Working in sculpture, installation and photography, Rhonda Holberton employs a hybrid of scientific and metaphysical practices to reveal a symbolic reading of empirical canons of belief.  Throughout various bodies of her work, Holberton consistently hijacks existing technologies to reveal invisible histories and make space in the ordinary for the creation of fantastic narratives. Recently, she has been investigating the politics of a virtual landscape navigated by the corporeal body in physical space. This new body of work, SLOW MOTION MIDNIGHT, presented at Zona Maco Sur 2016 includes a suspended silk sculpture, a cast fist of the artist’s hand, sculptural floor gestures, custom wall paper, animation stills, and 3D animation.

Across the installation for ZMS, Holberton explores site as fantasy, fiction and apparition. A Fixed Resistance, the wallpaper covering the booth, creates a mise-en-scène for the work. The artist composited photographs of wandering sand dunes she took on the decommissioned Salton Sea Military Test Base in California with found images of the desert landscape in the Middle East and the Sahara Desert. Holberton likens the desert to virtual landscapes; a seemingly empty canvas ready for the projection of both militaristic and cinematic fabrication. The skinning of the booth is mirrored in the 3D animation, The Best of Both Worlds (Rhythm Is A Dancer), where the artist’s body is presented as a deconstructed digital skin – the result of algorithmic pixelation vis-à-vis the technology used in the production of the video. The fabric sculpture, No Seams to Match, is a reconstruction of a life-size military bunker sewn from silk printed with photographs shot on decommissioned military bases along the coastline of California.

Holberton downloads publicly available 3D models from an online database to create the sculpted rocks, A Fallen Pixel I, II, III. Mostly used by game designers, these rocks will have populated countless virtual spaces, but have no reference in reality other than human memory. The sculpture An Additive Inverse, employs the gesture of the “raised fist,” a symbol of solidarity and human strength. The artist describes the painting, A Short Lived Fault, as a collaborative action; using a process called data bending Holberton combines the raw code of glitched video stills with an audio recording of a reading she had with a psychic. The resulting data is opened back up in an image editing program and printed on canvas. Holberton then covers her body in paint to record a series of yogic gestures that she performs on top of the canvas. The movement takes it cues from somatic healing suggested by the psychic during her reading.

For Zona Maco Sur 2016, Holberton uses cycles of virtualization and actualization to blur the boundaries between imagination and reality.  She conflates military history with cinematic fantasy and attempts to engage in subconscious interactions with computational algorithms. The desert setting has physiological and psychological appeal for Holberton who says:  “Everything slows down and opens up in the barren environment. The empty space allows for both the projection of wartime fables and wild enactment of psychedelic ritual. In the desert, the human senses cannot make sense of the distance to the horizon.”

The Sur section of Zona Maco Sur is curated by João Mourão and Luis Silva, co-directors at Kuntshalle Lissabon, Lisbon.

RHONDA HOLBERTON (b. 1981, Fall Church, Virginia USA)
Working in sculpture, installation and photography, Rhonda Holberton employs a hybrid of scientific and metaphysical practices to reveal a symbolic reading of empirical canons of belief. Rhonda has recently had solo and two person exhibitions at City Limits Gallery (Oakland, CA), Royal Nonesuch (Oakland, CA) and the Berkeley Art Center (Berkeley, CA) and will have her second solo show with CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions in San Francisco in the autumn of 2016. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Arts Commission. In 2012 she received a Project Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's SECA Grant Nomination. Holberton received her B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts, and her M.F.A from Stanford University. Her work has been featured in SFAQ, Art in America, Art Practical and Daily Serving, among others. Holberton is represented by CULT | Aimee Friberg Exhibitions; her work is featured as a solo presentation in ZONA MACO SUR 2016 in Mexico City.