SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- One considers the origin of a search as an extended view into the effort of returning to a place or idea and seeking the differences instead of dwelling in sameness. The attention provided to place suggests a challenge since distinctions vary from multiple points of control: change of environment, change of body dynamics, to what is beyond our control: light, weather, time. Even disappearance is an available risk given the dependence of a return.

This exhibition considers a generative process of image making and the visual distinctions from one moment to the next that call attention to the process of its very creation through each frame. In each of these works a series of considered interactions result in the inquiry into the real and representative, the natural and artificial and how we designate space for ourselves in the world.

In 'Enso: 36 Right-Handed Circumference Gestures' John Divola signals evidence of time, place and being. Between June 7th and August 12th, 2018, Divola performed a gesture using the circumference of his right arm in the abandoned housing tract of what was previously George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. The circular marks are made in various rooms but always in the morning. Understood as a single work, each frame offers an index of a place and a time and an index and trace of physical being.

In ‘Untitled (no 1-15)’ Tarah Douglas inserts her body into the frame of natural environment as a gesture of admission, a nod to the visibility of body language and the signals and narratives it projects to the viewer. Douglas's movements are at once various and theatrical: climbing, reading, exploring, observing. The landscape and the body exist together in an orbicular way.

'Running' (1976) was captured as a self portrait by Steve Kahn while shooting in a run-down apartment complex in Los Angeles between 1974-76. Kahn turned his attention to his body in motion using framing and scale to present an illusion in space and time. The cropping of each frame allows for the minute difference and the illusion of speed.

Raymond Meeks and Adrianna Ault created the photographs titled ‘Winter Farm Auction’ (2019) in response to the event itself. Each farm tool selected is thrown into the air and captured in motion, a compositional choice that provides the tool with its own life separate from that of the user. The motion of the tools captured on film pierce the frame nearly marking time.

John Divola received a BA from California State University, Northridge in 1971 and completed his MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 1974. His career spans four decades and emphasizes the separation of image and reality. His work has been the subject of international exhibitions, most recently at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Kunstverein Freiburg. His photographs are part of collections including but not limited to the J.Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fotomuseum Winterthur; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He is represented by Office Baroque in Brussels, Gallery Luisotti in Santa Monica and Yancey Richardson in New York.

Tarah Douglas is an artist working in photography, sound, and video. her practice is rooted in the allegorical dissection of identity, color, language, landscape, and the human condition. Douglas holds a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA in photography from Yale.

Steve Kahn (b. 1943, Los Angeles, CA, d. 2018, Berkeley, CA). Kahn’s works are in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art (LACMA); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; the High Museum, Atlanta; and the Bibliothèque national, Paris, among others. His monograph The Hollywood Suites 1974-76 was published by Nazraeli Press in 2014. Kahn was the focus of a retrospective exhibition at The de Young Fine Art Museum, San Francisco, in September 2018.

Adrianna Ault is an American photographer raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her BA in photography from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Ault holds an MFA from Hartford International Limited-residency Photography School. She currently resides in the Hudson Valley of New York.

Raymond Meeks lives and works in the Hudson Valley (New York). His work is represented in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Bibliotheque Nationale, France, and the George Eastman House, with recent solo exhibitions at Casemore Kirkeby in San Francisco and Wouter van Leeuwen in Amsterdam. Raymond Meeks is the sixth laureate of Immersion, a French-American photography commission sponsored by Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. He will be mentored by David Campany, artistic director of the ICP, and will carry out his residency in France in 2022. Meeks is a 2020 recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Photography.