Desai | Matta Gallery
Karla Diaz |While You WEre Sleeping
through February 24, 2023
Artist Talk January 27th 6:00 - 7:30PM
Karla Diaz
Pata de Perro, 2021
Watercolor and ink on paper
Memories are often uneasy, sometimes painful, and always fragmented and transformed by time. Moving in a dreamlike, surreal space, Diaz’ paintings dance easily from the diaristic and personal to the cultural and diasporic, quilting together memory and identity much as our memories are transformed in time. In her love of magic realism, Diaz has found another tool for transformation and survival.
“Magic realism gives us a container to hold (struggle & trauma)—to go on or to walk with it, to know that it is part of our life… the best way I know is that strategy for survival. And I think surrealism kind of affords me that, in a way where I’m using it as a tool for survival and visual communication.“ - Karla Diaz
All artworks are (c) Karla Diaz, Courtesy the Artist and Luis De Jesus Gallery
How do we describe the combination of pleasure and anxiety we feel in donning summer clothes in the middle of winter? Or basking in the exquisite spectacle of a sunset made vivid by wildfires? Inspired by such moments when they found themselves at a loss for words to describe emotions or ideas, Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott created The Bureau of Linguistical Reality, a participatory art project to develop neologisms for our rapidly changing world. Rather than cede the power to create that language to “experts,” the Bureau creates spaces for conversation about the collective grief of living with climate change by setting up their field station in various sites—nationally and internationally—to invite us all to the table, creating new language that Quante and Escott understand to be connective anchors to advance dialogue and culture.
Third Floor Hall
Dennis Mccauley: Scratch
THROUGH November 11, 2022
I was painting with sharp objects…like painting with a knife or a
razor blade was a good thing because no one messes
with you if you have a sharp object in your hand.
Through his Impressionist-inspired paintings Dennis McCauley shows us an often overlooked view of San Francisco. His paintings depict a city that is known for malleability and innovation, for acceptance and revolution, for its idealism, and for its ever growing economic crevasse. McCauley’s work shows a perspective that is often spoken of, but not spoken from, as he paints each scene with objects found on the streets of the city that’s both his home and the subject of his paintings.