{"id":402499,"date":"2026-07-17T18:30:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/402499\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T18:30:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:30:31","slug":"review-chaplins-modern-times-reimagined-in-the-tramp-in-ccacs-wattis-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/402499\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Chaplin\u2019s \u2018Modern Times\u2019 reimagined in \u2018The Tramp\u2019 in CCAC\u2019s Wattis Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Tramp,\u201d on view at California College of the Arts Wattis Institute in San Francisco through November,\u00a0is a big swing of a solo exhibition in\u00a0which the collaborative artist duo known as Caguiat Delacruz (Justin Caguiat and Rafael Delacruz) conjures the 1936 clown from Charlie Chaplin\u2019s \u201cModern Times\u201d to ask if our own time\u2019s aspirational society of optimization, automated production, consumer satisfaction and material success leaves any place for the\u00a0fl\u00e2neur\u2019s\u00a0whim.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Upon entry, there is a large abstract painting, \u201cUntitled\u201d\u00a0(2026), hanging on the backside of a bare wooden temporary wall, parallel to the front door. This wall marks the exterior of an inner chamber of the gallery, inside which\u00a0is\u00a0a discrete installation \u201cThe Voice\u201d (2026), complete with the backseat of a car converted to a viewing couch, an old CRT TV monitor, and a dead potted plant resting on a VHS cassette tape player. The interior walls of this squat-like room are painted in a loose whitewash of abstract brushwork.<\/p>\n

The television plays Caguiat Delacruz\u2019s central film\u00a0\u201cThe Tramp\u201d\u00a0(2026) on an infinite and randomly interrupted loop. The\u00a0walksheet\u00a0rather suggests\u00a0this film is infinite, that each viewing is different, due to\u00a0an automated, self-interrupting mechanism. Like\u00a0in\u00a0\u201cModern\u00a0Times,\u201d \u201cThe Tramp\u2019s\u201d\u00a0sound is superficially layered onto the film: foley sounds, field recordings and music play only when the film self-cues or reviews, punctuating the space with the jumps in time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"Scenes from \u201cCaguiat Delacruz: The Tramp,\u201d a take on Charlie Chaplin\u2019s \u201cModern Times,\u201d are on view at California College of the Arts Wattis Institute in San Francisco, Calif., through Nov. 21, 2026. (Caguiat Delacruz\/Greene Naftali, New York, Hoffman Donahue, New York and Los Angeles, and Modern Art, London via Bay City News)<\/p>\n

During my viewing, I saw\u00a0one\u00a0actor in an over-large Chaplin-like suit among yellow sun flowers. Ambient music played when the film fast\u00a0forwarded,\u00a0and its tracking lines, shimmering across the screen, evoked a sense of nostalgia for those once-common analogue technologies. In another black-and-white scene,\u00a0another actor in another Chaplin-like suit walks ahead of the camera through a crowd on a sunny San Francisco day. The same actor later smokes a cigarette. Traffic sounds next played over the fast forward. These leaps in the film\u2019s time, combined with my own nostalgia for bygone technologies, and the parallel narratives of 1936 and 2026, create an effective temporal anxiety:\u00a0I tried to remember the\u00a0appropriate name:\u00a0dyschronometria\u00a0or\u00a0chronotaraxis,\u00a0or the cognitive symptom known as\u00a0time-shifting. Regardless, Caguiat Delacruz\u2019s tramps are in a narrative purgatory. Next came a jump cut to the city\u2019s quiet nightscape soaked in electric light and shot from a high-storied apartment building. UFO-like electronic sounds followed with the next skip.<\/p>\n

Other works in the show include materials extracted and reconfigured from Caguiat Delacruz\u2019s same film, including watercolor monotypes with scenes from the film arranged in a\u00a0plexi\u00a0vitrine called \u201cThe Long Walk\u201d (2026); black-and-white photographs from the film or its rehearsal, also named after the film; an ink jet artist book called \u201cUugh\u2026\u201d (2026) on a provisional cardboard bench; duo-chromatic paintings of more film stills named after the film; a large orange, abstract painting called \u201cTerminal\u201d (2026); a high mounted clock with a faded image of the crucifixion on its face; intermittent pigment prints on metallic paper called \u201cUntitled\u201d (2026), and two wonderous sculptures of costumes transformed into assemblage-and-papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 mannequin sets named after the movie.\u00a0California assemblage was popularized after World War II, when, in a show of rejecting commercial art, artists opted instead to recycle debris, finding new possibilities in what society had otherwise discarded. Caguiat Delacruz\u00a0builds\u00a0on that lineage, while asking if and what new possibilities from a\u00a0closed-loop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The repetition of the title, \u201cTramp,\u201d for example, applied to so many other works in the show and differentiated only by number, furthers a sense of restlessness, as though the spirit of the film is perpetually decentered through its multiple iterations. No\u00a0one\u00a0work is primary or fully resolved. The exhibit\u00a0recycles\u00a0its material in an ouroboros of mark making without either the satisfaction of a concluding coda or new material that might allow the artist-turned-clown to transcend or upend his limitations. Implicit in this pattern lies an argument about algorithmic practices that reconfigure and eventually exhaust or distort any original source.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The gesture is\u00a0all the more\u00a0prescient given the exhibition\u2019s setting on the historic campus of the California College of the Arts, which, following nationwide trends of closing or sold art colleges, was sold to Vanderbilt University in January. Given the Bay Area\u2019s recent loss of both Mills College and the San Francisco Art Institute, however, the question of where artists might find a place rings loudly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chaplin disrupts the assembly lines of his day, is accidentally caught up in and convicted for\u00a0participating\u00a0in a labor protest, daydreams through the absurdity of bourgeois life, and roller skates to the very edge of a department store under construction. Perhaps because the body\u00a0is not able to\u00a0perform on its own terms, subject\u00a0rather to\u00a0the skips\u00a0and\u00a0hops of rewind and fast forward, Caguiat Delacruz seems closed down, by comparison.\u00a0Perhaps we\u00a0might find solace in the canvas of a street and freedom of abstract marks making \u2014 a mode of production that\u00a0remains\u00a0untitled and therefore outside of identification.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCaguiat Delacruz: The Tramp\u201d continues through Nov. 21 at the Wattis Institute, California College of the Arts, 145 Hooper\u00a0St., San Francisco. Open noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays; admission is free. Visit cca.edu<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The post Review:\u00a0Chaplin\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Modern Times\u2019 reimagined in \u2018The Tramp\u2019 in CCAC\u2019s Wattis Institute<\/a> appeared first on Local News Matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Tramp,\u201d on view at California College of the Arts Wattis Institute in San Francisco through November,\u00a0is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-402499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}