The exhibition compares and contrasts the work of Malena López-Maggi, Mark Johnsen, and We Live in Paradise, California-based artists who produce work which dialogues with concepts and forms inspired by geology. Each body of work presented in Artificial Geologies possesses a synthetic formal relationship to geological and weathering forces —they set to artificially capture their aesthetic complexity.

Ever shifting, geological forces represent a never ending creative and destructive cycle, one which is written in stone —etched, and spread across the whole of Earth’s surface. The processes of each of these artists craft an indexical relationship with geological forms and textures —Artificial Geologies is a showcase of their practices and translation processes.

López-Maggi, Johnsen, and We Live in Paradise pursue different paths of analysis of natural rock processes like erosion and aggregation —making earnest commentary on art and ecology.

Malena López-Maggi (b. 1981, California) is a multimedia artist based in Richmond and received her MFA from Mills College in 2015. For Artificial Geologies López-Maggi will present sculptures and a series of photographic prints produced through a hybrid and layered process —the result of her research on crystalline geometric constructions and color translation.

Mark Johnsen (b. 1986, California) is a printmaker and photographer based in Northern California.  He received his BFA from California College of the Arts in 2011. Johnsen will exhibit a series of monotypes and collages that capture the detailed surfaces of river rocks and mountain-sides —through discreet yet highly detailed prints that draw you into them.

We Live in Paradise a.k.a. Daniel Medina (b. 1990, California) is a musician, poet, and botanist, based in San Francisco. He is an alumni of Fullerton College. Medina will present a synthetic soundscape for Artificial Geologies that addresses environmental forces that exist in interplay with geologic processes, namely weather and biological agents, which as the artist states “quite literally hold the earth together.”