‘Hip’ would be an obsolete adjective to describe the crowd of artists, art students, and art enthusiasts who turned up to underground gallery 1038sf last week to catch a first glimpse of work by five young photographers from San Francisco in a Castro Heights basement.
The installation, entitled, “Fabricated to be Photographed” was curated by Savash Erenler, a student at San Francisco Art Institute, whose vision for the collection traced an aesthetic rooted in the 21st century relationship between technology and nature, each photographer demonstrating his/her own creativity in approaching the postmodern dilemma. The media ranged in form, including both film and digital prints of all sizes, black and whites as well as color, and even a series of miniature polaroids occupying the back wall of stark gallery.
While each young artist contributed to the dramatic energy of the gallery, for me the work of twenty-one year old Keko Jackson stood out among the rest. His playful and humorous shots suggest a lingering beauty in the waste bin of American consumerism. He sees something in the overlooked, pointing out a sort of absurdly endearing quality among ripped mattresses, soda cans, broken statues, and axe deodorant containers. Jackson, when prompted to reveal his inspiration, only smiled and said, “I shoot what I think is funny”. I’d like to think I’m in on the joke.
See Keko’s original photography here.
Check out what’s going on at 1038sf here.