Events Calendar · April 2022
The Potential of Objects at Marin MOCA thru June 5
Date: Thursday, April 7, 2022
Time: 11:00am - 4:00pm Wednesday - Friday and 11:00am 5 :00pm Saturday - Sunday
The Potential of Objects highlights eleven emerging artists with ties to the Bay Area who use everyday materials to explore the human condition. In their hands, objects become transformative—vessels, mirrors, talismans—and engage with a range of social and political issues.
The works on view deploy a combination of natural and artificial materials, from clay, fiber, minerals, and shells to AstroTurf, pleather, resin, and steel, to draw out hidden meanings and latent possibilities. Teresa Baker, Demetri Broxton, Cathy Lu, Masako Miki, and Natani Notah manipulate traditional cultural objects through a contemporary lens to challenge our assumptions of identity, borders, and inherited values. Ashwini Bhat, Sophronia Cook, Tyler Cross and Kyle Lypka, Renée Gertler, and Peter Simensky invent entirely new forms as conduits for healing, preservation, intimacy, and universal connection. The works provoke questions: How does identity relate to inanimate objects? Can things connect disparate geographies, or past and present? And when does object making become an act of resistance?
The exhibition reflects recent contemporary debates around visual culture, and also draws from a long history in both Eastern and Western philosophy of pondering the “vital forces” of the supposedly inanimate. All of the featured artists suggest that matter, things, and nonhuman forces have agency, vitality, and auras of their own. A vibrant materialism imbues their work.
Admission: $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students. Free for members.