Photo Epicenter
26 Lilac Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Monday – Saturday, 10am – 8pm
www.hamburgereyes.com
psymulation@chrisfitzpatrick.net
415-550-0701

Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present
March 14th–April 11th, 2008
Opening reception on Friday, March 14th from 6–9pm
Gallery hours are Monday – Saturday, 10am – 8pm

ARTISTS:
Gerald Edwards (New York)
Brennan Hill (Los Angeles)
Kent Lambert (Chicago)
Matthew Post (Oakland)
Squirrel (Indiana)
Brendan Threadgill (Los Angeles)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (March, 2008)—Photo Epicenter presents Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present, opening March 14, 2008. Artists from across the U.S. respond to a series of criticalities in the war on terror with photography, video, sculpture, drawing, and performance. They present bizarre dystopian visions of post-9/11 hyperreality in a time when the U.S. openly enlists nationalist Science Fiction writers to envision the future of homeland security.

From psychic espionage to sticky foam and spider-goat silk-milk—the U.S. has been actualizing its own sci-fi realities for years. Meanwhile, these revelations can easily be reduced to the imaginative drivel of fringe paranoids—sci-fi as alibi. As reality is submerged in the fantastical, the artists in Psymulation create artifacts of the present with striking immediacy and futurological retrospection. They disrupt the media’s psychological operations by appropriating its imagery, exploring its perceptual affect, and questioning its dominant narratives in different ways.

Following last year’s Swan Songs exhibition, Psymulation is the second installment in a series of projects Chris Fitzpatrick is curating for Photo Epicenter. Gerald Edwards, Brennan Hill, Kent Lambert, Squirrel, and Brendan Threadgill have contributed work that will be on display from March 14 – April 11, 2008. Additionally, the opening reception will feature a psychological tuba performance by Matthew Post.

In Psych Securities LLC, an ongoing series of photographic composites by Gerald Edwards, faceless PsyOps agents and technicolored HazMat workers inhabit strange environments from electromagnetic pulse tests to extraordinary rendition flight waiting rooms. He combines research into the black world of clandestine operations and experimentation with historical narratives and a heavy dose of psychedelic conjecture, envisaging realities shrouded in a stigma of conspiracy.

Appropriating various media distractions, Kent Lambert explores a number of pertinent issues from national security to international torture in three videos with sound. The trilogy—which consists of Security Anthem, Hymn of Reckoning, and Sunset Coda—features guest appearances by Tom Cruise, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, the cast of Lost, G.I. Joe, and Lambert as a young boy, whose prescience has a particular resonance today.

Brendan Threadgill’s Partially Reconstructed Fragment (SKU# 3059778), the mangled roof of a car used as a bomb, sprawls across the floor in the center of the gallery. He refinished these materials in strict accordance with automotive industry standards, but did so without altering them structurally. Also included is Painted Fragment With Overspray, a two-panel diptych, that further reveals the impossibility of erasing or concealing the traces of violence and unknowable histories embedded within.

The recent hyper-aestheticization of torture has had a considerable effect on perception.
Through association and apophoria, in Threatening Chair, a large photograph by Brennan Hill, a tool intended to aid the improvement of vision can be perceived as an instrument of infliction. Similarly, Sinus Horror, a drawing based on a highly detailed medical illustration has been reduced into a pulp-comic formalism that allows for multiple readings.

In Nuclear Holocaust, a video with sound by Squirrel, appropriated footage of nuclear explosions, desert warfare, and George W. Bush are combined with epic symphonic music and what the artist calls “a psychotic church radio program” about God, Satan, the Saints, and the apocalypse. Collateral Damage, another video with sound, collides the superficial with the unconscionable, revealing the causal relationship between two seemingly dichotomous images.

During the entire opening reception, Matthew Post will repeatedly perform “Enter Sandman” by the band Metallica on a tuba equipped with a sousaphone bell. The song has been used extensively to torture and terrify in Iraq and Afghanistan and brass instruments have been used as psychological weapons in war for thousands of years. The performance is made more poetic by an interview on NPR, in which Metallica-singer James Hetfield paradoxically stated, “If the Iraqis aren't used to freedom, then I'm glad to be part of their exposure.”

A catalog is being produced to coincide with Psymulation: Reenactments of the Present. It will be an extension of the exhibition, with photographic documentation of the work and performances, as well as various related writings and additional materials.

For high-resolution photos, more information, or descriptions of the included works, please email psymulation@chrisfitzpatrick.net