De Soto Gallery is pleased to present Connie Samaras' V.A.L.I.S (vast active living intelligence system), an exhibition of photographs and videos shot while an artist-in-residence in the South Pole and Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica. This will be Samaras' first solo show with de Soto.
 
A recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Services, Artists and Writers Grant (2004-2005), Los Angeles artist Connie Samaras traveled to the U.S. science stations at the South Pole and the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica to depict the liminal space between extreme climate and life support architecture. The title V.A.L.I.S. (vast active living intelligence system) is loosely borrowed from science fiction writer Philip K. Dick's ruminations on transcendence and technology and underscores Samaras' interest in the "fluctuating membrane between fiction and real world, between the creation of place and the imaginary," especially political geographies and psychological dislocation in the everyday. The resulting photographs and videos reveal the simultaneous dystopic and utopic imaginings of the only landscape on earth where there are no indigenous peoples.

Connie Samaras is a Professor in the Department of Studio Art UC Irvine. She has exhibited and lectured on her work extensively at numerous institutions nationally and internationally. In addition to the NSF Artist and Writer's grant, other recent awards include, California Community Foundation Mid Career Artists Fellowship (2006), Anonymous Was A Woman Fellowship (2003), Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Visual Arts Fellowship C.O.L.A (2002), and the Adaline Kent Award, San Francisco Art Institute (2002).