All Exit

Oct. 25, 2014 - Jan. 3, 2015

Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA

In their second exhibition with Johansson Projects, entitled All Exit, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy present new works that spin out from the landscape of the Californian West, from farmland to corporate campus. California, with its nexus of computer, entertainment, and military industrial centers is seen as the conclusion, both geographically and ideologically, of the frontier fantasy of the American dream. The title, All Exit, is taken from internet rhetoric in which Silicon Valley scions write about moving beyond California to create new, legislatively permissive, zones of privilege. In these new projects, constructed as wall-mounted dioramas, the McCoys present elaborate fabrications that extend from the physical nerve centers of the tech headquarters to the imaginary landscape of board game fiction. Employing exhaustive categorization, recreation, automation,miniaturization, and remote viewing, the McCoys create kinetic, multi-media, multi-faceted sculptures. Installations ranging from miniature dioramas to all encompassing environments invite the viewer to see sculpture, camera, and screen as one in the production of live experience.


Works Shown

The Constant World 2014

2014, sculpture with video, sound, and electronics

This new version of 2007's Constant World, with nine live video cameras, presents a utopian world that acts as its own advertisement. This new sculpture, with sound and a slowly evolving video track with text and color is a ceiling mounted assemblage of metal spheres, models, and lights. It portrays a film noir melodrama set in an urban environment that is intercut with text elements. The result, seen on flat screen displays, beckons the viewers to inhabit the place seen onscreen. Drawing from influences as varied as Constant Nieuwenhuis’s models for the utopian New Babylon and the dystopian technological noir of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, the project forms a critique of labels. Specifically it questions the ways in which our culture uses language to falsely assign value.

Priest of the Temple

2012, installation with live cameras

In Priest of the Temple, an office building juts out of a Mt. Rushmore-style mountain. The embedded video is based on the actions of a Silicon Valley hotel spa. Behind the building, a portrait of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore looms like a Pyongyang mural. Gordon Moore's prophetic observation, Moore's Law, states that the computing power of a microchip will double every two years. Moore himself in a 2005 interview provided an amendment to this law when he added, "The law can't continue forever. The nature of exponentials is that you push them out and eventually disaster happens."

Between the Resorts

2012, sculpture with electronics

Between the Resorts depicts a no mans land between a simulated ski slope and a simulated water park. Embedded video shows images of sand blowing across pavement.

Dominion

2014, sculpture

Wall mounted shadow box depicting a fantasy landscape incorporating aspects of the San Francisco Bay area, the Dominion board game, and the Oracle headquarters circa 2014. Contains an oil on canvas background, color photography, video screen, and electronics.

Shore Leave

2014, sculpture

Wall mounted shadow box depicting a fantasy landscape incorporating aspects of the San Francisco Bay area, the Forbidden Island board game, and the Paypal/Ebay headquarters circa 2014. Contains an oil on canvas background, color photography and electronics.

Silicon Flats

2014, HD video

Overlapping images of Silicon Valley's natural environment, its industry, and the architecture of its suburban technology headquarter buildings. 9:50

Eichler Series

2014, sculpture

Series of printed, sandstone sculptures fusing an extruded image of the Silicon Valley headquarters (Google, Nvidia, Intel) with the architecture of middle class Joseph Eichler subdivision home.

Aerie

2014, sculpture

Wall mounted shadow box depicting a fantasy landscape incorporating aspects of the San Francisco Bay area, Lord of the Rings, and the Twitter headquarters circa 2014. Contains an oil on canvas background, color photography, video screen, and electronics.