Hot Engage: Lobot Gallery Intimately West Oakland
Petra Bibeau
Adam Hatch, Pre-Loved, 2004, mixed media sculpture, photo credits: P. Dahl
West Oakland’s emerged warehouse art venue LoBot Gallery is at an advantage that many art galleries never arrive at, all within its infancy of fours months, mostly in part to its founders’ unique vision of the art scene in the Bay Area. Cofounders and artists Adam Hatch and Caleb Rogers fill a niche that was desperately underserved in the East Bay, acting on a need for an art space that resists a hierarchical status or exclusive typecasting for a role that lends itself as a support for the sometimes scattered art community of the East Bay, especially the overlooked art and artists of Oakland.
With the inception of the fourth exhibition at LoBot, "Touch Me, Feel Me," a tactile, installation art show, Hatch and Rogers sought out to introduce a more emotive connection with art of an approachable nature, inevitably including the attendees as part of the art. The gallery opening, which boasted "lounge rooms, massage, kissing booths and all things touchable" drew more than just interested art goers and curious individuals, (peaking attendance nearing 500 people); also present was a type of art typically shunned for its trashy, ‘low art’ status, acting as a conduit of exploratory visitation rights for viewers who long to do more than merely view art from a safe distance.
In the fashion of most of LoBot’s openings thus far, everything was spectacularly
tightfisted yet advantageously savvy for such humble digs: four live bands hailing from Seattle to San Francisco, and a collection of DJ’s armed with 80’s dance and electro-pop. Yet what is truly impressive is LoBot Gallery minus the massive entourage: a 6,000 square-foot warehouse, cold, damp and industrial, that does not need the excess to stand out as an outlet of the most ingenious and at times hidden artists in the Bay Area. Armed with an intriguing curatorial proposal and a plethora of inventive artists, "Touch Me, Feel Me" canned the division of high and low art, compelling visitors to investigate sno-globes, stuffed animal sculptures, a constructed catacomb crawl-space, a punching bag and cushy wall installations with audio, among others, in complete freedom.
The optional beauty and transitory nature of tactile art, as well as the reason it enjoys such a kitschy status in the minds of many, was given full court at LoBot and its return was broad spectrum. Even after the large opening night crowd had departed, there still remained several good reasons to visit LoBot Gallery during gallery hours: Adam Hatch and Amy Friebertshauser offered two very captivating ones: Amy Friebertshauser’s massive installation Untitled, though not so cuddly or kitschy, defiantly engulfed the exhibition. Sophisticated, bare and expansive, Untitled was aesthetically reminiscent of strange mix of Hesse and Christo (1972 Valley Curtain Project) upon first glance. An installation of large scale, Untitled assumed one corner of the gallery, as well as working its way through a missing window pane.
Hatch managed to gather 1700 stuffed animals from random people in the community who responded to his call for donating stuffed animals for his mega-teddy sculpture Pre-Loved. With Pre-Loved Hatch practiced a special brand of pop art, one found with heavy L.A. ancestral style wedded to an East Bay brand of street-wave. The spirit of the stuffed animals that were donated or discarded, doubled with the universal connection that one has with the inanimate objects created specifically for intimacy, almost promised Pre-Loved could easily work either way: as a whole or dismantled. Used and abused, Pre-Loved ended up in devastating tactile art fate: hugged to death and ripped to pieces, the loose remnants scattered over the gallery floor, some found as far as several blocks away. Possibly the best show of tactile art was the evident effect that the sculpture had on the visitors by viewing the aftermath of Pre-Loved hanging by mere threads with the artifact of past seduction strewn in lots of poly-fiber blend. Pre-Loved worked skillfully even in disarray as an installation of pop-kultur California style.
Touch Me, Feel Me
LoBot Gallery
1800 Campbell Street
W. Oakland, CA 94607
