Tales of Metamorphosis: Rebekah Goldstein, James Perkins, and Amy Nathan

Online Exhibition with 8-Bridges
June 3 - 30, 2021


“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – Joan Didion

CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions is pleased to share works by Rebekah Goldstein, James Perkins and Amy Nathan for the June edition of 4x8-Bridges. 8-Bridges is a Bay Area gallery coalition showcasing 8 works by 8 galleries each month, with support to a local non-profit arts institution each edition. This month we are proud to support California College of the Arts.

At the intersection of Goldstein, Perkins and Nathan’s works is a desire to share stories about change. Each artist utilizes formal investigations as a way to share a narrative endowed from personal experience with a focus on transformation. Goldstein alludes to movements, memories and changes that took place in her body during pregnancy through the contours of her canvas, which escape the rectangular. While her paintings still retain a certain flatness, the unconventional shapes relate to the metaphorical journey of human-life, which is far from uniform.

Perspective and composition guide the narrative in Amy Nathan’s artworks, which reinterpret historical documents of ancient Greek and Roman mythologies to re-examine mythology from a feminist perspective. In these three drawings of photographs of ancient sculptures, Nathan considers how we acquire knowledge—the many filters, perspectives, and informed guesses that are part of any object’s narrative arc through time. By cropping source images to focus on certain details of warriors and goddesses, Nathan highlights the delicate moments, and the tools women use (literally and metaphorically) to hold themselves together. In the drawing, Athena wears Medusa, the goddess is portrayed wearing on her armor a brooch of Medusa. Medusa—whose head was used as a weapon in her own mythology— becomes a mediating talisman itself, an interface of public and private.

James Perkins creates paintings through performative installations that employ the elements and forces of nature to mark time on stretched silks and linens. Made on the beach in Fire Island, New York, Perkins’ work explores the beauty and experience of weathering the vicissitudes of life. The “post-totem structures” start outdoors in the language of sculpture and culminate as “nonsite” wall reliefs with marks made in collaboration with nature. He believes that we all navigate totems and their historical and contemporary values to paint an identity either closer to or further away from his idea of a neutral existence.

Amy Nathan, Athena Wears Medusa, 2020, Colored pencil and flashe on paper, 12.5 x 10 inches
Amy Nathan, Crouching Mars, 2021, Colored pencil and flashe on paper, 14.75 x 10 inches
James Perkins, Event Horizon Pink Triangle Fire Island, New York, 2019, Silk, sun, sand, wind, wood, water, aluminum, 29 x 3 x 110 inches
James Perkins, A Line in Nature Fire Island, New York, 2019, Silk, sun, sand, wind, wood, water, aluminum, 37 x 95 x 3 inches
Rebekah Goldstein, Sorry Not Sorry, 2021, Acrylic and oil on shaped canvas, 70.5 x 58 inches
Rebekah Goldstein, One Hand in my Pocket, 2021, Acrylic and oil on shaped canvas, 60 x 56 inches
Rebekah Goldstein, My Reflection in the Water, 2021, Acrylic and oil on shaped canvas, 66.5 x 48 inches

Current

CULT TURNS 10
10 Year Anniversary Exhibition
January 18 - March 2, 2024

Past

Terri Loewenthal
Mountain Goat Mountain

September 15 – November 18, 2023

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
September 28 - December 16, 2023

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

Two Handfuls Of Silver Dust: Rhonda Holberton
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