San Pablo Arts District Fund (SPAD) and di Rosa launch their partnership with a selection of video works from the di Rosa exhibition, Reconstructed World. The video series will be on display indoors throughout the evening’s reading series, Lip Service West, which begins at 7 p.m., and show outdoor daily from 7p.m. through 1a.m. in the storefront window. Admission is free.

SPAD and the di Rosa are pleased to present a selection of video works by artists from the di Rosa exhibition, Reconstructed World, curated by Robert Wuilfe. Artists in the SPAD presentation include leonardogillesfleur, Samara Halperin, and Liz Hickok. The collection of videos will show for the duration of the main exhibition at di Rosa, which also includes projects by other artists. In June, artists and videos from di Rosa’s upcoming exhibition, Zombie-Proof House, will show in the SPAD storefront window.

Reconstructed World focuses on the work of artists who draw viewers into complex narrative tableaux through recreating and restaging sites, objects, and stories. Rather than striving for perfect realism or objective documentation, these projects side-step traditional representation for a more uncanny and ultimately affective experience. The projects in the exhibition utilize a range of media that include animated video, assemblage, constructed photographs and installation to evoke realities beneath the perceived surface of the everyday.
-Robert Wuilfe, di Rosa curator

“We are very excited to have this collaboration with di Rosa and curator Robert Wuilfe at SPAD,” says Tracey Snelling, founder and visual arts director of SPAD. “As one of the largest and best-known collections of Northern Californian artists, di Rosa continues into its next phase with ambitious, new ideas for exhibiting, collecting, and collaborating. This collaboration gives us a great opportunity to share diverse contemporary art with the Golden Gate District.”

Experimental filmmaker Samara Halperin presents Day and Dusk to Night, films of Coney Island that evoke a longing for a disappearing past. Known for her award-winning experimental stop-motion film Tumbleweed Town, Halperin is presently in preparation to film the sequel, West of the Wonder Wheel. She received a BFA in film from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in film from The California College of Arts and Crafts, and currently lives and works in Oakland, California.

San Francisco artist Liz Hickok asks us to consider the fragility and transitory nature of human endeavor through her remarkable video reconstructions of cities constructed from Jell-O. In Suburban Growth, Las Vegas in Jell-O, she revisits the idea of the sublime for a contemporary audience. The San Francisco-based Hickok has shown at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; San Jose Museum of Art; Southern Exposure; the Headlands Center for the Arts; Works/San Jose; and the Kala Art Institute. She has also exhibited internationally at the Ha’Kibbutz Israeli Art Gallery in Tel Aviv.

The collaborative duo leonardogillesfleur will be showing the videos In To You Phase 1 and Rendez-Vous Reloaded. Favoring ideas of the collective whole over notions of individual artistic identities, the work of leonardogillesfleur explores ideas of artistic production through collaboration, straddling the genres of performance, video and sculpture. leonardogillesfleur has exhibited in solo and group shows in Mexico City, Miami, Paris, Prague and San Francisco. The artists, part if di Rosa’s permanent collection, spent years in the Bay area, and currently live and work in Argentina.