Featuring work by:

Liat Berdugo
Gregory Chatonsky
Tom Estes
Anthony Fader
Timothy Furstnau
Ollie Glatzer
Gabriel Harp
Lori Hepner
Faith Holland
Antoinette Lafarge
Rebecca Nagle
Jody Oesterreicher
Liz Rodda
Paul Shortt
Joel Swanson
Daniel Temkin
Julia Vallera
Heather Warren-Crow

An infinite loop of questions from Yahoo Answers randomly paired and spoken by a computer as rhyming couplets. Dozens of girls doing the splits to the accompaniment of Billy Joel’s “Just The Way You Are” performed by a man who is definitely not Billy Joel. A woman creating a Photoshopped version of her own face as a mask, and then wearing it around. Dots per inch writ large. “Hypernatural Airffiti”. An artist who will do whatever the internet tells her to do for fifteen minutes. Lady Gaga’s live Twitter feed translated into Morse code and beamed out to Pioneer Square. Tweets tagged “confession” broadcast out into the street. Abstract portraits created by translating Twitter posts into binary code that controls the output of a spinning LED. Drawings of photographs from the OkCupid profiles of people who have looked at the artist’s OkCupid profile which are then photographed being held by the artist while imitating the person’s facial expression and then emailed to the OkCupid member who posted the original photograph. The roles of World of Warcraft avatar and real-world player, switched. A woman on a screen whose mood is controlled by live CNN headlines. Elongated silk stoles consisting of four different-colored threads representing the nucleotides A,U,C, and G, woven in sequence to exhibit the full human mitochondrial genome. A printed directory of every internet domain beginning with the word “serious”. (Seriously.) A large, hand-cut carpet which reads “Rolling On the Floor Laughing”….

Read the call for entries.

a still from Gergory Chatonsky's "World State"

FICTILIS

FICTILIS

A collection of collections. Featuring work by:

Center for Genomic Gastronomy
Gina Coffman
Michael Demers
Adam Farcus
Timothy Furstnau
Alan S. Hopkins
Tim Hutchings
Cat Jensen
Mary Anne Kluth
Matt Lee
Noah Pedrini
Ben Pranger
Mary Rothlisberger
Hugh Russell
Dominic Sansone
Sarah Sinclair
Abby Spangel Perry
Ryan Thompson

The world’s largest collection of “mailpiece security screens” (or envelope patterns).  A collection of “meteorwrongs” (rocks mistakenly identified as meteorites) from the Arizona State University’s famous collection.  A set of ceramic models based on a geologist’s verbal descriptions of favorite rocks. A small, traveling natural history museum that holds a lovingly assembled and ever changing exhibit of natural objects.A collection of sticky notes found all over the world. Selections from the Play Generated Map and Document Archive of paper documents created during play. A collection of 120 shoe heels found on the streets of Chicago between the years 1989-1992, with map marking each location. Photographic documentation of lost tennis balls. Twenty 1970s photographs whose provenance is unknown. A collection of matchboxes from India. An archive of collections of dried slugs, pet coffins, clay and shell sculptures, sweater lint art, and more from a 1980s childhood. 30 variations of Cobra Commander action figures arranged according to color. Crushed Crush bottles and cans photographed exactly as they are found.  A collection of used 35mm film canisters, flattened and photographed in a uniform method. One month’s worth of preserved food for an adult human. Two years worth of nail clippings. Four years of beard clippings. Seven years of drain catch from a New York City loft. A collection of tiny, unholdable pieces of bar soap melded together. A lifetime of daily to-do lists.

And more….

Exhibition runs through March 29th.

FICTILIS

Text in public places. Notices. Rules. Warnings. Labels. Menus. Plaques. Certificates and other official documentation. Historical markers. Flyers. Broadsides. Posters.

And not only text: Symbols, logos, mascots. Things which stand for other things. Wayfindings, indexations. Things which point the way, or point to other things.

Signifiers and signified. Either, or both. Signs.

Deadline: May 18th 2012.
Exhibition mid-June 2012, precise dates TBD.
Apply here.

FICTILIS

FICTILIS

a reading group/series

Calling all word-lovers, trash-pickers, puzzle-solvers, joke-tellers, linguists, lexicographers, and librarians: We are organizing a reading event where participants share only text that they themselves did not write. Especially pieces that are not already recognized for their “literary” quality, by entities not known as “Authors”. Dictionaries, instruction manuals, to-do lists, internet commentary, latrinalia, random generators, transcripts of court proceedings, newscasts, fine print, spam, whatever.  Words wherever they appear. High and low, above, beneath, from every angle. Circum-text.

We will gather monthly and share pieces. We will invite visiting writers to share pieces of their own choosing. We will have fun. Interested?  Email circumtext@fictilis.com.

FICTILIS

Read the Cat Faces call for entries.

Featuring work by:
Laura Averill
Liat Berdugo + Leora Fridman
Jeremy Christopherson
Dead Squirrel (Kurt Chiang + Caitlin Stainken)
Tom Deslongchamp
Sabrina Habel
Clare Hebert
Susan Gallacher-Turner
Tory Franklin
Jason Nelson
Dennis Palazzolo
Jessica Phoenix
Jeremy Rotsztain
Paul Valadez
Cecelia Venolia
Mike Wurn

More background reading:
Ethan Zuckerman’s Cut Cat Theory of Digital Activism
Sianne Ngai’s The Cuteness of the Avant Garde

On display:
A new Cat Face-themed game by net artist and cyberpoet Jason Nelson. An homage to the legendary Tokyo night life character known as Daiyamondo Neko, or “Diamond Cat”. Crowdsourced imaginings of cat-like plastic surgery on various celebrities. A collection of cat calls heard by women in the San Francisco’s Mission District over the course of a year and a half. Recollections of graffiti on cat-face-shaped drainage pipes in Los Angelese. Photos of pets on Flickr analyzed digitally and re-worked into still images from animations made in C++. And much more….

"Lioness" by Susan Gallacher-Turner

“Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one society alone among others, so man is not alone in the universe. When the spectrum or rainbow of human cultures has finally sunk into the void created by our frenzy; as long as we continue to exist and there is a world, that tenuous arch linking us to the inaccessible will still remain, to show us the opposite course to that leading to enslavement; man may be unable to follow it, but its contemplation affords him the only privilege of which he can make himself worthy; that of arresting the process, of controlling the impulse which forces him to block up the cracks in the wall of necessity one by one and to complete his work at the same time as he shuts himself up within his prison; this is a privilege coveted by every society, whatever its beliefs, its political system or its level of civilization; a privilege to which it attaches its leisure, its pleasure, its peace of mind and its freedom; the possibility, vital for life, of unhitching, which consists –Oh! fond farewell to savages and explorations!— in grasping, during the brief intervals in which our species can bring itself to interrupt its hive-like activity, the essence of what it was and continues to be, below the threshold of thought and over and above society: in the contemplation of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity, and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.”
-  Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, 1955  [R.I.P. Renton  - FICTILIS]

"a cat bides his time" by Tom Deslongchamp

FICTILIS
210 S Washington St
Seattle, WA 98104

 Click here for photos from opening night.

FICTILIS

opening reception Thursday November 3rd 6-9pm

This November, FICTILIS presents a gallery-wide installation/exhibition celebrating the art of xerography (photocopying). The FICTILIS space will transform into a pop-up copy shop that is pre-stocked with a wide selection of ready-to-copy artworks, by artists from Seattle and beyond, which will blanket the space’s 17-ft-high walls. Visitors can use on-site copy machines to interact with the collection in several ways and contribute to its evolution over the course of the exhibition.

FREE: one copy of anything you bring in (two if you give one to us)
$1 for one copy of anything on the walls
$5 for one original on the walls, if you replace it with a copy
$10 for one original, without making a copy

New York City artist Raphael Griswold contributes a month-long edition of serial xerographs faxed each day to Pioneer Square from across the continent.

Los Angelest artist Danielle McCullough contributes a 105-sheet xerographic treatment of the Google “finger spam” phenomenon entitled “Ring out wild bells!!!/ Say unto others what you would have them/say unto you, only way louder!” (view her Kickstarter page to help fund the project further). From her statement:

In this book, I have memorialized the gestures of distracted clerical workers, myself included, who have inadvertently inserted ourselves into the historical archive as embodied mistakes –disrupting the seamless translation of public domain texts into digital commodities as we insert our fingers into the margins. During breaks in my work at a library I’ve scanned a 1901 version of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam” and inserted a parallel message in American Sign Language. This finger spelling interprets notes of encouragement, taken from the Tennyson poem and Naomi Klein’s address to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Participating artists include:

Aaron Khawaja / Ali Osborn / Amanda Schoofs / Anthony Balkan / Ashley Hagen / Barbara Ekstrom / Bill Dimichele / Blade Birch / Bradley Miller / Bren Munroe / Brian Nogues / Cara Levine / Carl Baker / Catherine Trapani / Chelsea Alvarez / Chelsea Kowitz / Cheryl Wormley / Chris Ando / Christopher Clark / Craig Latchaw Jr. / Danielle McCullough / Davis Liambac / Derek Dickey / Emily Wiseman / Fox Anthony Spears / Geronimo Legaspi / Graham Downing / Gregory Carlson / Heather Walters / Jamie Olmstead / Jason Byrnes / Jason T. Miles / Jay Passer / John M Bennett / Justin Mata / Katie Herzog / Katrina Castillo / Kelly Froh / Lauren Tyler Norby / Lilia Felipe / Lindsey St.Pierre / Lucy Morehouse & Scott Davis / Luke Munn / Lydia Frederick / Lyssa Barsda / Madeline Courtney / Marcy Gussenhofen / Mariangela Guatteri / Marisa Prefer / Max Clotfelter / Meadow Starts with P (Andrew, Vienne, and Raffi Peterson) / Michael B. Baum / Michael Blake / Michelle Rozic / Michelle Wakeland / Miles Lewis / Miles Mattison / Nick Wolf / Nico Vassilakis / Nicole Lavelle / Omar Cervantes / Rachel Chiodo / Raphael Griswold / Richard Wynne / Rosa Mcelheny / Sam Sheppard / Samantha Indrieri / Scott F. Hall / Shihori Nakayama / Steve Quenell / Teresa Grasseschi / Tim Miller / Toran Kotter / Valerie Nichols / Vinh Ho / Wayne Diem Kleppe / Wendy Ann Witsoe / Xavier Oden / Zeina Baltagi

and FICTILIS: Timothy Furstnau / Andrea Steves / Isabel Blue / Rani Ban

The show also features works submitted by groups of students from San Francisco International High School, Youngstown University (Ohio), and California State University Northridge’s Printmaking department, and will include a sneak peek into the world’s largest collection of “mailpiece security screens” – the patterns printed on the  insides of envelopes – which will be displayed in its entirety in the future.

FICTILIS
210 S Washington
Seattle, WA 98104

FICTILIS

This exhibition focused on the colors of shipping containers in Seattle and other port cities. In our call for entries we asked for work with a limited color palette taken from the downtown Seattle port (Terminals 46 and 30).

We also conducted extensive research about the subject of container colors and produced an infographic, a swatchbook, and “Containerization” shirts for the show.

The exhibition features work by Therese Buchmiller, Christopher Gideon, Madeline Courtney, Marc Hume, Andrea Steves, Ron Hemphill,, Robin Siegl, Greg Boudreau, Robert Strah, Patti Bowman, David Verba, Nam Hoang, and Suze Wolf.

Design Less Better contributed a “telePORTation booth”, which transformed photos of visitors at the opening into container-shaped pixelated images using our limited palette.

Read the full press release.

FICTILIS

Some of these can be seen and purchased in the Goods section of our site.

FICTILIS