Jack Fischer Gallery is pleased to present somewhere between here and there, a solo exhibition of collages by Vanessa Woods. Join us for the opening reception on January 13, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at our Potrero location. The show will be on view through February 24, 2018.
 
somewhere between here and there is a new body of work created from the archive of 1940s-60s paper ephemera and objects that Woods recently inherited from her deceased collage mentor/photographer Ken Graves. Part elegy, part eulogy, the collages in somewhere between here and there engage in a seductive illusion. Each collage reveals a subject navigating a set comprised of layers that can be pulled up or pulled apart to reveal other realms. The varying perspectives of space and scale function like a magician’s sleight of hand, continually reorienting the viewer and further accentuating references to artifice, theater and illusion.
 
The collages in somewhere between here and there generate psychological spaces that invoke the borderlands of dreams and the shadow worlds inhabited by those we mourn. The tension between tangible and ephemeral, concrete and abstract, is given weight by the presence of protagonists in the collages, who often stand at thresholds between worlds. Rituals of mourning are also a reoccurring motif, specifically the Jewish tradition of leaving a pebble on the gravestone as a memento to the deceased’s life. Throughout the work, stones populate the landscapes, or sets, floating mid-air, being pulled by subjects or resting singularly on surfaces. Finally, many of the collages incorporate the use of clouds, waves and rippled sand as a means to trace past activity—atmospheric, geological, cultural, personal—and change wrought by time. 
 
With a vast inherited archive at its origin, the works in somewhere between here and there navigate the places between memory and history; the known, and the lost; and the legacy of artist bonds formed across generations. A selection of over twenty collages made by Woods’ between 2016-2017, as well as original collages by Ken Graves, courtesy of Anglim Gilbert Gallery, will be on display for the exhibition.

Vanessa Woods graduated with an MFA with honors, from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her artwork and films have been exhibited internationally including Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco, Stanford Art Spaces at Stanford University, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and The Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose. Woods has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship from the SF Arts Commission, a Film Arts Foundation Grant, and the San Francisco Art Institute's MFA Fellowship. She has also been awarded residencies at Djerassi, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony and in Pont-Aven, France, through the Museum of Pont-Aven.