Lucien Shapiro's "Speak No Mask" is on exhibit in "Erin M. Riley, Lucien Shapiro / Anew" through March 26 at Hashimoto Contemporary.
Courtesy Hashimoto ContemporaryErin M. Riley's "Crimson Landslide" is on display in "Erin M. Riley, Lucien Shapiro / Anew" through March 26 at Hashimoto Contemporary.
Courtesy Hashimoto ContemporaryTapestry takes a hard left turn, away from fair maidens, unicorns and scenes of highborn medieval life and toward grittier — yet girlier — contemporary scenes in the hands of Brooklyn artist Erin M. Riley.
She scours social media for images of drug paraphernalia, sext-ready smartphones and other loaded objects for the tapestries she weaves.
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“Menstruation, masturbation, dating or sexting — these are things I’ve always done but we’re always kind of ashamed of,” she says from New York City, where she pours 40 to 1,000 hours into the textiles she weaves. “As I grow older, I’m just trying to represent my real life and how dating is nowadays, and the things that women use and look at every day but kind of keep hidden.”
Work from both Riley, 30, and the Sonoma County-raised artist Lucien Shapiro, 36, is showcased in a two-person exhibit, “Anew,” at Hashimoto Contemporary.
Shapiro works through themes of obsessive behavior, ritual and even personal healing in the lavishly embellished masks, vessels and weapons he creates out of thousands of found bottle caps, “punker studs” and shards of broken safety glass he calls “street diamonds.” “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” is the overarching concept.
African and folk art seem to be touchstones, but Shapiro, who earned his bachelor of fine arts at the San Francisco Academy of Art, sees them as “worldly” objects.
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“It was never my intention to pull from another culture,” he explains. “It’s all very personal and actually goes back to growing up off the grid a little bit, part time in a cabin or a yurt and other times in the suburbs. It has to do with cities and the suburbs, and it also has the feel of nature.”
In conjunction with “Anew,” Shapiro is traveling to about 20 cities around the country, screening the “Analect Rituals” film he created with photographer Shaun Roberts. Shapiro also plans to conduct his “Light Collector” ritual, where audience members are asked to write down their great fears. Shapiro will ceremonially burn those fears when he returns to the Bay Area.
“I’m just trying to heal some stuff that’s been going on in my life and to deal with some of my fears,” says Shapiro in a recent phone interview while driving through Utah. The performance connects his art to his band, Papervehicle. “It’s having a powerful response — more than I expected. I’m not claiming to heal anyone or take their fears away, I’m just offering people another way to deal with something in their life.”
Riley, for one, appreciated Shapiro’s sense of direction when the two first started talking about the exhibit, ritualistic behavior and the power that objects, like those oh-so-fetishized phones, can hold.
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“I think phones nowadays are like our own little private diaries,” she says. “There’s so much shaming and judgment when it comes to women and young girls especially. If someone gets caught sending nude photos, they’re in the wrong, but everybody does it too. I want to open the dialogue.”
Kimberly Chun is an East Bay freelance writer.
Anew: Works by Erin M. Riley and Lucien Shapiro . Noon-6 p.m. through Saturday, March 26. Hashimoto Contemporary, 804 Sutter St., S.F. (415) 655-9265. www.hashimotocontemporary.com.
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