INDIGO MIND // Opening September 26, 2015

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[IMAGE - close up of hands drawing brain and "Indigo Mind: Celebrating the works of Oliver Sacks", Carissa Potter, 2015]

[IMAGE - Abstract blue and cyan shapes, Lynn Kirby, Still from Golden Gate Bridge Exposure: Poised for Parabolas, 2004]

Indigo Mind is an ambitious group exhibition celebrating the work of neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks. Opening September 26, 2015 at StoreFrontLab, the project features artists who explore a range of brain and body phenomena examined in Sacks’ research. These works present the influence Sacks has had on our understanding of the human condition in its limitless variation and form.

The title, Indigo Mind, references Sacks’ essay, “Altered States,” in which he describes the mental state of indigo, rare moments of perceiving the truest form of the color. Sacks witnessed indigo only twice in his life, once in 1964 at his home in Los Angeles, and the other, a year later during a Monteverdi concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He describes indigo as “luminous” and “numinous,” filling him with a sense of “rapture.” Indigo Mind relates this elevated state of mind to that of the artist’s process—clarity, inspiration, and pure creative bliss.

Indigo Mind regards the idiosyncrasies of the body and mind as a pathway to creativity. The Unknown and the Other, to which Sacks has dedicated his life’s work, are deeply valued for their neuro- and physiological diversity; the unique qualities of being human that enables us to discover new ground.

ARTISTS

Adrienne Adar, Sherrie Aradanas, Miguel Arzabe, AXIS Dance, Alexandra Bell, Michelle Blade, Rebeca Bollinger, Alice Bonczkowski, Terri Bowden, Lisa Bufano, Shannon Bronson, Casey Byrnes, James Davis, Gina Demerell, Chris Downey, Arianne Gelardin, Sonsheree Giles, Emilie Gossiaux, Casey Gray, Lauren Hartman, Kathleen Henderson, Desiree Holman, Jennifer Justice, Lynn Marie Kirby, Petra Kuppers and Olimpias, Dohee Lee, Cara Levine, Neil Marcus, Paulino Martin, Anna Mayer, Jacob Palmer, David Parsons, Carlos Perez, James Pitt, Carissa Potter, Rowland Ricketts, Ali Nashke-Messing, Tamra Seal, Katherine Sherwood, Cassie Thornton, Valerie Tribble, William Tyler, Monica Valentine, Merrit Wallace, Amber Jean Young

COLLABORATORS

Alice Wong, Disability Visibility Project (a community partnership with StoryCorps); Amy Cranch, Anna Halprin's Advanced Performance Lab; Case for Making; Creative Growth Art Center; Disability Unity Festival at San Francisco City Hall; Susan Schwartzenberg, Senior Artist and Curator, Exploratorium

CURATORIAL TEAM

Cara Levine is an artist in the Bay Area. She explores the intersections of the physical, metaphysical, traumatic and illusionary through video, photography and sculpture. She has worked for years through ideas around chronic pain and the body—though it has been in the last year—while coming into her adult body as a chronic migraineur, that her understanding of pain, perceptual experience and creativity has formally merged.

Arianne Gelardin is a San Francisco-based artist and curator. She works to dress the mundane with colorful moments and thoughtful interruptions, breaking us free from habitual attitudes and auto-responses. Arianne is Curator at StoreFrontLab, a space for ideas and dialogue that prompts participants to push beyond the bounds of their practice in order to develop an expanded and unexpected view of reality—one that informs our work as creators and shapers of society.

[IMAGE - 12 INCH CUBE COVERED IN COLORFUL SEQUENCE TEXTURE. MONICA VALENTINE, COURTESY CREATIVE GROWTH ARTS CENTER, 2015] 

[IMAGE - Dancers on the floor, arms spread, heads facing upward. Neil Marcus, Olimpias, 2009]

[IMAGE - Hand cast in bronze. Anna Mayer, We Are Not Only Anything]

*This exhibition is being mounted to honor the work of Dr. Sacks. Dr. Sacks has no direct role in the exhibition itself. 

For inquiries about Indigo Mind, please contact arianne@storefrontlab.org