Liliana Porter, Magritte, 2008, digital duraflex mounted on Plexiglas, 11 x 16 3/7 inches

One of the most important things art can do is give you access to experiences that are different from your own… providing you the opportunity to transcend yourself and approach life from another perspective.

Liliana Porter, Rina Banerjee and Patricia Piccinini — all immigrants to the countries in which they live and work, and thus outsiders to one degree or another — imagine and depict universes of extraordinary possibility. Connection and empathy are at the heart of each artist's oeuvre.

Rina Banerjee’s (b. 1963, Kolkata, India) sculptures are shamanistic assemblages of textiles, feathers, sparkling glass and tinkling bells. Beaded, embroidered and sensuously monstrous, they conjoin the exotic and rare with the cheap and mass-produced — rejecting conventional hierarchies of material and culture. In her paintings, chimeric female forms dance and float in states of hybrid transformation. In a post-colonial, global world, identity — racial, cultural or gender — is no longer easily defined. Banerjee offers up the optimistic prospect of a world freed from the constraints of conventional standards of beauty, worth, social pecking order and what is “proper.” We live in a moment of opportunity, Banerjee posits, a moment when it is possible to define yourself in a way that is truly authentic.

Rina Banerjee at Hosfelt Gallery

Rina Banerjee studio view

Rina Banerjee, In transplant of people battle of all things grew funny and fickle until new things could be gotten and old things forgotten, 2013, ink, acrylic and collage on paper, 30 x 44 inches

Rina Banerjee, 2020, acrylic on paper, 22 x 15 inches

Rina Banerjee studio view

Patricia Piccinini (b. 1965, Freetown, Sierra Leone) explores the potentialities — both liberating and threatening — inherent in our advancing capabilities in genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. Her meticulously-crafted sculptures and finely wrought graphite drawings envision a co-mingling of animal, plant, machine and human, questioning the ‘otherness’ of creatures who don’t resemble ‘the norm.’ Piccinini's imagined beings are scientifically plausible and nearly possible embodiments of the complex ethical issues of our time.

Patricia Piccinini in her studio

Patricia Piccinini, Kindred, 2018, silicone, fiberglass, hair, 40 1/2 x 37 3/8 x 50 3/8 inches

Patricia Piccinini, Shadowbat, 2019 (detail), silicone, fiberglass, hair, 18 7/8 x 22 7/8 x 19 3/4 inches

Patricia Piccinini studio view

Liliana Porter (b. 1941, Buenos Aires, Argentina) uses found tchotchkes, positioned in improbable situations, to manipulate scale and time and subvert “reality.” Her conceptual strategies, developed in the course of a practice spanning nearly 60 years, are most closely related to the literary approaches of Latin American Magical Realism. With masterful simplicity and wit, she presents incredible situations as ordinary occurrences, providing viewers a safe place from which to explore big existential questions.

Liliana Porter in her studio

Liliana Porter, To Think About It, 2020 (detail), broken table clock and figurine, 4 x 3 x 1 1/2 inches

Liliana Porter, Che/Rabbit, 1997, Cibachrome with assemblage, plaster rabbit on shelf, 36 x 28 x 8 inches

Liliana Porter studio view

Cornelius Völker

Bernard Lokai

Jim Campbell

Anoka Faruqee & David Driscoll

Andrew Schoultz

Andrew Schoultz, Window (in Plain Sight), 2018-2020 (detail), acrylic on canvas over panel, 36 x 30 inches

Mother Nature, Father Time

On view through July 11

Schoultz’s stylized, symbolic lexicon includes archaic military machines, volcanic eruptions, Greek vases, mythical creatures and iconography from the Great Seal of the United States. Weaving them together with formal references to mid-20th-century Op Art, Schoultz depicts a complex and unstable world in which truth must be de-coded.

You must make an appointment to view the exhibition. You will have 40 minutes to see the show privately. To schedule a gallery visit, you may call the gallery or use our online calendar: calendly.com/hosfelt-gallery.

Jim Campbell shares his top 10 favorite films (with a challenge to find the odd film out):

The Hustler, 1961
Wings of Desire, 1987
Sunset Blvd, 1950
8.5, 1963
Anatomy of a Murder, 1959
A Raisin in the Sun, 1961
Notorious, 1946
The Mirror, 1975
Dr. Strangelove, 1964
Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959

Jim Campbell, Home Movies (1248-1), 2007, custom electronics, LEDs, wire, 192 x 288 x 8 inches

Hosfelt Gallery is located at 260 Utah St, between 15th & 16th streets. Wheelchair accessible entrance at 255A Potrero Avenue. For more information call 415.495.5454 or visit hosfeltgallery.com.

Open by appointment Monday through Saturday
To schedule an appointment, call the gallery or sign up online:
calendly.com/hosfelt-gallery

Hours: M, Tu, W, F, Sa 10-5:30, Th 11-7

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