	Southern Exposure announces upcoming exhibitions and events Solo Exhibitions: *Speech and Basins,* Sculpture by Matthew Flegle *Permanently Temporary,* Installation by Sarah Smith *Accumulative Dissipation,* Video installation and work by Chris Sollars In the OVERLOOK Project Space: *Accumulative Rubbings,* On-Site Education Program led by Chris Sollars Exhibition Dates: January 13 – February 18, 2006 Opening Reception: Friday, January 13, 7 – 9 pm Artist Talks: Friday, January 13, 6:30 pm Southern Exposure (SoEx) presents solo exhibitions by three San Francisco based artists: Matthew Flegle, Sarah Smith, and Chris Sollars, and an On-Site Education Program led by Chris Sollars in the Overlook Project Space. Flegle, Smith and Sollars will participate in a discussion of their artwork on Friday, January 13th at 6:30 pm with an opening reception to follow from 7 – 9 pm. These exhibitions will be on view from Friday, January 13 through Saturday, February 18, 2006. The exhibition and events are free and open to the public.
	Matthew Flegle, Corpus, 2001	Matthew Flegle fuses the expressive potential of sculpture and installation, examining how physical space affects psychology. Flegle frequently employs domestic renovation materials such as steel studs, drywall, and plastic sheeting to build structures that can be entered and explored. His project Speech and Basins manipulate two types of Western vernacular architecture – a storage shed and church steeple. By altering the structure, Flegle changes the emphasis of the steeple from ascension to introspection. Inspired in part by the topology of the Klein bottle, he merges the two distinct structures so they share surfaces and become a continuous volume. This radical transformation creates a physical space for contemplation and seclusion.
	Sarah Smith, Overture to Memory's Passage, 2005	Sarah Smith combines elements of sculpture, painting, and drawing to create three-dimensional immersive environments that address our relationship to nature. Influenced by over 10 years experience as a scenic and decorative painter, her work resembles the set of an allegorical theater, composed of false architecture and pastoral landscape. Her installation Permanently Temporary will incorporate a sawdust drawing of a treescape and cut-wood silhouettes of cliff edges. Many of these visual features symbolize the passage of time and ultimately, death. The components of her stage setting are pieced together and propped up, inherently revealing their artifice, temporality, and reliance on illusion. Smith endeavors to conjure a sense of loss and longing, and convey nature’s ability to endure and transcend utter devastation.
	Chris Sollars, Pile of Trash, 2005	Chris Sollars presents a large-scale rubbing and site-specific installation that address consumption and waste. Sollars produced a full scale rubbing of a Ford Exhibition sports utility vehicle by wrapping it with paper and rubbing its contours. Appropriating a technique regularly employed to memorialize sacred objects, Sollars aims to critique contemporary societal values. His video installation draws upon a recent performance in which he dressed a team of eleven people as walking piles of garbage and paraded through San Francisco’s Union Square shopping district. This absurd act startled pedestrians and highlighted the surrounding commercial activity as the participants would getup, walk and sit down again. At Southern Exposure, Sollars will construct a massive sculpture, Pile of Trash that houses a video installation exploring how we look at a pile of trash and how it looks at us.
	The On-Site Education Program (OSEP) utilizes Southern Exposure’s gallery to house workshops and projects created out of a unique collaboration between an exhibiting artist and youth. For the On-Site Education Program, Accumulative Rubbings, young artists from Jewish Vocational Services, International Studies Academy, and Potrero Hill Neighborhood House work with exhibiting artist Chris Sollars to explore contemporary every-day life. Students will investigate personal, neighborhood, and social concerns to create drawings using rubbing techniques and document actions using video and photography. The resulting project will be presented in the OVERLOOK Project Space from February 7 – 18, 2006. For more information and images, contact Kristen Evangelista at 415/863-2141 or programs@soex.org. Southern Exposure is located at 401 Alabama at 17th Street in San Francisco. Gallery hours are 11 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Saturday. Gallery Admission is FREE. Website: www.soex.org
	contact: Southern Exposure 401 Alabama Street San Francisco, CA 94110 t: 415-863-2141 f: 415-863-1841 e: soex@soex.org