The current exhibit “Enter Slowly” at the non-profit arts space The Lab in the Mission  brings seven internationally acclaimed artists to the San Francisco arts calendar: Maud Cotter, Anna Barham, Cath Campbell, Laura Gannon, Alexandra Navratil, and Linda Quinlan. Beautifully curated by David Cunningham of the once David Cunningham Projects, the individuality of  the artists work are sewn seamlessly into an inspiring show, where, as the gallery website writes, they “ Shar[e] a preoccupation with the ways in which architecture, language and memory function as framing devices and filters deployed in the manipulation of perception and the construction of ‘meaning…’”

Entering the gallery, the works commanding most attention are Cath Campbell’s, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and Maud Cotter’s installed sculptural forms, More Than Anything. Campbell’s work is of  a large, white corrugated cardboard wall with plinths cut out in parallel, and then used as props to hold it upwards. As large works without being obtrusive, their architectural qualities are therefore capable for more opportunities to  interact with the viewer and the gallery space.  Like the artwork by Richard Serra, Campbell’s work is so large that the viewer’s perambulation and observation of the gallery space must be affected by the work: whether by its manipulation of shadows and light, smaller spaces within the gallery, and the viewer’s relation to the work while under observation. Additionally, what is also interesting in Campbell’s work is that which holds up the cardboard plane is paradoxically what is removed from it. This calls to attention her use of negative space in her artwork, and myriad emotive meanings that may be suggested by this formation. 

Maud Cotter’s work is a highlight of the show: a sculptural work of interlocking wooden square pieces placed somewhat sporadically throughout the gallery in stalwart pillars, undulating over walls, and traversing down stairwells. Maud Cotter’s work examines the inherent meaning and physical properties of sculpture and architecture and the space it inhabits, while concurrently working toward a space between a figurative existence and an abstract prominence. Known in Ireland for her 30-year career in sculpture and pioneering the modern genre of the medium, Cotter founded the Sculpture Factory in Cork, and has installed similar sculptures like the one at The Lab in the Court House of Cork, Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Brussels, and galleries in New York, France, Wales, Ireland, and England. An opportunity to view her work here in San Francisco should certainly not be missed.

Prints and video by Alexandra Navratil also retain the architectual element found in the other sculptures but with the qualities of two-dimensional mediums. Motifs of nostalgia and memory alongside Navratil’s studies in luminosity, opaqueness and transparency were apparent in the works, and used in a  significant and powerful way that show her engagement with historical concepts of perception through cinema and lighting design. Her work also makes an aesthetic impact to the show:  Like Linda Quinlan’s video in the exhibit, ‘Side Step’, 2009, Navratil’s medium, being inherently two-dimensional,  is not typically thought  to be included in a show which examines the meaning of architectual forms and its manipulation of perception while being self-referential. Even Campbell’s architectual designs on paper leap off the page by some means of a backing and then set on the paper. This is a wonderful testament not only to the artists’ works, but also again to the strong curation by David Cunningham. The artists’ works of disparate backgrounds, experiences, and mediums can speak to each other, and are both respected individually and strengthened by the other work in the exhibit.