#DadaTarot at SFAI Alumni Show

#DadaTarot at the SFAI alumni show (curator Katya Min of the Yerba Buena Center) was especially interesting because it was right after the election (November 13th and 14th).  There were unsurprisingly a fair number of questions about the direction of the country.  Notably a few of these were answered with a U-Turn sign.  One question about whether “It was going to be okay” (post election) was answered by a picture of Trump making a rude gesture with his fingers, a plane and a car.  Definitely an intense and rattled climate here in liberal San Francisco at an art school.

The gallery environment of the Diego was more open space with people coming into the gallery in a steady stream of singles and small groups for hours.  The pace people approach a piece and how much they see of what other people do first really changes the dynamic.  In this case people were greeting it almost on their own, or one group at a time.  One of the best dynamics in this case was two strangers wanting to do the piece, but lacking a partner they knew.  There were people who looked like they had little in common (age, clothing, etc.) who seemed deeply skeptical of each other, but in a couple cases embraced after doing the piece together and found they had ideas to offer each other.  This was one of my hopes for the piece.  Really, it has worked out to be everything I hoped for and more. While the records are interesting, the interaction itself is the core of the piece.