CUBE SPACE
Located on
the ground floor of the Center Street Garage at 2010 Addison Street near Milvia
Street in the heart of the arts district in Downtown Berkeley, Cube Space features exhibitions of works by Bay Area emerging and mid-career artists working in video, multi-media, and sculpture to create installations which are viewable at all hours, every day of the week.
Current Exhibition
touch and go, by Dionne Lee
October
6, 2020 – January 31, 2021
Dionne Lee Cube Space installation. Photo by Kija Lucas.
touch and go is an installation curated by Leila
Weefur of large scale mixed media collages and video works that
source, reenact, and re-photograph images from wilderness survival
books, exploring the relationship between rescue, danger, and the
necessity of touch. Lee's images are a metaphorical guide,
assembling a narrative of survival skills that manifest amid
environmental chaos and the historical systems of oppression that
determine who survives.
Dionne Lee uses photography, collage, and video to investigate
ideas of power and race in relation to the American landscape.
Past Exhibition
OPPOSITE DAY, by Sofie Ramos
December
14, 2019 – August 16, 2020
Sofie Ramos Cube Space installation. Photo by Diana Jones.
Sofie Ramos creates maximalist sculptural installations of
vibrantly painted and precariously placed household objects
combined with colorful textured materials that imagine and bring to
life other worlds inside, alongside, and underneath our own. With
her installation OPPOSITE DAY in the Cube Space,
the artist flips her recent obsession with large piles of objects
on its head, symbolically defying oppressive forces that hold us
down (in this case, gravity). Ramos's use of bold color and playful
shapes transforms the colossal mass into a vivid three dimensional
painting where everyday objects animate a fantastical cartoonish
scene.
Ramos was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and received her BA in Visual
Art from Brown University and her MFA in Art Practice from
University of California, Berkeley. She is currently based in San
Francisco and Los Angeles.
A Pallet of Blackberry and Feverfew, by Richard-Jonathan Nelson
October 12 – December 7, 2019
Richard-Jonathan Nelson Cube Space installation. Photo by Marie-Luise Klotz.
A Pallet of Blackberry and Feverfew, by Richard-Jonathan
Nelson, was a site-specific installation created for the Cube Space
organized by independent curator Demetri Broxton. A Pallet of
Blackberry and Feverfew is a hoodoo prescription for protection
that Nelson has translated into a video textile installation which
transforms the Cube Space into a place to ruminate on how Queer
people of the Black Diaspora can nurture themselves and their
identity while navigating the cacophony of modern life. For this
installation Nelson blends the craft of quilting and digital art to
create an alternative world where the Black body is removed from
the persistent historic depictions of it as servile and without
agency. Nelson's work references both African American low country
herbalism and cybernetic Afrofuturism as a means to expand our
concept of who and what Black people can be culturally.
Richard-Jonathan Nelson is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses
textiles, video, and digital manipulation to create alternative
worlds of speculative identity. Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1987
and working in Oakland, CA, Nelson received his MFA from California
College of the Arts in 2017.
San Jose and Juri, by Amy M. Ho
August 31 – October 5, 2019
Amy Ho Cube Space Installation. Photo by Marie-Luise Klotz.
San Jose and Juri, by Amy M. Ho, was a site-specific
installation created for the Cube Space (curated by Demetri
Broxton), which was part of a recent series of artwork by Amy M. Ho
that draws from local architecture. Over the last few years, the
Bay Area has experienced an influx of wealth that has helped drive
real estate prices up and as a result, buildings are being
renovated, or torn down and replaced by new development. Creating
work in response to the changing urban landscape, the artist aims
to preserve her memories of the local architecture via large-scale
installations that explore how we inhabit our world both
psychologically and physically. Space is the most immediate medium
through which we understand the world yet we often take it for
granted. Amy M. Ho's artwork explores the role that space and
architecture play in our experiences and their impact on our
individual identities.
Sea Beds and Signals by Dimitra Skandali
June 8 – August 10, 2019
.jpg "Dimitra pro image")
Dimitra Skandali Cube Space installation. Photo by Marie-Luise Klotz.
Sea Beds and Signals, by artist Dimitra Skandali, was a
site-specific installation created for the Cube Space organized by
independent curator Demetri Broxton. Using materials such as
seagrass and seaweed from the Pacific Ocean and found fishing net
from the coasts of Bengal, Skandali's installation is composed of
elements that allude to oceanic environments, pollution and a
growing environmental risk.
Dimitra Skandali grew up on Paros, a Greek island in the Aegean
Sea and was educated in Greece and the Netherlands before moving to
California and earning her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco
Art Institute in 2013. She has been the recipient of numerous
awards and her works have been exhibited throughout the Bay Area,
New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, as well as in the Netherlands,
Italy, Germany, Portugal, the Philippines, and Greece. She lives
and works in the United States and Paros Island, Greece.