patricia piccinini’s 1st solo show on the west coast
patricia piccinini’s work is often not easy to look at, but it affects us profoundly. it is grotesque, shocking and disturbing at the same time that it’s poetic, tender, compassionate and beautiful. it’s both attractive and repulsive.
her vision is impossible, monstrous, surreal—yet completely plausible, given the continuing advances in genetics, organ harvesting and transplantation, and artificial intelligence.
her art is about sexuality and fecundity, though in her universe, fertility is not necessarily about offspring, but is a metaphor for ideas, potential and hope.
this exhibition is about distinctions between the natural and artificial… and the blurring of those boundaries. about how nature has been changed by technology and technology is becoming more and more natural.
piccinini asks us to confront the ethical delimmas inherent in the most up-to-the-minute advances in medical and technological science, along with the imminent existence of artificial intelligence. her work also grapples with the oldest and most basic philosophical question: what does it means to be human?
her work is about both inter- and intra-species relations… how we treat other animals and other humans. piccinini understands that we are hardwired to distrust and dislike difference—an evolutionary survival instinct—yet she appeals to us to look at diversity and non-conformity with empathy and even love.
patricia piccinini’s exhibition we feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep runs through friday july 1st at our exhibition space in san francisco
