Harvest the crust from your eyes at / (SLASH)

Artists: Bruce Conner, Ian Markell, Adam Marnie, Piotr Łakomy, Jason Matthew Lee, Fin Simonetti

Exhibition title: Harvest the crust from your eyes

Curated by: Bob Linder

Venue: / (SLASH), San Francisco, US

Date: January 10 – March 8, 2020

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and / (SLASH), San Francisco

You: tell me a story.

Me: Jello used to wear surgical gloves on stage.

Harvest the crust from your eyes is a group exhibition featuring Bruce Conner, Ian Markell, Adam Marnie, Piotr Łakomy, Jason Matthew Lee, and Fin Simonetti.

The title for the exhibition is a lyric taken from Fugazi’s 1988 self titled EP. Though descriptively surreal, the title is less of a specific reference, but rather uses language formally (as a found object), to be re-framed, re-staged, and re-considered.

This exhibition trades in the understatement. Artworks are upside-down, black and white, transitional, fragile. A complicated narrative built around a disorderly composition, fragmented hardware, cryptic communication, and impulsive perspective. Transgressive yet sensitive, Harvest… is built on re-contextualized craft and conceptual storytelling, a space in-between the past and present, public and private, as well as the ceremonial and ritualistic. The works are brought together to compose an internal logic, based around relationships that are not always cohesive. Harvest the crust from your eyes, explores the nonlinear relationships between objects and images, and caters to the poetic possibility that confusion, mystery, fantasy, and romantic ambiguity can act as connective tissue.

Bruce Conner (b.1933 in McPherson, KS; d. 2008 in San Francisco, California). Recent traveling exhibitions include: Bruce Conner: IT’S ALL TRUE, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (7/3-10/2/16); SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA (10/29/16-1/22/17); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2/22/17-5/22/17).

Ian Markell (b. 1991, Los Angeles, CA, lives and works in Los Angeles, California). Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Love My Way, Villa Noailles, France, Names from the box, Kimberly-Klark, New York, Nothing Now Anything Anytime, Bad Reputation, Los Angeles. Annex, M+B, Los Angeles. Entre Nous, Bad Reputation, Los Angeles, No! I am No Singular Instrument, Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, A Sensuous Appearance of the Idea, Bad Reputation, Los Angeles, No Hope No Fear, Taylor Macklin at Istituto Svizzero di Roma, IT.

Adam Marnie (b. 1977, Minneapolis, MN, lives and works in Houston, Texas). Recent exhibitions of his work include: New Constructions, Bad Reputation, Los Angeles, Dragon Polishes the Pearl, Arturo Bandini, Los Angeles, and Construction/Destruction, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris. He is publisher and editor-in-chief of F Magazine, a biannual self-published art magazine based in Los Angeles, Houston, and New York, a project around which he has organized group exhibitions such as The Garden of Forking Paths at Magenta Plains, New York.

Piotr Łakomy (b. 1983, Skwierzyna, Poland, lives and works in Poznań, Poland). Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Fenix, Avant-Garde Institute-Edward Krasiński’s Studio, Warsaw, 3 inch giant in your bathroom, Center For Contemporary Art Futura, CZ, One Foot Bone Box, The Sunday Painter. London, UK, From the Tenth Floor People Seem Smaller, Stereo, Warsaw, PL, MetamorphosisArt in Europe Now, Fondation Cartier, Paris, The House Where You Live Forever, (curated by Marina Coelho), Garage Rotterdam, Rotterdam, NL.

Jason Matthew Lee (b. 1989, Chicago, IL, lives and works in New York). Recent solo and group exhibitions include: In Search of Sunrise, Crèvecœur, Marseille, FR, Tragic Venus, CELESTE – Data Center Marilyn, Champs-sur-Marne, FR, L.I.E, Lomex, New York, Jason Matthew Lee and Ben Schumacher: Special Pictures, Carl Louie, Toronto, RESET, Kai Matsumiya, New York, The Hard Facts on Tragedy in April, Lomex Gallery, New York.

Fin Simonetti (b.1985 Vancouver, British Columbia, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York). Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Head Gusset, Cooper Cole, Toronto, CA, Pledge, Company Gallery, New York, Dog Days, CLEARING, Brooklyn, NY, New Moon, Hotel Art Pavilion, Brooklyn, NY, Pastoral Emergency, SIGNAL, Brooklyn, NY, Eye to eye, Arsenal Contemporary, New York, Altered, Company Gallery, New York, Cerrajeria, Lock Up International, Mexico City, CDMX.

Bob Linder (b. 1973, lives and works in San Francisco, California).

Harvest the crust from your eyes, 2020, exhibition view, / (SLASH), San Francisco

Fin Simonetti, Hearth 7, 2018, Ink on paper, framed, 27 x 21 inches

Harvest the crust from your eyes, 2020, exhibition view, / (SLASH), San Francisco

Adam Marnie, Spy Vs Spy, 2020, Wood, canvas drop cloth, latex paint

Bruce Conner, BIAFRA, AUGUST 13, 1978, 2011, Pigmented Ink Jet Print, 22 x 17 inches, framed

Harvest the crust from your eyes, 2020, exhibition view, / (SLASH), San Francisco

Fin Simonetti/Michael Assiff, Keeper, 2017, Refrigerator, stained glass, unique lock, 29 x 32 x 24 inches

Harvest the crust from your eyes, 2020, exhibition view, / (SLASH), San Francisco

Ian Markell, RISER, 2018, Carpet, wood, galvanized steel, laser printed image of three presumed gay men, plexiglass, various hardware, 18 x 16 x 120 inches

Ian Markell, NOTEBOOK 21, 2019, Archival Pigment Print, Artist Frame 41 x 51inches

Jason Matthew Lee, sans titre (Tragic Venus), 2017, Payphone, light cable, cables 100 × 20 × 19 cm

Harvest the crust from your eyes, 2020, exhibition view, / (SLASH), San Francisco

Ian Markell, NOTEBOOK 9, 2019, Archival Pigment Print, Artist Frame 41 x 51inches

Harvest the crust from your eyes, 2020, exhibition view, / (SLASH), San Francisco

Piotr Łakomy, Planet Bone Dome, 2018/2019, Umbrella, aluminum honeycomb, glue, bone ash, leather, oil paint, ostrich egg, 16 7/8 × 36 5/8 × 40 1/8 inches

Harvest the crust from your eyes, 2020, exhibition view, / (SLASH), San Francisco