimpse mirrors and a disco ball, her cheeky take on the promise of SF gay culture. Christine M. Peterson used black plexiglass to cleverly highlight the inside of a doorway and create the mirror image of two windows high on one gallery wall, while her slide projection piece utilizing found professional vacation photographs shot diffuse colors right out the window and onto the street outside (or onto whoever happened to be walking by). For Emma Spertus's trio of sculptures she took black-and-white images of Rococo and Baroque architecture and fit them precisely to corners of the gallery walls and also wrapped them around the interior and exterior of a hexagonal shape, and then Sarah Hotchkiss launched the exhibition theme quite literally into the ether by asking attendees to fill out a questionnaire in which they imagined a meeting space for her Young Astronaut Club. The compiled results will be forthcoming.
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