October 10 through November 10, 2022

Reception: Thursday October 11, 5:30-7:30pm

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to present Not Drowning, Waving, an exhibition of works by Nayland Blake.

Marking over 15 years working with Nayland Blake, the gallery will place on view a selection of works from his past four exhibitions, presented with a new video work by the artist.

In his exhibition FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX! at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and his presentation at Gallery Paule Anglim, Blake engages the history of community and social environment, examining the context for his practice.  Beginning in an age of social, group and identity politics that was restricted to active and local participants (in comparison to the digital ‘communities’ springing from social networking), Blake’s career was formed from observation and quotation.  Direct forms of interaction with others (performance, collaboration, teaching, sampling, finding and repurposing used objects) became central to his practice.  In his latest work he examines early locales and signage that served to define social awareness and change, and inform his own art making.

Educated at Bard and Cal Arts, Nayland Blake lived in San Francisco early in his career, making an important contribution to the arts community, and has taught here from time to time.  His works are in the collections of SFMOMA, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art,  and the Walker Art Center.  Blake is now the chair of the MFA program at the International Photography Center in New York.

Nayland Blake’s exhibition, FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX! will be on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, October 12 - January 27, 2013.  See YBCA.org for details on related programs.  Blake will give a lecture at California College of the Arts, at the San Francisco campus on November 27, 2012.