The Lab

The Lab is a nonprofit experimental art and performance space located in the Mission District of San Francisco.

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Pictures of You: Headlands Center for the Arts Graduate Fellowship Exhibition


  • The Lab 2948 16th St San Francisco, CA, 94103 (map)

July 8–July 29, 2023
Opening Reception: July 8, 5:00–7:00pm
Gallery Hours: Thursday–Saturday, Noon–5:00pm
Tickets: Free

Released in 1990, The Cure's Pictures of You brims with nostalgia, heartache, destruction, and desire. While this exhibition of work by Headlands' 2022–23 Graduate Fellows pays homage to the goth-pop anthem, the song also serves as a potent metaphor: expressing the uncanny experience of loss and the human impulse to meticulously create an idea of a person, place, or thing to endeavor to fill a gaping emotional void. No matter how well crafted, these melancholy “pictures” become powerful, yet superficial surrogates composed through ghostly traces (recollections, fragments of desires, regrets, and dreams). The artists featured in this exhibition make works that invoke a sense of impermanence, speculation, spirituality, transformation, alchemy, myth, and history by assembling fragments to create metaphorical reliquaries. 

Artists:

Lexygius Sanchez Calip

Shao-Feng Hsu

Markus Kager

Ahn Lee

Joshua Moreno

Nicole Shaffer

Whitney Vangrin