Sahar Khoury | ZOO

I am transported to Dheisheh, a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian territories; designed 50 years ago to be temporary, this has become a permanent home for many. I’m walking up winding, unnamed streets narrowly sandwiched between crumbling walls, their exteriors covered with layers of faded posters and painted stencils. Concrete floors and tin roofs, exposed rebar and half-built cinderblock structures, rebuilt and repaired–everywhere is evidence of dislocation.

Sahar Khoury scours the urban landscape for castaways: security bars or fence posts that were discarded in favor of visually pleasing replacements, or disposed of altogether in the wake of demolition for a new building site. She reimagines this refuse— gathered nearby her West Oakland studio—to build her sculptures. The resulting work is not specific to any place, yet is insistently local–this is what is being thrown out. The work is able to exist out of place, yet be about place.

Luca Antonucci | The Custodian

In “The Custodian,” Luca Antonucci explores issues of authenticity and authorship of art. Starting from an obsession with art forgeries and their implications, Antonucci focused on the practice of art conservation for the work in his installation. The conservator is tasked with the impossible challenge of making an artwork last indefinitely but who inevitably alters the work in an attempt at preservation. Apt for a seasoned publisher, the core of Antonucci’s site-specific installation takes book form — one that cleverly employs ambiguity to frame a collection of found images that muddle the definition of art. Antonucci’s installation also challenges traditional display practices: while it is conventional to hang 2D work on a wall with a 60’’ center, said wall is traditionally facing the viewer.