BACKUP UTOPIA | McLean Fahnestock
August 26 - October 11, 2024

Cerritos College Art Gallery is pleased to present BackUp Utopia, a solo exhibition of new print, video, and installation works by multimedia artist McLean Fahnestock, produced during her month-long July 2024 residency at the gallery.

The sardonic dichotomy of the exhibition's title, with 'utopia' implying an extreme ideal and 'backup' suggesting a safe and/or lesser alternative, unites and frames the disparate works on display. Together, they seek to tackle the historic (and still ongoing) discursive inscription and mediated representation of the American West as a paradise on earth, despite perpetually falling short of that aspirational goal. The series Maladaptive Daydreaming, hand-manipulated scans of stereotypically-dreamy calendar photos, are presented as elongated glitch-strewn prints, while Disaster Spirituality, a series of staged miniature prop photos, triggers augmented reality (AR) stop-motion video loops that bring those static images to life (for good or ill), including a loop of a forever-sinking paper boat. Videos, of course, abound throughout the exhibition. In The Summer is Endless, an ever-expanding flock of seagulls hover ceaselessly over a perpetual sunrise/sunset, a conceptual mashup of Alfred Hitchcock's horror film The Birds with the film poster for the iconic 1966 surfer documentary, The Endless Summer. In the video Gold Rush, a solitary palm tree burns, eternally erupting in flames made from golden glitter. For the installation Training Set, with a title suggestive of AI-based machine-learning systems, two bird sculptures with monitors in place of heads present dueling scenes from manipulated nature documentaries. The closed-circuit video installation, Every Man, in a clear homage to pioneering video artist Nam June Paik’s signature TV Buddha (1974, first iteration), plays with the interlocking layers of simulation inherent in the perception of (re)mediated realities. In Promise Land, a looping video of a waterfall is projection mapped onto the surface of a large prop rock, a clear allusion to the biblical story of Moses striking a rock to draw water (leading to his ultimate inability to enter the so-called promised land), as well as, perhaps, to the historic theft of water from the Owens Valley via the Los Angeles Aqueduct. A large wall-based video projection, Desire for Birds Provokes a Desire for Stones, tells a fanciful tale of a conflict (of relative perception) between gangs of rocks and birds, a tongue-in-cheek spin on the famous saying "to kill two birds with one stone." And, finally, in the large display window on the exterior of the gallery building, an installation of inflatable sculptures, photo backdrops, and pools of mylar water repeats many of these same symbols and themes (birds, stones, dreamy landscapes, boats, palm trees on fire, etc.), alongside a video, titled Insta Pop-Up Oasis To-Go, filmed on-site last month using those very objects.

Nashville, Tennessee-based artist McLean Fahnestock works in video, sculptural installation, and digital photographic processes, selecting and repurposing material from popular media and institutional sources, seeking out footage, images, and items that tap into our collective memory. She received a BFA from Middle Tennessee State University and a MFA from California State University, Long Beach. Having previously worked in the studio of the renowned (and recently-deceased) video artist Bill Viola, she now serves as the Chair of the Art and Design department at Austin Peay State University. Her work has been exhibited and screened in galleries, museums, and alternative spaces including Arrowmont School of Art and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN, Bloomburg University, Bloomsburg, PA, Mesaros Gallery, West Virginia University, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, VINEGAR Contemporary, Birmingham, AL, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN, Browsing Room Gallery, Nashville, TN, UCR ARTSblock, Riverside, CA, and Black Mountain College + Art Center, Asheville, NC.