Allegorical Procedures: Bay Area Collage, 1950’s- present

Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 2014

“Allegory functions by layering meaning upon meaning, allowing one thing to stand for another,” said curator Gwen Allen, an SF State associate professor of Art and author of Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (MIT Press). “Collage as a medium corresponds to this method, in that it literally ‘pastes’ one image on top of another, altering the context and significance of both.”

For the exhibition, Allen defines collage broadly: as an “allegorical” technique of signification that relies on methods of “confiscation, superimposition and fragmentation,” as Benjamin Buchloh observed in his 1982 theorization of collage and montage. The exhibition looks back to such well-known precedents as Wallace Berman, Jess, Jay DeFeo, Bruce Conner and the Bay Area Dadaist/Mail art scene of the 1970s, as well as other contemporary artists employing and/or expanding the practice of collage. It ranges from Emory Douglas’ illustrations for the Black Panther Party Newspaper and Winston Smith’s work for the Dead Kennedys’ album covers and liner notes to SF State Assistant Professor Matt Lipps’ staged photographs of magazine cutouts and a new installation by castaneda/reiman.