Chris Kabel installation to be unveiled at Headlands Center for the Arts

Sun, Sep 17 - Sun, Dec 31  2017

Headlands Center for the Arts

On September 17, 2017 the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausolito, CA will unveil Wall Space, a new permanent installation by Chris Kabel as part of The Commons, a new outdoor space designed to enhance the Headlands experience

About Wall Space by Chris Kabel

Created by Rotterdam-based designer Chris Kabel, Wall Space (2017) is a sculptural installation that turns Headlands’ building façade into a canvas for commissioned texts. Hidden armature, inspired by historical movie theater marquees, features a modular lettering system rendered in transparent metal mesh, which responds to changing light conditions and makes the text readable to viewers as a cast shadow. For the inaugural installation, which will change over the course of the year, Headlands has commissioned San Francisco-based writer Claudia La Rocco (Headlands Artist in Residence, 2013) to curate texts from Wendy Rose and Tongo Martin-Eisen, poets whom La Rocco describes as “formally dazzling and politically fierce.” Wall Space will launch with a new poem by Rose relating to her Hopi and Miwok ancestry and the Native American history of the Marin Headlands.’

About The Commons at Headlands Center for the Arts

Fueled by recent program and audience growth, the Headlands Center for the Arts is enhancing its campus and services to the public with The Commons, a new outdoor space designed to enhance the Headlands experience.

The $1.8 million project—sited between and immediately surrounding Headlands’ two main buildings—reimagines an unpaved parking lot and gravel pathway as a thoughtfully designed outdoor space for art and everyday use. The Commons expands the center’s services for artists and visitors with more than 3,000 square feet of new programming space; three newly commissioned permanent artworks; and additional places to gather, relax, and enjoy the area’s renowned natural beauty. The design includes a central plaza, a pedestrian walkway that connects the two main public buildings, and a redesign of the main entryway that is more welcoming and accessible.

Envisioned in partnership with Bay Area-based CMG Landscape Architecture—whose past and current projects include SFMOMA’s rooftop sculpture garden, the Moscone Center expansion, and the redevelopment of Treasure Island as a public art destination—The Commons’ site-appropriate design honors Headlands’ sensitive natural setting and unique history as a former military base. The central plaza includes a concrete overlook and series of terraces that reference military bunkers and shape views toward the nearby Rodeo Lagoon watershed and Gerbode Valley. Eucalyptus and native plants such as lupines, Wyethia, California poppy, and assorted grasses—grown in the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy’s nursery—frame the smaller spaces within The Commons.

In keeping with Headlands’ rich legacy of commissioning artists to rehabilitate and steward our campus, The Commons will incorporate three new permanent outdoor artworks. In addition to The Walls by Chris Kabel it pertains to the following works:

“Welcome Terrace East & West by Ball-Nogues Studio” 

Based on the tradition of Kintsugi or “golden joinery”—the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with lacquer and powdered gold, silver, or platinum—Ball-Nogues Studio will repurpose Headlands’ original broken concrete driveway to create Welcome Terrace East & West (2017), a vibrant new artist-designed promenade. The Los Angeles-based artists, whose work is included in the permanent collections of MoMA, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will collaborate closely with the architect to reshape the fragments and reassemble them using colorful terrazzo mortar that honors repair as part of the history of the site rather than something to disguise.

“Doubledrink by Nathan Lynch”

A functional sculpture conceived by San Francisco-based artist Nathan Lynch, Doubledrink (2017) is a ceramic drinking fountain designed for two people to drink simultaneously while looking each other in the eye. “Bending over to drink and making that sucking face is awkward and intimate, and an incredibly symbolic way to begin a conversation,” says Lynch. The work continues his ongoing interest in political conflict and environmental issues by heightening the importance of sharing water as a limited natural resource and celebrating its power to bring friends and strangers together for a brief moment.