Manifest 770

The original purpose of a space’s architecture may not always be obvious, but its interior design often serve as an indicator as to what the location has witnessed. This is most certainly the case with the current exhibition at Incline Gallery. The space, which is essentially a series of ascending ramps, was originally a morgue; these inclines were used to wheel bodies to the embalming room on the top floor. Manifest 770, a group show curated by Scott S. Jennings and mosshouse, SF, explores this building’s history through artists’ explorations of life and death.

Though ranging a variety of styles and mediums, Manifest 770 is a surprisingly cohesive exhibit. Jason M. Aumann’s photo transfer Memory No. 31(The Space Between) (2011) is a diptych of black-and-white mirrored images depicting a figure in a wooded area. With its faded, blurred images, the piece is reminiscent of a Rorschach test. The left side of the work creates a sense of unease through its use of the horizontal lines that typically appear on static television screens, while the right side has a faded, distorted, vortex-like quality. Memory No. 2 (Lethe) (2010) and Memory No. 26 (2011) both include images of people with no faces, leaving viewers to fill in the blanks with their own memories. Positioned at the top of the ramp next to the embalming room, Aumann’s works evoke the people, now faceless, who once passed through this space.

Jason M. Aumann. Memory No. 26 (2011); pigment, resin, and beeswax varnish on birch wood; 18 x 12 in. Courtesy the Artist and Incline Gallery, San Francisco.

JR Doty’s photographs of Graceland capture another building where the memory of the dead has preserved the space. In the photograph Where We’re Not Allowed (2011), a piano sits waiting as though Elvis were to walk in at any moment. Doty’s richly colored images capture a home that has been dedicated to keeping the memory of a person alive for visitors who are strangers. Her photographs remind us of the unwillingness to let go of the dead and the spaces they inhabited. At Incline Gallery, the memory of the people who once ascended these ramps may be long forgotten, but the history of the space persists.

Manifest 770 is on view at Incline Gallery, in San Francisco, through October 8, 2011.

Emily Vigor received her MA in Art History from Richmond University in London in 2008. She is currently working towards a degree in Library and Archival Science from San Jose State University and works as a cataloger at the Academy of Art University Library.