In two portions, Han and Mihalyo’s Extended Collapse installation examines the museum’s former existence as an urban five-plex cinema. In one gallery, two sculpted seating arrangements appear with projections of Valley cityscapes. An adjacent gallery houses a large-scale sculpture reminiscent of a movie theater marquee combined with various building fragments.
Curated by Cassandra Coblentz, the Lead Pencil Studio installation highlights the architectural conditions and development choices associated with construction in a boom economy and the ramifications of these decisions during extended down cycles such as the current one.
“We want Extended Collapse to inspire thought about opportunities, about multiple visions for our built spaces,” Coblentz says. “We hope people leaving this experience will consider the implications of our development decisions — about both failed uses of space as well as how our design decisions can generate better ones in the future.”
Conceived by Haddock, Us Versus Them displays his work, which explores the individual’s experience and society’s collective reality, and Masters of Collective Reality celebrates the achievement of nine comics artists whose technical virtuosity and idiosyncrasies Haddock admires.
Sponsored by the SMoCA Salon, Masters of Collective Reality showcases selected work of comics legends Fred Guardineer, Rory Hayes, Joe Sacco, R. Sikoryak, John Stanley, Jim Woodring and Basil Wolverton, as well as new artists such as Matthew Allison and Jennifer Diane Reitz.
Matthew Allison, Calamity of Challenge (cover), 2010-11. Digital Reproduction. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. © Matthew Allison
Jon Haddock, Come Down Neville (detail), 2010. Digital image, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. © Jon Haddock.
Jon Haddock, Legion, 2011 (installation view); Papier-mache and casein; Approximately 36 x 16 x 12 inches each; Courtesy of the artist Jon Haddock
R. Sikoryak, “The Crypt of Bronte” from Masterpiece Comics, 2009. Digital Reproduction. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. © R. Sikoryak
Annie Hand and Daniel Mihalyo, Lead Pencil Studio, Under the Surface, 2008, charcoal and acrylic on paper, 57 x 71 inches. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Lead Pencil Studio. ©Lead Pencil Studio.
Though widely differing in coloring, characterization, narrative and theme, each artist employs the comic to examine personal, cultural and political inequities, explains Haddock, guest curator for the exhibition. They invite us into world of their own design, a mythology, and for the short time we experience that world, it becomes reality for us, too.
