SHAUN O'DELL ::::

Inspired by his own investigations into apocalyptic anxieties related to the sun and its energies, Shaun O’Dell has created a body of work concerning the mythologies of the sun as a metaphor for America. For his piece We Remember the Sun, O’Dell requested of friends that each write a one-sentence memory of the sun. In the accompanying video, he interviews Jim Uber, an amateur astronomer who looks at sun spots and flares and catalogues what he sees in a logbook. Taken together, the work We Remember the Sun and the interview with Jim Uber come to articulate the personal mythologies different persons associate with the sun, which serves as a larger metaphor for nation and state (the sun’s connection to humanity transcends national borders). O’Dell’s video, Sun October 24th–27th 2002, is taken from NASA footage capturing the sun burning out. For the opening reception, he will perform in front of a projection of the video.

O’Dell makes drawings, videos, music, and sculpture. His work explores the intertwining realities of the human and natural orders. O’Dell has exhibited his work at such venues as Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco and Los Angeles; SFMOMA; the UCLA Hammer Museum; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; and White Box and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. O’Dell received the Richard C. Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship at SFAI in 2006, the Artadia Award in 2005, a SECA Art Award in 2004 from SFMOMA, and a Fleishhacker Foundation Award in 2002. www.shaunodell.com