‘A Day at Victoria Glades,’ 2021 by Basil Kincaid (b. 1986). (Basil Kincaid)
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) will present Remixed: Entwined Histories and New Forms, an exhibit offering a convergence of quilts, textiles, paintings and sculptures, on view in the Von Romberg and Emmons Galleries, Feb. 22-Aug. 30.
The exhibit explores remixing as a visual and conceptual strategy, blurring the lines between eras, genres and cultures, the museum said.
Remixed: Entwined Histories and New Forms features works by Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, Carla Edwards, Jeffrey Gibson, Tamara Gonzales, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Porfirio Gutiérrez, Basil Kincaid, Maia Ruth Lee, Candice Lin, Yassi Mazandi, Adia Millett, Wendy Red Star, Jeffrey Sincich, Shinique Smith, Michael C. Thorpe, and Ben Venom.
“Remixing transforms the familiar into something new. In the recording studio, a music producer layers tracks, shifts tempos, and samples old melodies, creating a fresh soundscape with the echoes of the past,” SBMA said. “Remixed explores this sonic alchemy through visual art that ‘remixes’ both physical objects and immaterial legacies.”
The display features a diverse roster of artists who do not simply use materials; they listen to them, speaking with, not for, across time and space, the museum said.
“Here, materials are conduits for spirit, memory and history,” SBMA said.
Kincaid, for example, deconstructs and reassembles lived-in fabrics into an ethereal dreamscape, where pink skies and purple mountains host haloed, spiritual entities.
Porfirio Gutiérrez’s ‘Desde Otra Mirada,’ 2023 uses nogal and pomegranate dye on wool. © Porfirio Gutiérrez. (Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94)
“In this kind of quilting, you take elements with memory content from the people you love; put your own energy and love and presence into it; and then your loved ones wrap themselves in it,” Kincaid said.
Gutiérrez captures nature’s seasonal voice through pomegranates, distilling its temperamental conditions, its weather, the nutrients in the land through color, exhibit organizers said.
“Moreover, it is a pigment of layered history. Introduced by Spanish colonizers,
pomegranates were adapted by the Zapotec people, transforming the non-native fruit into a traditional material for dye,” the museum said.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, at 1130 State St., is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, and free to visit 5-8 p.m. on 1st Thursdays. For more, visit sbma.net.