MICHAEL ARCEGA: THE COLLASPE
October 24 – December 5, 2009
Opening Reception for the Artist: Saturday, October 24 from 5:00 – 7:30 PM

***During the run of the exhibition, 15% of all sales of Arcega’s work – both current and past – will be donated to The Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC)

San Francisco-based artist Michael Arcega’s eagerly anticipated second solo exhibition at Marx & Zavattero will present a multi-dimensional installation that explores a meditative post-apocalyptic atmosphere. On the heels of several important exhibitions throughout the country and abroad, and the completion of his MFA at Stanford University this past Spring, Arcega draws from a wealth of artistic investigations — many of which wryly deal with episodes of power, tragedy, human folly, and recently, the possibilities of renewal.

Arcega is widely known for his sense of humor in which wordplay and materials take on multiple meanings that affect a variety of responses and understandings. The new work in The Collaspe will feature sculptures based on tent architecture and reclaimed architectural components that become devastated sites. “Survivalist and bunker mentality has been pushed to the front of our consciousness with cultural products like Survivorman, Man Versus Wild, The Colony, 28 Days Later, The Road, The Inconvenient Truth, Battlestar Galactica and so on,” says Arcega, “and has helped to foster this new body of work, which explores issues regarding the ongoing fear of instant global annihilation with a long, drawn-out survival.”

Arcega meticulously rescues discarded and blemished wood banisters by adding architectural sites into their devastated areas. They are then arranged into a forest-like floor installation alongside a tent structure, which will house a moody projection of mist and random acts of decay and violence. By featuring support structures found inside a home opposite an imagined and somewhat surreal recreational campsite, Arcega dramatizes the conflict between permanence and transitory modes of survival. In reclaiming these discarded objects, and adding to their broken spaces, Arcega poignantly fosters a sense of renewal and the possibility of rebuilding. Hints of Hurricane Katrina, the recent devastating floods in his homeland of Manila, and earthquakes and tsunamis in Oceania echo here as well.

Arcega’s rare ability to examine, critique, and unsettle the concept of power and survival with a swashbuckling sense of humor and compassion promises to yield a poignant exhibition.

In 2009, Arcega was the recipient of The Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, as well as the Headlands Center for the Arts MFA Fellowship, and the Catalyst Artist in Residence at The Contemporary Museum Honolulu. Recent solo shows include Homing Pidgin, the de Young Museum, San Francisco; CERCA Series: Michael Arcega, The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Misusefulness, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY; and Futilitarianism, Nu’uanu Gallery at Marks Garage, Honolulu, HI, among many others. Group exhibitions include the 2008 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; the national traveling exhibition One Way Or Another: Asian American Art Now, which originated at the Asia Society in New York; and Alimatuan: The Emerging Artist as American Filipino, the Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI, among several others. Arcega’s work has also been exhibited widely over the past 15 years in such venues as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Euphrat Museum of Art, Mag:Net Galleries and Green Papaya Gallery (Manila, Philippines), Caren Golden Fine Art, The Luggage Store, Southern Exposure, Ze Dos Bois (Lisbon, Portugal), and Marianne Boesky Gallery, among others. His work has been featured and reviewed in The New York Times, The San-Diego Union-Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Flash Art, Artforum, Artweek, SF Weekly, 7 x7 Magazine, SF Bay Guardian, Sculpture Magazine, artnetmagazine.com, Honolulu Advertiser, Art review, Hyphen, Houston Press, SFGate.com, and Asian Week, among several other publications.

Arcega received his MFA from Stanford University in 2009, and a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998. The artist lives and works in San Francisco.