Recology SF
The Memory Library Lends Life Through a Glimpse
Jake Shapiro welcomes us to the Memory Library, an imagined space built to reflect upon the piles of anonymous photographs he gathered while in residence at Recology. In the entryway to the exhibition, we are met with a mixed media, collaged set of bookshelves displaying photo albums and ephemera. Beyond the shelf, the space opens into a gallery of the artist’s paper pulp paintings reinterpreting moments captured by strangers’ cameras.
We are constantly inundated with photographic imagery. Online and in physical space, we live amidst a glut of snapshots–ads, personal social media posts, news and critical documentation. Making sense of our visual world requires a degree of numbness to the oversaturation, a reflexive swiping through, a blurring of our sight, a turn of the head. In an attention economy, consumption is not just the things thrown to the Public Reuse and Recycling Area, but where we lend our focus. In the Memory Library, Shapiro clears out space for us to consider a selection of photographs reinterpreted through handmade paper and paint. With each piece, we sort through details to fill in pieces of the story, deciphering the arrangement of the details we see and the ones we cannot. The lossy format of these new pieces demands that we spend time considering images taken by random strangers, encouraging us to re-familiarize ourselves with the practice of slow looking we all too often tamp down.
Written By Weston Teruya
Their Shadows Combined And The Sun Was Content (2023) // Paper Pulp // 16 ½ x 29”
You Will Leave, But Your Heart Will Always Be Here (2023) // Paper Pulp // 52 x 41”
I Couldn’t Afford A Vacation So I Opened Up Your Photo Album (2023) // Paper Pulp // 38 x 57 ½ “
You Were Drinking Red Wine That Day, I Remember Because I Made It Up (2023) // Paper Pulp // 45 x 43 ½”
It Came True, I know It Did (2023) // Paper Pulp // 17 x 20 ½”
I Don’t Know About Tomorrow, But Today We’re Fishings (2023) // Paper Pulp // 10 ½ x 15 ½”
The Arms That Held Each Other Belonged To The Lovers (2023) // Paper Pulp // 27 ½ x 39 ½
The Splash Marked The Arrival Of Summer (2023) // Paper Pulp // 20 ½ x 29 ½ "
The Cloud Of Ashes Can Only Be Accessed By The Nourishment Of Elders (2023) // Pulped Photographs // 25 ¼ x 21 ½”
If I Can’t Hold It Anymore, Will You (2023) // Photographs, Pulped Photographs // 25 ¼ x 21 ½”
Who Will Be Lost In The Stories We Tell Ourselves (2023) // Collaged Photographs // 42 x 58 ½”