We made an art show! You're invited.
Opening reception May 12, closing party June 10
Hello, wonderful people. You’re cordially invited to Your Moodiest, a group exhibition at Your Mood Gallery, featuring artists Andrea Bergen, Ruth Santee, Eric Filkins, and Alice Wu.
Opening reception:
Friday, May 12 from 7-9pm
Closing party:
Saturday, June 10 from 6-8pm
Open by appointment in the in-between, just drop a line to your.mood.gallery@gmail.com to get time on the calendar
Your Mood, an artist-curated space in the Noonan Building, is an oasis in the Dogpatch, one small parking lot away from the water overlooking the east bay, surrounded by empty buildings that make you feel like you’ve travelled outside time and space. Be sure to read driving directions here—you’ll think you’re lost til the minute you step inside the space, then you’ll never want to leave.
I hope to see you out there at the opening, closing, and/or in the in-between.
xo,
Alana Heiss
curator of Your Moodiest and editor of the Days & Nights List
Your Moodiest at Your Mood Gallery
May 12 - June 10, 2023
Your Mood Gallery is based not on a theme but a truth: how you feel at any given moment—your affect, your emotions, your mood—shapes how you experience the world, and thus how you engage with art.
Your Moodiest is a thematic exploration of that truth, highlighting four Bay Area artists whose work investigates how it feels to be human.
Ruth Santee’s flower sculptures are made from papier-mâché, sketchbook pages, gourds, found documents, and found objects. Ruth works with flowers because of their anthropomorphic qualities. While Pumps Daisy and Pick Me Up Daisy seem to dance together on the pedestal, embodying joy and ecstasy, Docu Daisy is the hulking epitome of agony, with bulging eyes and a stuck-out tongue hinting at a recent bender gone wrong.
Alice Wu’s sculptures and objects on display here are made from salvaged materials with their own stories to tell—Tell Them I Said No and Lotus, for example, are stuffed with fabrics repurposed from her excellent former fashion label, Feral Childe. As the histories of the materials are layered, they create space for new stories to emerge.
Eric Filkins’ photographs capture quiet nighttime scenes across small towns in Washington and odd corners of San Francisco that are spooky and sometimes surreal. My sense from these photos is that everything with a past—which is to say, everything—is haunted, and what’s haunted can teach us something if we give it our attention.
Andrea Bergen’s cut paper collages are preoccupied with the man-made influence on the natural world, and how animals will adapt to the environment we’ve trashed once they step into our shoes. Do we think they’ll be as obsessed with junk food as we are? Will they like being in control? While you almost never see humans in Andrea’s work, this self-portrait portrays the artist as a benevolent queen, befriending a raccoon family which could very well be the raccoons that live in the parking lot outside Your Mood Gallery.
What Ruth, Alice, Eric, and Andrea have in common, aside from geography and my undying fanhood, is the tendency to achieve in spades what the late writer, Peter Schjeldahl, describes as the domain of art:
The arts are a great laboratory of absolutely free play of ideas and emotions that normal social life can’t accommodate.
The pieces in Your Moodiest give us feelings to try on, make sense of, learn from, incorporate. I feel more adventurous and alert when I look at Eric’s photos; more inquisitive and open-hearted when I spend time with Alice’s work; more humble and playful when I think about Andrea’s scenes; more in awe of the natural world when I remember Ruth’s flowers. When we let the art do its work, we become deeper, more self-aware, and ultimately better versions of ourselves.
Endless thanks to Selby Sohn, founder of Your Mood, for the chance to bring this show together, and to Eric, Alice, Andrea, and Ruth for your art and partnership.
- Alana Heiss
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Your Moodiest runs from May 12 - June 10, 2023. Opening reception on May 12 from 7-9 pm, closing reception on June 10 from 6-8 pm, open by appointment in the in-between. Contact the gallery via email (your.mood.gallery@gmail.com) to make an appointment.