Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010 October 30, 2010

Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010

Sat, Oct 30, 2010-Sun, Feb 6, 2011: Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010
Sat, Oct 30, 2-4pm: Audience Roundtable

Yoshua Okón’s video installations are built on improvisational narratives created by the artist and his collaborators, mostly non-actors willing to participate in a game of social chance that may easily spiral out of control. Centered around emotionally charged expressions of power and contemplations of fear, death, sex and nationhood, these works provoke viewers to consider questions of social conduct and the behavior of individuals within systems of social restraint. Okón further challenges viewers to question their own attitudes towards power, ethics and prejudice particularly as they relate to class and race. Maintaining a belief that humanity holds within its grasp a complex web of fears and desires, psychological violence shares the stage with absurdity and humor. The rather serious antics that unfold yield to audience reactions of shock or disbelief while at the same time providing a space to laugh at one’s own frailties. Okón’s works are both performative and interactive, in that they aren’t complete without the participation and complicity of the audience as they react to what they experience on screen.

Among the works included in the exhibition are: Bocanegra (2005-2007), in which Okón collaborated with a group of Nazi enthusiasts who dressed up in vintage uniforms and were recorded in a variety of orchestrated situations; Canned Laughter (2009), a simulation of a maquiladora (a factory on the northern border of Mexico) that cans laughter, juxtaposing the spontaneity of emotion with the grim realities of contemporary industry; Hausmeister (2008), in which a man comes out of a mouse-hole-like opening in the wall and crawls on the ground hissing and growling; Hipnostasis (2009), a collaboration with Raymond Pettibon which explores the subculture of old hippies and beach bums from Venice Beach; and Rusos Blancos (White Russians) (2008), a collaboration involving a family and residents of a remote desert area in California who rehearsed performances for invited spectators.

Audience Roundtable
Sat, Oct 30, 2-4 pm
FREE w/ gallery admission
Artists from the exhibitions Audience as Subject, Part 1: Medium and Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010 discuss the role of the audience in their work. The relationship between the artists and the collective viewing body they imagine is considered, as well as questions around group dynamics, individuated vs. group identity, and what is revealed by portraying audience reactions separated from the object of attention or implicated by the performance on view.
Participants: Leonor Caraballo, Danica Dakic, Abou Farman, Yoshua Okón, Adrian Paci, and Shizu Saldamando

Yoshua Okón: 2007-2010
Gallery 2
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Audience Roundtable
YAAW Lounge
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

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