Christopher Garrett
Cliff Hengst
GONE TODAY HERE TOMORROW
Organized by Jason Leggiere
February 5 - March 11, 2023
620 Kearny St. (in new ground floor space, tentatively called Et al.+)
Reception February 5, 2:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Mask recommended
The original inspiration for this show came from this Christopher Garrett work from his grave rubbing series. Say You Can, Say You Will, c.2010 quotes Echo and the Bunnymen’s The Cutter by means of rubbing with graphite onto paper over the carved letters from various gravestones, one at a time, font, pica, and kerning be damned, like a gothic ransom note.
It says everything I ever needed to say about being an artist and being a part of the art community in one poetic flourish. From our innocent(ish) childhoods in the late seventies and eighties straight through to the grave, the piece seems to leave nothing out at all of the joyful, anthemic rallying cry of lives lived in defiance of silence and death while maintaining the quality of quiet persistence that is also required of the artist/poet, regardless of age. Cliff Hengst and the shared friendship we have with Christopher is an unavoidable association here and showing them together makes otherwise inexplicable intuitive sense to me.
Gone Today Here Tomorrow is not so much an excuse to show Say We Can Say We Will, but to invoke it. Having known, personally, both of these artists for 2 and 3 decades respectively, I can say Christopher and Cliff embody the dynamic spirit of the rubbing in everything they do. They are the living examples, the models for any aspiring artist. Here are a few significant “drops” from their ocean-sized visions and hearts. I hope this show haunts your understanding of what it means to dream.
-Jason Leggiere, 2023
Cliff Hengst is an artist and performer who works and lives in San Francisco. He has exhibited work at SFMOMA, Southern Exposure, The San Francisco Arts Commission and Gallery 16 in San Francisco. Hengst has performed and exhibited at Hauser & Wirth, L.A., Machine Project in Los Angeles, The Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga, New York, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, and at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.
Christopher Garrett (Born 1972) is an artist and curator currently living in New York. He has had solo exhibitions at South Willard, Los Angeles 2021; AMP, Athens, Greece 2011; White Columns, NY 2007; Kabila Gupta, Chicago 2006; Jack Hanley, San Francisco 2004; AOV, San Francisco 2001, and has curated shows in Athens, New York and San Francisco.
This is the first show in Et al.+, the ground-floor storefront above the original Chinatown Et al. space. For more info, click the link in the menu above.
