Downtown San Jose’s art community thrived in the moonlight on Thursday with the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art’s “Art After Dark” event.
The Institute held its monthly after-hours hang out to showcase exhibitions including “Sense of Self,” “Clive McCarthy: Electric Paintings” and “Stas Orlovski: Chimera.” From 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. The Institute opened its doors to San Jose’s community for nightlife benefits.
Membership manager Lisa Cavigliano said, “We like to put these on because daily we close at 5 p.m. Everyone who has work or school doesn’t get the time to come by.”
Cavigliano welcomed guests through the doors and onto the wooden floors of the exhibitions. Indie and classical music played throughout the exhibition space.
“Sense of Self” was curated by Marcela Pardo Ariza, Tammy Rae Carland, Erica Deeman, Jamil Hellu and Stephanie Syjuco to explore deep connections around identity.
The exhibition’s gallery label said the art celebrates the power of photographic portraiture in order to ignite empathy and to break down barriers.
Visual artist Jamil Hellu collaborated with members of the LGBTQ+ community using portraits to explore their histories and cultural lineage.
“It’s very eye-opening. I appreciate the beauty of it, the ability to capture a singular moment,” San Jose resident Kris Procel said.
In a darker setting, “Clive McCarthy: Electric Paintings” was an immersive installation of everchanging painterly images. The images flowed in sequence and showed brush strokes or dabs of color.
Portraits, streams of color and distorted images were visually projected from start to finish. Audience members could go back and see different images than before. Starting with blank canvases, facial portraits and color collages appeared in sped-up motion so the art looked as if it were drawing itself.
Dr. Christopher Burkett, a lecturer for San Jose State’s school of social work, attended the Institute’s “Art After Dark” as a visual artist himself.
“It’s therapeutic for me,” Burkett said. “We’re all creative people and for me, being around art or expression is motivating.”
A brown room curated by artist Erica Deeman invited visitors in with a portrait series of five African American men of different ages. Deeman said in the gallery label that the portraits aimed to question assumptions about race and how people analyze faces based on visual expectations and historic portrayals.
“For black people, the structure of being seen has always been compromised historically and in the present,” Deeman said in the gallery label.
Aside from the “Art After Dark” exhibitions, the Institute opened The LGBTQ Youth Space and filled the front windows of the Institute with “Chris Eckert: Art & Life.”
Eckert’s installation included two machines scanning the internet for comments about art and remarks about life. The transcriptions filled the windows with collected sentences such as “Life can truly change” and “Love is our only existential solution.”
“I appreciate the process the most . . . it may be small, whimsical remarks but ultimately it evolves into something substantial,”
said Burkett.
The Institute’s exhibitions were separated through rooms ranging with bright and dark lighting. “Clive McCarthy: Electric Paintings” and “Stas Orlovski: Chimera” only had projected lights while “Sense of Self” was vibrant in lighting.
The artwork was accompanied by gallery labels that identified the artists and described the meanings behind the art or photography.
The Institute gathered art for the exhibitions from San Francisco art galleries such as the Jessica Silverman Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Anthony Meier Fine Arts, as well as San Jose’s The LGBTQ Youth Space and the artists themselves.
SJSU psychology freshman Lilliana Contreras said, “What stands out to me the most is the colors . . . It really draws me in. From the light show to the portraits, it’s all super fascinating.”
Aside from visual art, a few poems were displayed as gallery labels.
Artist Marcela Pardo Ariza extended her “Kin” series into the “Sense of Self” exhibition.
Ariza’s poem visualized the relationship between self and community, with lines that said “It’s ageless and ageful / It’s silent but not too often / Kin is what keeps us here.”
The poetry was scattered next to the artwork. Ariza’s poem was on the wall near a large, four-portrait display of human bondage.
The Institute ended “Art After Dark” at 10 p.m., but the exhibitions will remain open daily until March 15.
