In October, Jeremy Blake, an artist working out of Los Angeles, takes over the Cerca gallery with his Winchester project. The work exploits the history and architecture of a house constructed by rifle-heiress Sara Winchester. Guided by a deep belief in the nineteenth-century practice of Spiritualism, Sara obsessively added-on to her home in an effort to ward off the angry spirits of those killed by her family's guns. Blake does not document what Sara built, instead he embarks upon an abstract, emotional tour of her insanity. His tour takes the shape of a large-scale projection, or what he calls a "frame-by-frame digital painting," created from old photographs, ink drawings, and intricate vector-graphics. At MCASD he exhibits his renowned digital work next to traditional oil on canvas paintings. Although he studied painting at Cal Arts, this is the first public exhibition of his canvases. Combining the aesthetics of Color Field abstraction and photo-realism, Blake's paintings provoke debate about the persistence and mutability of painting as a contemporary art form.
This exhibition is made possible, in part, by Bill and Robin Comer, generous sponsors of Jeremy Blake.