03 June- 16 July,
2016

Opening reception Friday 03 June,
2016 from 6 – 10 pm

Marginal Utility is pleased to present SUMMER SHOW,
a group exhibition featuring Josias Figueirido, Matthew McKnight, MNM Collaborative (Michael Delgado, Matia Jones, Natalia Slattery), Yue Nakayama, Omid Shekari and Han Wang.

Where do ideas come from? For Josias Figueirido, ideas come from looking and drawing the ordinary events of life: a figure passing by, two children kicking a ball in the park, a flower pot on the edge of a window, etc. Figueirido’s paintings evolve from those moments of looking at the everyday, and through memory, invention, color, and mark-making they become a way to explore how people relate to one another and their environment.

Matthew McKnight’s installation examines the history of rugby and how it spread throughout the British colonies as a form of cultural indoctrination. Former colony states such as Australia, New Zealand and Samoa have come to dominate the sport and their games against the UK embody the lingering history of resistance of the colonized towards the colonizing imperial power.

In their newest work, MNM Collaborative reinterprets the classic tale of Macbeth from the perspective of three Marina Abramovics acting like pirates. MNM enriches Shakespeare’s play with pirate zest and uses performances by Abramovic spanning several decades to explore the double edged sword of fame. By embodying the greats, MNM experiences first-hand the glory that is so sought after, as well as its consequences.

Omid Shekari’s paintings speak globally about how force, violence, and pressure unambiguously determine the rhythms and laws of power within human experience. As an artist who has lived through the shifting political events in the Middle East and who has observed the cultural phenomena following the religious revolution in Iran, Shekari makes art about these events and the hidden stories and feelings that they provoke.

Yue Nakayama’s video work forms around the stories and essays that she writes. These writings are based on Nakayama’s own memories, fictional stories, and imagination. Personal writing is also combined with found writing, such as newspaper articles, magazines, and historical novels. The writing doesn’t follow any specific structure. The flow of thoughts is non-linear, and topics jump from one to another. However, it forms one united piece in the end.

Han Wang’s ceramics over-identify with the phenomenon of “cultural grafting.” Cultural grafting is the transplanting of one’s culture onto another culture’s imagination about that culture. Wang’s work explores industrially produced items that are thought of as Chinese, but are actually American concoctions with Chinese cultural symbols attached, such as some Chinese food, Chinese food takeout containers, and fortune cookies.