Machine Project

Opening Reception Saturday, September 22nd, 8pm
September 22 – November 3, 2007

Glitter, Yoruba headdresses and visions of the Apocalypse meet in Kamau Patton’s exhibit at Machine, opening September 22nd at 8pm. Equal parts religious rite, glam spectacle and public access television show, Kamau’s video installations bring a personal cosmography to bear on existing folk narratives. Literally sitting atop St. James the Janitor’s trash-art throne, Kamau creates work that is simultaneously elaborate and elemental –- folk assemblages by way of Photoshop, as seen on MTV. References collide to create fictional spaces and amended mythologies that draw from sources as varied as modern media aesthetics, to a cult founded by a former gypsy-carnie-magician-priest from Jersey. He interacts with these images as a participant and mediator, and the resulting videos are kaleidoscopic performances that show our world as an accumulation of manipulated symbols, fictions, personal histories and enigmatic codes.

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Kamau Patton is a San Francisco-based artist whose work draws from folktales and modern cult doctrines. He creates installations, videos and objects that are the result of research into visual communication systems, gesture and ritual. His work is often rooted in living folk practices and mediated by his personal narrative, other folktales and by contemporary shared narratives such as urban architecture, advertising and television.