On today’s installment of the Afternoon Report: Ins and Outs
A sandwich board propped up on Mission Street Wednesday afternoon invited passersby to enter the long-shuttered, yet newly under-construction, Grand Theater to “Glance Inside the Body.” Always curious about human inner life, I stepped into the mysterious old theater in the midst of transformation for an afternoon’s peep.
“Glance Inside the Body” is a large-scale multimedia installation by French artist Xavier Lucchesi hosted by the Grand’s new tenant the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. As the name of the exhibit promises, Lucchesi’s work offers a layered look into the human body’s complex interiors.
It’s actually quite a literal glance. Part of the exhibit includes footage from endoscopy videos.
Said videos are projected in a variety of colors against various X-Ray photos printed onto transparency and hung from the ceiling. Around the exhibition space, the almost abstract journey through human organs animates an X-ray images of a skeleton, a large landscape, a parts of motorcycle.
“He wants people to look at body in a different way,” said Dorothy Santos, a community and grants manager for Gray Area. “It’s about seeing body in a gesture that is unfamiliar.”
Lucchesi’s exhibit, which is part of the larger art festival Image as Location that explores the relationship of pictures and place, does have the effect of making you see the body in a new way. Watching the slow moving endoscopy video, refracted in pastel-colored light, whatever innards it depicts became suddenly, surprising kind of pretty to look at.
An exhibit exploring interiority and exteriority is an appropriate one for Gray Area at this point it its development.
“A lot of people walk by us and think we look suspicious from the outside,” said Josette Melchor, founder of Gray Area, who walked through the exhibit as I gazed into the projected imaged. She explained that people who do take the risk and venture into the new space to see the current exhibit have been mostly intrigued. She also has to do a lot of explaining to people who come in that Gray Area is not some new tech company, but an arts organization.
While the arts nonprofit has been occupying the Grand Theater since June, hosting its creative coding classes, and some events, it’s actually not officially open or done with its construction. Temporary curtains separate an auditorium, the exhibition space currently showing “Glance Inside the Body,” and shared office space of Gray Area’s “cultural incubator” for other arts organization.
According to Melchor, what’s in the Grand Theater now is just a skeleton of what the Gray Area will do with the space. Despite the newly-laid carpets and freshly painted marquee, there’s more construction that the organization needs to undertake. For one, in order to comply with the building’s current zoning and fulfill its vision of always having its doors open to the public, Gray Area will build a retail space in the Grand’s lobby.
Also, they’re not done getting all the permits they need from the city. Melchor says it hasn’t been easy, and everything has taken longer than expected. They’ll be hosting a few more events until November 7th, but won’t have their grand opening and offer a full roster of events until March, when the additional construction and permit gathering should be complete.
“This is just a taste,” said Melchor.
For a taste (and a glimpse), Lucchesi’s work will be on view daily until October 26th, between 12-6pm, for a suggested donation of $5-$20. Gray Area will also be hosting the musical artist Lusine on November 7th before going dark to finish its renovations. For more information, visit Gray Area’s website of events.
A look at Xavier Lucchesi’s “Glance Inside the Body” via Instagram, courtesy of Dorothy Santos.
This has been your Afternoon Report—a new series we’re trying out in which we offer a quickie post-meridian rundown of some minor developments in the always-happening streets of the Mission District. Got ideas or suggestions? Let us know what you think by sending an email to info@missionlocal.com.
