LAS COSAS QUE PINTAN / PAINTING IN AN EXPANSIVE FIELD
WORKS BY MIGUEL ARZABE AND JUAN SORRENTINO

April 9 – May 17, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 9, 6–9PM
Verge Center for the Arts, 625 S Street, Sacramento, CA 95811

Verge Center for the Arts and CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions are pleased to present Las Cosas que Pintan / Painting in an Expansive Field, a two-person exhibition curated by Aimee Friberg on view from April 9 through May 17 at Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento. The exhibition features sound and video installation by Argentinian artist Juan Sorrentino and painting, video, and works on paper by San Francisco-based artist Miguel Arzabe. The works included in Las Cosas que Pintan / Painting in an Expansive Field take as their starting point a field of painting that has been thoroughly examined and expanded by numerous other artists since the advent of Modernism. Rather than attempting to push these boundaries further for the sake of ambition and innovation, Sorrentino and Arzabe investigate the existing landscape of the medium to look for space in which poetic gesture and thoughtful intention combine to reveal truthful contradictions of human experience. The artists’ sensibilities draw from diverse sources––ranging from Modernist painting and conceptual art to indigenous crafts such as weaving and storytelling––while resisting rigid boundaries and literal translations. In Sorrentino’s single-channel video Untitled, the camera follows the artist carrying a blank canvas through a field with trees, pausing briefly at certain locations so that the canvas frames branches, grasses, shadows, and other elements of the natural landscape. These moments of arrested motion create temporary “paintings” that last only a few seconds before the canvas moves on, continuing its search for new content, much like the creative brain ceaselessly pursues novel sources of inspiration. As if moving through an infinite “forest of ideas,” the canvas seeks restful moments of sublimity, and then moves on again in search of new revelations.

In the sound installation Cuadros Sonoros (California), Sorrentino explores concepts of visual language, poetic context, and collective imagination. The piece features a grouping of blank canvases of varying sizes, each with a circular perforation containing a small speaker from which emanates the voice of a person describing a particular painting. The size of each canvas is identical to the painting being described. The voice reveals only the physical attributes of each painting, without providing the artist’s name, the painting’s title, or any other contextual information. In Cuadros Sonoros (California), the viewer/listener is invited to use his or her imagination and memory to construct a mental image of the picture, an image that is inevitably informed by subjective experience, so that each individual interpretation of the work becomes deeply personal and utterly unique.

In contrast with Sorrentino’s conceptual exploration of painting, which foregoes the use of the material itself, Miguel Arzabe’s work focuses on the ways in which the physical substance of paint holds meaning. In Tubes, a large abstract oil painting by the artist is suspended from the ceiling. Its reverse side functions as a projection screen for a series of stop-motion animations, composed of close-up photographs of paint tubes squeezing out their entire contents amidst digitally rendered color fields. The paint tubes, which were given to Arzabe by other artists who ultimately decided to stop painting, embody a sense of anxiety surrounding potential creative failure. Here, Arzabe confronts this anxiety by forcibly releasing all of the paint from each tube in a single continuous motion. The emptying of these tubes, symbols of thwarted creative endeavors, becomes a cathartic act, immediately activating empty space through color and form and yielding a dynamic flow reminiscent of bodily functions.

In a new series of single-channel videos entitled Not Painting, Paintings, Arzabe focuses the camera on observed elements of his everyday life outside the studio. The content of these seemingly random images––ingredients found in the kitchen, such as buttermilk and water, or a flock of birds noticed while the artist was jogging––visually reference formal abstraction in traditional painting practice. As hidden physical forces cause the liquids to swirl and coalesce, and unknown factors induce the birds to flock together anxiously, the possibilities of these organic flows are allowed to play themselves out to their inevitable conclusion without intervention. Here, the artist cedes a measure of control over the image-making process, rejecting the confines of conventional narrative-driven presentations. Also on view is a series of handmade paper tapestries by Arzabe made from postcards, brochures, catalogs, posters, and other printed ephemera collected over the years from art exhibitions [around the world] that the artist has attended. These tapestry pieces reference the “cultural fabric” of specific regions, making use of indigenous craft techniques to reinvest oft-discarded materials with new value by highlighting the collective, yet dispersed, creative labor involved in producing the exhibitions that they originally promoted. Arzabe worked without a final design in mind, cutting the paper into strips and gluing and weaving them together in a spontaneous act that evokes an element of chance in creation, a theme that is also present in his oil paintings.

The definition of what a painting is or can be has been challenged throughout modern history and continues to be a rich topic of debate. Through different means, the artists in Las Cosas que Pintan / Painting in an Expansive Field take advantage of this ever-expanding space of painting not to conquer new territory, but to use its own internal language to pose existential questions about its purpose. By working in relation to traditional modes of painting without actually creating paintings, Sorrentino and Arzabe bring the concerns of the medium closer to the contemporary human experience.

ABOUT MIGUEL ARZABE
Miguel Arzabe (b. 1975) is an artist based in Berkeley, California. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions globally, including Hors Pistes 2011 and 2012 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montréal, Canada; Carry On in Mexico City; Summer Drift at RM Projects in Auckland, New Zealand; Wood Anniversary at Marylhurst University in Portland, Oregon, and in group exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Arzabe has participated in artist residency programs at organizations including the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Montalvo Art Center, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. His work is held in private and public collections around the world and was most recently featured in solo shows at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico and at CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions in San Francisco, California. Arzabe holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS in Environmental Fluid Dynamics from Arizona State University, and an MFA from UC Berkeley. He is represented by CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions in San Francisco.

ABOUT JUAN SORRENTINO
Juan Sorrentino (b. 1978) is an artist, musician, and composer based in Córdoba, Argentina. He creates electronic, acoustic, multimedia concert works and installations. Sorrentino’s work has been presented in diverse venues across South America, the United States, and Europe. He has been the recipient of numerous awards via the UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries for Artists; the Residence Prize of Bourges; Le Fonds national d'art contemporain (FNAC); the Goethe Institute of Córdoba; and the Ministerio de Cultural de España Reina Sofia, among others. Sorrentino has exhibited at Metronom (Modena), Espacio Marzana (Bilbao), Circulo de Bellas Artes (Madrid), MARCO (Vigo), Nau Coclea (Girona), IMAGO (Buenos Aires), the Forum Cultural Guanajuato, and the Teatro Maria Grever (Léon), among others. His work is included in the collections of the Muséo del Arte Contemporáneo in Bahía Blanca; the Museo Genaro Pérez, the Emilio Caraffa Provincial Fine Arts Museum, and the Museo de Bellas Artes Evita Palacio Ferreyra in Córdoba; the ONCE Foundation in Spain; and private collections around the world. Sorrentino holds degrees from the Media Center d’Art y Disseny (MECAD) in Barcelona and the University of Córdoba (Argentina).

ABOUT VERGE CENTER FOR THE ARTS
The mission of Verge Center for the Arts is to expose the Sacramento art region to internationally recognized contemporary art, while providing vital resources to local career and emerging artists.

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Current

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Past

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Time is a Tangled Web: Mary Fernando Conrad, Sophronia Cook, Cross Lypka, Tyler Cross, Zhivago Duncan, Jean Isamu Nagai, Rachel Kaye, Ruth Charlotte Kneass at CULT Bureau, Oakland
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Last Light: Luz Carabaño, Sophronia Cook, Cross Lypka, and Aidan Koch
June 23 - August 26, 2023

ECHO ECHO: Rachel Bridges and Ivan Bridges at CULT Bureau, Oakland
March 2 - August 5, 2023

RHONDA HOLBERTON: Two Handfuls Of Silver Dust
April 27 - June 17, 2023

LEGACY: Binta Ayofemi, Adrian L. Burrell, Rachel Bridges, Ivan Bridges, Masako Miki, and Jean Isamu Nagai
January 18 - April 1, 2023

ZHIVAGO DUNCAN: Measuring Consciousness
September 15 - December 10, 2022

CULT Bureau: Gaze Interrupted
September 17 - November 19, 2022

AMY NATHAN: Slipknot Loophole
May 14 - August 26, 2022

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: Welcome Home Stranger
March 19 - May 7, 2022

Sapiens / Stories at CULT Bureau
November 10, 2021 - April 30, 2022

Physics & Fiction
January 20 - March 12, 2022

CHRIS FALLON: Irresistible Deception
October 15 - December 18, 2021

Sapiens / Stories on 8-Bridges
October 7 - November 3, 2021

MASAKO MIKI: New Mythologies
June 16 - October 12, 2021

Tales of Metamorphosis: Rebekah Goldstein, James Perkins, and Amy Nathan
June 3 - 30, 2021

Janus II - CULT's 7 Year Anniversary Exhibition
April 9 - May 20, 2021

TROY CHEW: Yadadamean
October 17 - December 12, 2020

We’re all in this together
August 14 - October 10, 2020

Beyond Words
June 26 - August 29, 2020

Ritual of Succession
January 10 - March 28, 2020

Record of Succession at fused space
January 13 - March 27, 2020

AMY NATHAN: Glyph Slipper
September 13 - December 7, 2019

FEMALE TROUBLE 2
June 28 - August 3, 2019

RUXUE ZHANG
April 20 - June 15, 2019

MASAKO MIKI: Shapeshifters
January 12 - March 23, 2019

JASKO BEGOVIC (SKO HABIBI): HUMAN_E.T.
November 30 - December 14, 2019

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: See You On The Flipside
September 8 - November 25, 2018

FEMALE TROUBLE
June 9 - July 28, 2018

TERRI LOEWENTHAL: Psychscapes
March 2 - May 19, 2018

VECINOS
October 27, 2017 - January 20, 2018

RHONDA HOLBERTON: Still Life
January 10 – March 4, 2017

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: Release Me
October 21 - December 10, 2016

NO SHOW MUSEUM: Yves Klein, Maria Eichhorn, Daniel Knorr, Etc.
One Night Only: Monday, October 17, 2016

DESIRÉE HOLMAN: Selected Works
September 17 - October 8, 2016

SHE MOONAGE DAYDREAM:
Facundo Argañaraz, Leah Guadagnoli, Desirée Holman, Kara Joslyn, Max Maslansky, Liz Robb, Tamra Seal, Emily Weiner, & Cate White

July 16 - August 20, 2016

PABLO DÁVILA: Ladies & Gentlemen,
We Are Floating In Space

May 13 - July 9, 2016

MASAKO MIKI: Conversations with Fox, Feather, and Ghost
March 4 - April 30, 2016

SUZY POLING: Total Internal Reflection
January 15 - February 27, 2016

DAN GLUIBIZZI: You Don’t Have to be Alone Tonight
November 6 – December 19, 2015

FRANCESCO IGORY DEIANA: Haptic Render
September 11- October 31, 2015

SEXXXITECTURE: Daniel Gerwin, Rebekah Goldstein, Roman Liška, Max Maslansky, May Wilson & Jake Ziemann
July 1 - August 1, 2015

ADAM SORENSEN: In Situ
May 1 - June 27, 2015

KLARA KÄLLSTRÖM & THOBIAS FÄLDT: Village / High Hills
February 27 - April 25, 2015

PRINCE RAMA: How To Live Forever
January 25 – February 21, 2015

JOSEPH DUMBACHER & JOHN DUMBACHER: Divert (Out of Line)
November 7, 2014 – January 16, 2015

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: Passenger
September 12 – November 1, 2014

A PATTERN LANGUAGE: Michelle Grabner, Angie Wilson & Lena Wolff
June 20 - July 19, 2014

MICHELLE BLADE: Gathering Into Being
April 25th – June 7th, 2014

MIGUEL ARZABE: /*Reject Algorithms*/
March 7 – April 19, 2014

JACQUELINE KIYOMI GORDON: Drawings
March 7 – April 19, 2014

FRITZ CHESNUT: Purr Valley
& Rhonda Holberton

January 10 - February 22, 2014

UNSEEN: Miya Ando, Miguel Arzabe, Chris Duncan, Klea Mckenna & Dean Smith
November 10 - December 21, 2013

Past Off-Site Exhibitions

RHONDA HOLBERTON: Still Life 2
April 7 - May 26, 2018

LAS COSAS QUE PINTAN / PAINTING IN AN EXPANSIVE FIELD
Works by Miguel Arzabe & Juan Sorrentino

April 9 – May 17, 2015

EBB: Gina Borg and Chris Russell at Loczi Design
December 10, 2014