Natural selection comes from misidentified mockingbirds. On a string of Galápagos Islands Charles Darwin collected data on slight variations amongst a species of finches (that were actually mockingbirds), the results of which later became the basis for his theory of natural selection. The tidy humanist idea that she–nature–molds and reforms our bodies per the specifics of her landscape. She reaches down our throats and engineers the mysterious fact of song of speech of sound-making. She tunes the bird’s call and the human’s hum. In Mary Helena Clark’s Ligature, the chorus of disembodied sounds, the phantom of the finch, proposes a world heard haptically, a touching of a song, an illumination of the inner chambers of the larynx. As “ligature” may connote medical binding, textual twinning, or musical harmonizing, Clark proposes a multiplicity of connotative possibilities so that each may commingle in the atmosphere of the gallery.
Inherited traits of the female avant-garde sound and filmmakers of the twentieth century percolate in the Clark’s work. In this artist-cum-species lineage we find another story of creation: Alien Resurrection (1997), an alien-human hybrid is born. In the movie, avant-garde sound artist Joan La Barbara gave voice to Newborn, the alien sapien. Known for her 1970’s experimentations with the limits of long vocalizations, polyphonics, trills and whispers, La Barbara’s extended vocal technique operates on the crack of the voice, voice as evidence of a constellation of bodily mechanisms. How strange that this artist’s articulation of the vocal edges of the human form would be selected to animate alien otherness. La Barbara’s animation of the medical miracle of an alien/human body creates a circuit of woman/sound/apparatus/embodiment/alien/film/mimesis that provides a useful halo over Clark’s project.
Follow the ligatures of the exhibition: touching is tied to hearing, shell is tied to ear, laser is tied to throat, bird is tied to invisibility, projected images are bound to each other in multichannel call-and-responses. Clark uses contact microphones to record and amplify sound by pressing the mechanical ear into the places on the body that seem to produce it; a device kin to the stethoscope, producing recordings of the tongue, throat, and mouth. Bird songs throughout the exhibition announce an invisible presence – a sound we all know and understand though rarely see its source or witness the act of its making. Projections appear on tilted screens, bent and confronting you from below. Each of these elements build Clark’s ethereal, tactile project that calls into question the very fact of seeing and hearing and the forces that make those sensations reproducible to an artist. The viewer is rendered alien in Ligature’s speculative world.
— Erin Jane Nelson
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- 2018
- November 2 - December 22
Sara Greenberger Rafferty - September 14 - October 27
Stan VanDerBeek - July 13 - August 18
Friend of a Friend - June 1 - July 8
Sterling Lawrence - April 14 - May 26
Paul Mpagi Sepuya - February 24 - April 7
Howardena Pindell - January 6- February 17
Mary Helena Clark - 2017
- November 4 - December 23
Andy Cahill - September 9 - October 28
Laura Letinsky : Polaroids - September 9 - October 28
Julien Creuzet - July 14 - August 25
Summer group show - July 14 - August 26
Summer Group Show - June 3 - July 8
Erin Jane Nelson - April 15 - May 27
John Opera - February 25 - April 8
Geraldo de Barros - January 7 - February 18, 2017
Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito - 2016
- November 11 - December 23
Sara Greenberger Rafferty - November 4 - December 3
DOCUMENT at Et Al gallery in San Francisco - September 17 - November 5
Andrew Norman Wilson - July 9 - August 27
What Birds Can See - May 14 - June 25
Elizabeth Atterbury - March 18th - May 7th
Sterling Lawrence - January 29th - March 12th
Christopher Meerdo - 2015
- December 11th - January 23rd
Mary Helena Clark - October 24th - December 5th
Paul Mpagi Sepuya - September 3rd – October 17th
Sean Snyder - July 24th - August 29th
RE|PRODUCTION - June 19th - July 18th
Phillip Maisel - May 1st – June 13th
Derek Franklin - March 13th – April 25th
Erin Jane Nelson - January 30th – March 7th
Marcus Geiger and Margaret Welsh - 2014
- December 12th – January 24th
Sara Magenheimer - October 24th – December 6th
Greg Stimac - September 5th – October 18th
Christalena Hughmanick and Sterling Lawrence - June 6th – July 26th
Marco Braunschweiler - April 25th – May 31st
Thomas Killian Roach - March 14th – April 19th
Selina Trepp - January 31st – March 8th
Victoria Fu - 2013
- December 14th – January 25th
B. Ingrid Olson - October 25th – December 7th
Nick Johnson - September 6th – October 19th
Scott Fortino - June 7th – July 20th
Owen Kydd - April 26th – June 1st
Suara Welitoff - March 15th – April 20th
Christopher Meerdo - February 1st – March 9th
Scott Cowan - 2012
- December 14th – January 26th
Georgia Wall - MDW Fair > November 9th – 11th
Robert Chase Heishman and Megan Schvaneveldt - October 27th – December 8th
Elizabeth Atterbury - 845 MURAL > Sept 7th – March 31st
Ron Ewert, Leo Kaplan and Michael Kloss - September 7th – October 20th
Eric Fleischauer - Summer Residency > August 3rd – 26th
Michael Pfisterer - June 1st – July 28th
Andrew Norman Wilson - April 20th – May 26th
Adi Goodrich and Jimmy Marble - March 2nd – April 14th
Alan Cohen - January 6th – February 25th
Paul Erschen - 2011
- MDW Fair > October 21st - 23rd
Paul Cowan and Michael Hunter
