Peter Foucault working with Chris Treggiari brings MAP to Seattle, WA

Artist, Peter Foucault, first presented the idea of his Mobile Arts Platform (MAP) to us in 2007. Using a vintage retrofitted 1963 Ford Falcon van, Foucault's MAP introduced, and in some cases, reintroduced, the ideas and techniques of fine art practice to local communities with staged presentations of drawing, performance, and sound. Today, the van is paired with Chris Treggiari's mobile art trailer and a vintage Vespa scooter. MAP partnered with San Francisco's SOMArts Cultural Center with presentations at the Precita Eyes Urban Youth Festival, Japantown's Cherry Blossom Festival, and Potrero Hill Neighborhood Association. Additionally, MAP events have been held at RootDivision, Oakland's Art Murmur, and the Zero1 San Jose Art and Technology Festival. 

The current iteration of Mobile Arts Platform was awarded a generous grant from the Seattle Center Foundation to set up daily interactive art installations at the Seattle Center (for Next50, a 50th Anniversary celebration of the Seattle World Fair), from Wednesday, July 17 through Sunday, July 22, as well as satellite programming in neighboring areas. For related information please go to http://www.thenextfifty.org/

Working with a partner, Chris Treggiari, Foucault will unveil two new MAP constructions: A mobile pop-up cinema structure built in collaboration with Patrick Wilson, and a mobile screenprint cart towed behind a vintage Vespa scooter featuring the work of Seattle printmakers selected by PrintZero Studios co-founder Brian Lane.

The installations will feature artwork by MAP, Brian Lane and fellow PrintZero Studios artists, David T. Olsen, Jonathan Grover, Scott Kiernan, Matthew Parrott, Everett Beidler, Justin Hoover, Patrick Wilson, and other local Seattle artists. Musical performances by guest artists will also be featured.

On Sunday, July 22, Foucault will set up "Building Bridges of Peace Station," an interactive pop-up post office/mail art installation, a collaboration between MAP and Bay Area-based non-profit Building Bridges, which made its debut earlier this year at Oakland's Art Murmur.

The MAP Seattle itinerary is:

Wednesday, July 18

1-4pm: MAP Epi-Center Office set up at the Seattle Center featuring interactive artworks and video projects.

6-8pm: Georgetown pop-up event at Georgetown Art Walk

Thursday, July 19 

1-4pm: MAP Epi-Center Office set up at the Seattle Center featuring interactive artworks and video projects. 

6-8pm: Columbia City Art Walk http://communityartscreate.org/

Friday, July 20 

1-4pm: MAP Epi-Center Office set up at the Seattle Center featuring interactive artworks and video projects.

6-8pm: Capital Hill Block Party http://capitolhillblockparty.com/
Saturday, July 21

12-6pm: Interactive MAP programming set up behind the EMP at Seattle Center
Sunday, July 22 

12-6pm: Interactive MAP programming set up behind the EMP at Seattle Center

We are at the Affordable Art Fair!

Los Angelenos welcomed the inauguration of the Affordable Art Fair with exhibitions by many of us, including Micaela  Gallery + Project's Project 1:2012.

Our exhibition included work by Donata Benker, Philip Alden Benn, Sidnea d'Amico, Marilou Desmeules, Kathleen Elliot, Peter Foucault, Michelle Knox, Mark Leibowitz, Susan Longini, Lorraine Peltz, Kevin J. Pocock, and Lucky Rapp.

Peter Foucault in Micromanagement

Peter Foucault presents new work at the Performance Art Institute of San Francisco. Opening Saturday, October 15 at 7.30, performances begin at 8.000 pm.

The Performance Art Institute is located at 575 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA.

Peter Foucault's Pop Up Wrap Up

What: Mobile Arts Platform Pop-Up Wrap-Up Exhibition
Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
When: Sunday, August 14, 1-5PM
How much: Free admission


This free public event event marks the last in series of five collaborative exhibitions for 2010 – 2011. Pop-Up Wrap-Up celebrates the many creative forces who contributed to and interacted with mobile participatory art structures conceived by lead artists Peter Foucault and Chris Treggiari.


Pop-Up Wrap-Up features participatory art making activities as well as original artwork produced by collaborating local artists and by the public at four prior interactive pop-up exhibitions at SOMArts and the Potrero Hill Neighborhood, Northern California Cherry Blossom and Urban Youth Arts festivals.


The retrospective component of Pop-Up Wrap-Up includes a mural by Miranda Bergman and ergonomically innovative seating and structural installations by Furniture Design and Architecture MFA students from California College of the Arts. Pop-Up Wrap-Up will also display video and digital media content commissioned for and displayed at the neighborhood exhibitions, as well as live poetry and performance from the Potrero Hill Neighborhood Festival, video combining historic and contemporary photographs of Potrero Hill by artist and Interim Director of Cultural Affairs JD Beltran, a short documentary about Bay Area murals by John Urquhart, Chris Treggiari and Peter Foucault, and video by Peter Foucault and Nico Crisafulli featuring street art from India & Berlin.


Pop-Up Wrap-Up revisits three participatory projects included in MAP’s installations at the Urban Youth Arts and Cherry Blossom festivals. Artist James Gregg will produce a new set of stencils for an interactive stencil art assembly station. Pop-Up Wrap-Up also resurrects the Yes, We Can ________ Positive Picketing Project, which allows any member of the public to create a mini-pronouncement of values by customizing a ready-made protest style sign with their own message. There will be a live reading of haiku submitted by the public at the Cherry Blossom festival, as well as an opportunity to submit new haiku.


About the Mobile Arts Platform (MAP)
The Mobile Arts Platform (MAP) is comprised of two large-scale, interactive sculptures that are “activated” by a mobile exhibitions program. MAP is a collaboration of Peter Foucault’s Fal-Core Van and Chris Treggiari’s Mobile Store appearing in locations throughout the Bay Area. The partnership supports MAP’s goal to increase arts participation and deepen community engagement through the arts with innovative intervention at three neighborhoods street fairs and festivals in San Francisco and two events occurring at SOMArts. 


MAP creates autonomous exhibition spaces and reaches out to the public to promote strong creative and community bonds; an artistic research lab where a cross-pollination of
mediums and genres can occur. Events variously include video screenings, visual art, performance art, live music, interactive artworks, and culinary art. In essence, MAP builds a temporary, creative microcosm where community and creativity can intersect and flourish.

MAP is presented in collaboration with SOMArts and supported by a grant from the Creative Work Fund.

The Mobile Arts Platform is supported in part by the Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund supported by generous grants from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and by the San Francisco Arts Commission.


For more information please visit: http://mobileartsplatform.wordpress.com/

Peter Foucault MAP and the Cherry Blossom Festival

Peter Foucault's Mobile Art Project (MAP), a collaborative project with San Francisco Bay Area artist Chris Treggiari and SOMArt's Cultural Center, will have an interactive exhibition set up at the Cherry Blossom Festival in San Francisco on Sunday, April 9, and a second pop-up exhibition the following day at SOMArt's "All Access" show.


Mobile Arts Platform: Cherry Blossom Festival is the second in a series of five pop-up exhibitions presented by SOMArts Cultural Center and MAP in 2010–11.  Each exhibition is designed to deepen arts participation at city fairs and festivals and to make art accessible to all communities. 

Peter Foucault's Auto-Matic

Curated by Peter Foucault @Root Division:

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 12, 6 to 10 pm Exhibition Dates: June 9th- 26th, 2010

Gallery Hours: Wednesdays – Saturdays, 2-6 pm (or by appointment)

AUTO-MANIC Ever since the first interstate highways began carving a path through the urban landscape in the early 50’s, California has been the epitome of American “Car Culture.” Nostalgic images of the warm summer sun reflecting off the chrome bullets on the ached tail fin of a steel behemoth have given way to technologically savvy hybrids that can tear up a track at 0-60 mph in less than four seconds, and are nearing 130 miles per gallon.

From Thunderbirds to Teslas, the freeways, side streets, beaches and parking lots of California have always been clogged to the saturation point with automobiles. These everyday objects have deeply imbedded themselves into the collective unconscious of artists working within this urban environment, and created a fertile trajectory for exploring the relationship between man and four wheeled machine.

In Venice Beach, CA, at the Speedway Avenue Garage on April 23, 1974, Chris Burden had himself voluntarily crucified onto a Volkswagen Bug. The following year, on July 4, 1975 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, CA, the Bay Area Art Collective Art Farm staged a full-scale collision of the Phantom Dream Car (a modified 1959 Cadillac) into a flaming wall of televisions as part of their piece “Media Burn”. Utilizing the car as a cultural icon and critiquing American ideals of heroics and technological superiority, these early performances gave way to a new breadth of work in the generations to come.

At our current vantage point, within a deep and crippling economic recession, with CO2 emissions reaching an alarming level and gas prices teetering on the preposterous at times, we must re-evaluate our relationship with the beloved car. With the devastating fall of the big American Car Companies and the disappearance of such iconic brands as Pontiac, a dramatic new relationship is evolving between producer and consumer, pragmatist and dreamer. Alternative modes of transportation are becoming more visible. Bicycles are beyond trendy; messenger bags are the new fuzzy dice. There are golf carts on city streets. High Speed Rail proposals are finally being funded.

As we speed off into a new era of travel, technology and environmental responsibility, the artists in Auto-Manic respond to the role of the automobile, and it’s alternatives, in art.

Curated by Peter Foucault

FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY:

Kevin E. Taylor and M.A.P. (Mobile Arts Platform – Peter Foucault and Chris Treggiari)

ARTISTS:

Cody Bratt, Laura Garzon, Justin Hoover, Shea Naer, Guy Overfelt, Michael Pedroni, Damaris Rivera, Kirsten Rae Simonsen, Susanne Slavick, Heather Sparks, Anna-Maria Vag, Michelle Waters

ROOT DIVISION GALLERY 3175 17th Street (at S. Van Ness) San Francisco, CA 94110 415.863.766 www.rootdivision.org

Peter Foucault

Peter Foucault presents at OFF Space Proliferations (part 2).

Public Storage, 2490 Marin St. San Francisco, CA

Exhibition: Friday March 12th through Thursday March 26th, 2010

Artist Reception Friday March 12th, 7:30 to 9:30pm.

From Wealth to Stealth

OFF Space, an artist-run curatorial collective, brings contemporary works uptown to swanky wealth management offices in the financial district and into the ‘hood, behind the roll up door of a Public Storage unit in Bay View Hunter’s Point with Proliferations.

True to its nomadic nature OFF Space mounts exhibitions in a variety of locations.

Proliferations, a two-site show premiered at the wealth management offices of Rhodes & Fletcher on Dec. 3^rd and runs through March 4. In contrast, Part 2 will be presented on the sly to escorted groups in a Public Storage unit on the evening of March 12 and then by appointment through March 27.

Artists Alicia Escott, Peter Foucault, Eric Gangsei, Michael Ryan, Justin Hoover and Alexis Arnold will present various artworks.

Peter Foucault sets up mechanical systems through which viewers and robots interact to produce densely layered graphite drawings of repetitive and random marks. Sculptor and video artist David Stein presents a unique look at media and culture with his totem-pole video exploration of popular print media.

To learn more about OFF Space visit off-space.org.

THAI BUI with PETER FOUCAULT + FRIENDS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
4 January 2010

Contact: info@micaela.com
415.551.8118
Micaëla Gallery
49 Geary Street, No. 234
San Francisco, CA 94108 USA

Opening 5 January
Reception 7 January
Exhibition through 27 February


SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - 4 January 2010 (for immediate release) Micaëla Gallery is proud to present "THAI BUI with PETER FOUCAULT + FRIENDS," a multi-media exhibition showcasing artworks by Thai Bui and Peter Foucault.


"THAI BUI with PETER FOUCAULT + FRIENDS" introduces new work by artists Thai Bui and Peter Foucault (with collaborators, Jonathan Glover and Jake Coolidge), and reintroduces earlier works by both artists. Shown in context and in collaboration, the works respond to ideas of community and time with Bui's installation of "Don't Pressure Me" sculptures and Foucault's "Attraction/Repulsion:Redux II".

Thai Bui's sculptures are ongoing projects that combine the elegance of Nature's forms with the phenomenon of unlikely bonding. He views his work as a symbolic unification of opposing forces, a visual description of positive and negative ideas. Bui's use of Haiku to organize his work, introduces disciplined energy and a poetic quality to his work. For his solo exhibition at Micaela Gallery, Bui presents works on paper and sculpture influenced by personal history and philosophies. While a sense of isolation pervades Bui's sculptures and drawings, his work addresses the relationship of his environment with his persona. For example, Don't Pressure Me, might be interpreted as an personalized outcry from an object's perspective, or introspectively, as a weapon, a grenade or a bomb from Bui's youth.

Bui uses materials that chronicle aspects of his everyday life - inner tubes from his bicycle, stones from his garden, and gold from early memories. When viewed through Bui's sculptural lens, these materials take on a new, slightly menacing aspect, referencing conflict and tension. In his quiet manner, Bui's drawings, present introspection and freedom from his sculpture in a meditative response to natural elements.

Bui received his MFA from Stanford University in 1992. He is the recipient of a Stanford University Scholarship (1990), the Harold E. Weiner Memorial Prize (San Francisco Art Institute), the Skowhegan Scholarship, and the SOBEL Scholarship. He recently returned to Viet Nam and presented a solo exhibition in Ha Noi, and has also presented his work at various exhibitions in Cupertino, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

Peter Foucault creates works on paper, videos, and installations, fueled by his love of drawing and mark making. Upon receiving his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005, he embarked on a series of Drawing-Projects, using systems he developed to produce complex abstract compositions. At the root of these projects is a constant tension between control and the loss of control.

For his solo show at Micaela Gallery, Foucault presents a new series of works on paper and an interactive multi-media installation. Viewer participation plays an integral role in executing his drawings, as illustrated by his Embryo and Four-Square-Squared series. In these works, Foucault devised situations where audience interaction influenced the outcome of large compositions created by small sound-activated robots. Upon completing each event, Foucault returned to each drawing with his hand and further developed these marks, rendering form to the finished work. In the media room, Foucault will be showing Attraction/Repulsion:ReduxII, an audience interactive multi-media drawing installation. At the opening event, this installation will include video and audio elements by San Francisco Bay Area artists Jonathan Grover and Jake Coolidge, and resulting in two site-specific drawings that document the collaboration.

Concept driven, Foucault's work often utilizes objects that reference printmaking and multiplicities. Piecesfrom his Evolution, Ex-Libris and New Math series appropriate ephemera such as antique Florentine papers and U.S. government survey maps, and respond to them as primary abstract matrices that can be re-coded, drawn into and transformed into a new system of information.

Foucault has participated in numerous exhibitions nationwide, with recent solo shows at the SFMOMA Museo Café, the Richmond Art Center (Richmond, CA), and Blankspace Gallery (Oakland, CA). His work has been included in group shows at the Smithsonian Institutes' Freer and Sackler Gallery, the Portland Art Center, Ohge Ltd. (Seattle, WA), Works San Jose, and Mission 17 (San Francisco, CA). In 2007-2009, his artwork was presented on exhibition during Art Basel Miami Beach week, Bridge Art Fair (New York), and his interactive robotic drawing installations have been presented at the NASA Aimes Research Center, The Lab (San Francisco), and the Zero1 Art and Technology Fair (San Jose, CA). Foucault is a freshly awarded grant recipient presenting work at the 2010 Zero1 Art and Technology Biennial Fair in San Jose, California.

Recent reviews of Foucault's work have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly (Pick of the Week), NBC Bay Area News, ArtWeek, Wired Magazine, Stretcher Magazine, and Artnet Magazine. In April 2009, his drawing Four Square was featured on the Cover of California Home and Design Magazine. He lives and works in Oakland, CA.

The exhibition opens Tuesday, January 5. The opening reception, with artists in attendance, is Thursday, January 7 from 5:00 to 7:30pm.

A print exhibition catalog, PDF exhibition catalog, photographs and high resolution images are available upon request.

Bridge Art Fair|Miami Beach 2008

DECEMBER 4-7, 2008 Catalina Hotel, Room 124 1732 Collins Ave., Miami Beach

Micaëla Gallery presents the work of Gerald Cannon, Peter Foucault, Scott Kiernan, Scott Kildall, Taliaferro Jones, Jenna North, Lorraine Peltz, Tobias Tovera, Anne Yalon and David Yun at Bridge Art Fair|Miami Beach 2008 from Dec 4 through Dec 7. Read more...Current Exhibition Previous exhibition: Stig Persson | The Big Silence: works 2003-2008 Fairs: SOFA Chicago 2008, Bridge Art Fair|Miami Beach 2008 Gallery Calendar Exhibition catalogs are available for purchase.

The Weather Reconnaisance at the Garage Biennale

This evening (cold and foggy), I attended the Weather Reconnaisance show at the Garage Biennale this evening with my new neighbor, George Lawson (Room for Painting Room for Paper). The Weather Reconnaissance show was everything I expected from Jenna North and Peter Foucault - dramatic, edgy and formal - as MFA graduates are taught. Sparely curated, the works by young emerging local artists showed a common atmospheric thread, environmental awareness and hope for socio-political debate that is meaningful and communally enriching. The images shown were extemporaneously taken with an iPhone (apologies for the quality) and meant to share a sense of this short-lived exhibition (4 hours, 1 night only).

Jenna North and Peter Foucault at The Garage Biennale

The Weather Reconnaissance, jointly curated by Jenna North and Peter Foucault
The Garage Biennale, 2830 Pacific Ave. , San Francisco, CA
November 22nd 2008 7PM – 10PM

Artists can tune their antennas like no other species, and the Weather Reconnaissance is an attempt to exhibit a diverse range of creative work in response to both the micro and macro interpretations and influences of this force that affects everything from mood to doom.

Also showing: Angela Baker, Lisa Blatt, Zack Eichelberger, Peter Foucault, Sid Garrison, Jessica Haggenjos, Rachel Jablo, Scott Kiernan, Keira Kotler, Mary Anne Kluth, Yoon Lee, John Melvin, Andrew Mills, Jenna North, Shalo P, Kevin Parks Hauser, Jackson Patterson, David Sanchez Burr, Larry Sheradon, Patrick Wilson

Performances by: Pete Ippel, Dori Latman, Jsun Adrian Mccarty, Bryan Reuter of Cloud Archive

Curated by Jenna North and Peter Foucault

Peter Foucault

Peter Foucault will present his work to the Miami art world again this December at Bridge Art Fair, Miami Beach. Currently, Peter is enjoying the sweet taste of success at his show, External Influences, at the Richmond Art Center. Kenneth Baker, lauding Peter's style in a recent article on sfgate.com, wrote, "Foucault's procedure connects his work with the Surrealist lineage of automatism, the chance-enamored strategies of Fluxus and oddities on the fringes of art such as Harold Cohen's computer-generated drawings." External Influences, as described by the Richmond Art Center, explores the collaborative process between human and machine through the medium of drawing. The majority of works shown will be created on-site over the course of the exhibition, transforming the gallery into an active project space that will constantly generate new images, ideas and synchronicities. September 30 - October 31, 2008.