Asher Hartman and Cliff Hengst / MATRIX 264 / Irwin Kremen / MATRIX 265 / Sam Contis / MATRIX 266

This spring, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is presenting three new installments in its ongoing MATRIX Program, which is dedicated to introducing Bay Area audiences to exceptional work by contemporary artists. The next three installments in the series are:

Asher Hartman and Cliff Hengst / MATRIX 264
BAMPFA presents the exclusive Bay Area performance of Mr. Akita, featuring the acclaimed San Francisco-based artist Cliff Hengst. Written and directed by Asher Hartman, Mr. Akita centers on an abstract monologue performed by Hengst that offers a satirical take on the intersection of art, sexuality, and masculine ego. Hengst embodies multiple characters throughout a 45-minute performance, which explores the relationship between an artist and his former professor Mr. Akita—a venerable modernist painter who also happens to be a dog. Initially produced by Los Angeles’s Machine Project in 2015, Mr. Akita will be presented in BAMPFA’s galleries, with the beguiling Op Art painting Sun Burn (Split) 1 by the Los Angeles-based artist Emily Joyce as Hengst’s interlocutor. Performances take place on Thursday, April 13 at 7pm; Friday, April 14 at 6pm; and Saturday, April 15 at 3pm. Tickets are available here.

Irwin Kremen / MATRIX 265
BAMPFA presents the first West Coast solo exhibition of work by Irwin Kremen (b. 1925), who has been refining the practice of collage for more than 50 years. Composed primarily of weathered paper—scraps typically torn from street posters in European and American cities, including Berkeley—Kremen’s intricate compositions are notable for their subtle textural variations that become apparent only on close viewing. A former psychology professor at Duke University who studied at Black Mountain College, Kremen began experimenting with collage art in the late 1960s. He will visit BAMPFA for an artist’s talk on Wednesday, April 26 at 12:15pm.

Sam Contis / MATRIX 266
For her first solo museum exhibition, Berkeley-based artist Sam Contis uses photography and archival research to explore the relationship of bodies and landscape, as well as the shifting nature of gender identity and expression. The work in her upcoming MATRIX exhibition was made at Deep Springs College—located in a remote valley on the California-Nevada border—which is one of the country’s last all-male institutions of higher learning. In this body of work, Contis has incorporated photographs borrowed from the Deep Springs archive, including images made by some of the first students at the college nearly a century ago. Contis’s images of men incorporate both conventionally masculine and feminine aesthetics, set against the backdrop of ageless mountain ranges in the California desert. She will visit BAMPFA for an artist’s talk on Wednesday, May 3 at 12:15pm.

Support
Asher Hartman and Cliff Hengst / MATRIX 264 is organized by Lauren R. O’Connell, former curatorial associate. Mr. Akita was originally produced by Machine Project and commissioned by the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY. Irwin Kremen / MATRIX 265 and Sam Contis / MATRIX 266 are both organized by BAMPFA director and chief curator Lawrence Rinder. The MATRIX Program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis and the continued support of the BAMPFA trustees.

Press contact: afox [​at​] berkeley.edu