Relatives at Dovetail
May 18, 7-10pm
Dovetail is excited to announce RELATIVES, an art exhibition by Pablo Arancibia. Complimentary craft cocktails by guest mixologist Dawid Piwinski. 50% off men’s items. Free gift with each purchase while supplies last. Past-life readings by Ryan Fukuda. RSVP to the event here.
ABOUT THE SHOW
“We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn’t that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true.”
Richard Dawkins, Magic of Reality
Relatives
Relatives is the artist’s effort to find his place in the world and the sequence of history. Relatives explores sequences not only in the temporal plain, but also on a deeper level; it also symbolically explores genetic sequences as understood in science.
By finding the artist’s place in the major sequence of genes, and its relation to all other living things, the artist explores his place in the major sequence of life. This place allows the artist to find comfort in the fact that he is related to all life, and that every living thing is, to some degree, a relative.
That string of information encoded in our DNA is the code for life that repeats itself in every creature. It is easy to understand that the genetic material of a father and a son is extremely similar, and it is also easy to understand that the farther the relative, the more differences we will find. In Relatives each similarity is brought to light, and focuses on the commonality we share with all living things.
By taking a scientific approach to understanding life, it is easier for the artist to find a sense of legacy. It is that same gene make up and sequence that repeats itself in every creature, endlessly adapting to procure life and the life of the artist. As life’s end lurks behind every living thing, it is also comforting for the artist to know that what made him alive also continues to live on in every single one of his relatives. We see this kinship in all of our obvious cousins as well as in those that stopped talking to us a long time ago.
Family Portraits Series
These series of intervened images are personal family photos, where some relatives are switched by others. Raccoons, red pandas, dolphins and dogs, are among these new relatives in the picture. Each image has been retouched to recreate personal life events to literally include some genetic relatives as well. These pictures are the record of symbolic family reunion where ancestors, concestors and cousins are included in the picture. These images from the past are a door to invite the observer to recreate his own family history, and to include those animal-relatives that might be less considered.
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