Irrational Exhibits 8

Press release

April 16, 8:00 PM - Tickets $12.00 Students $10 with I.D.

Screens are the interface of our time, not just for entertainment, but for social, personal and business connections as well.   One evening of LIVE ART can counter months of screen time and isolation.

This Spring IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS from curator Deborah Oliver returns to Track 16 Gallery. In this 8th edition of IRRATIONAL EXHIBITS, 15 artists perform simultaneously in a spacious immersive environment that changes you from detached viewer to living participant. This is a unique blend live/sculputural/durational performance where artists bring the audience into a kinetic and visceral experience. Move freely through the gallery and dwell as long as you time want at each of the performance works exhibited. You are no longer just an observer you are a participant as well. The show creates itself with you and around you.

Brian Black and Ryan Bulis, Jarred Cairns, Mariel Carranza with Carol McDowell,

Carol Cetrone/Perpetua & Company, Alexis Disselkoen and Aaron Valenzuela,

Monica Duncan and Ross Karre, Kristina Faragher and Curt LeMieux with Rochelle Fabb and Alec Fraiser, Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, Thinh Nguyen,  Liz Nurenberg, Nancy Popp, Christy Roberts, Steve Shoffner, Ian Trout and Kim Alexander, Del Zamora and Juan Garza

Brian Black and Ryan Bulis: "Bubble-Boy Ping-Pong" Brian Black and Ryan Bulis have been working collaboratively to explore their interests in the psychology of competition and sports. In their sport-based work, the two artists have reflected that the “staged artistry” of these performances often gives way to a genuine urge to win and compete. For this performance, the artists play a game of table tennis in an enclosed plastic chamber complete with ping-pong table. The chamber has fans blowing air currents in the interior of the cylinder. The flow of air affects the ability of the players to make contact with the ball.

Jarred Cairns: "Kiss and Tell" Serving with honor and integrity and not their voices, gay military

members fight for our country and many have given their lives in her service. Every day, they live in fear of “don’t ask, don’t tell”, of being dishonored in their profession, community and service.

Mariel Carranza with Carol McDowell: "Stone Soup" with videos by Carol McDowell Carranza's performance will deconstruct the folk story, Stone Soup, to interpret its duality - fable's rejection and its possibility to arrive to a new order in relation to our current human state. Mariel Carranza Is a Los Angeles based artist and in using her body as sculpture,Carranza's work challenges conventional notions of the time, space, and corporeal constraint. Carol McDowell is an interdisciplinary dance artist and scholar.

Carol Cetrone/Perpetua & Company "window of time" Choreographer and filmmaker Carol Cetrone (aka Perpetua) translates the physical as a rhythmic drama. The dancers embody a cinematic dream as seen through an intimate perspective. In this "window of time", we are on the cusp of revolution. We see ourselves for the first time, we are moments away from our own power.... With this in mind, Cetrone animates the scene through her use of movement and gesture and creates a site specific work within the permanently installed "railroad dining car" at Track 16.

Alexis Disselkoen and Aaron Valenzuela "knotted" 2011 Alexis Disselkoen uses event-based situations to connect contemporary issues of identity and interpersonal relations. Her performances aim to disrupt constructions of power that inform art production and viewership. Aaron Valenzuela's sculptures and installations work through consumer culture, fashion, and the body to exploit the unresolved spaces and possibilities between the organic and inorganic. The artists come together for knotted, utilizing the properties of fabric to investigate the implications of labor and collaboration.

Monica Duncan: "Rochester Knocking" and "Légerdemain" a co-collaboration with Ross Karre Monica Duncan and others will perform excerpts from Rochester Knocking, a multi-media instrumental-theater performance. Following each iteration of Rochester Knocking will be performances of the collaborative work legerdemain, a piece for solo guiro and video projection, performed and co-composed by percussionist and visual artist, Ross Karre.

The turn of the century middle-class home included numerous technological devices with which Americans developed strange relationships. The parlor piano, the living room radio, Brownie cameras and door hinges merged into the 19th/20th century American lifestyle, as their users adopted a repertoire of gestures and sounds transcending pure object-hood. Via psychoanalytic experiments with hysterics, human radio antennae, and vibration therapy, Rochester Knocking conjures the spirit of silent film star, Louise Brooks to lead a vaudevillian tour of real and imagined historical homes.

Kristina Faragher and Curt LeMieux with Rochelle Fabb and Alec Fraiser: "Twelve From The Underground" Video Seven Video seven from the “Twelve from the Underground” series is centered upon a young boy, Clifton Lowery, who lived and died in the state of Utah from 1900 to 1908. Clifton was the grandson of a Mormon Bishop and the twelfth child of twelve children. The work features Rochelle Fabb as Clifton’s mother and Alec Frasier as his ailing older brother.

Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly: "Untitled" 2011 Collaborating since 2003, Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly approach art as a seri