iCCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary ArtsPotrero Hill
Caguiat Delacruz: The Tramp
Justin Caguiat and Rafael Delacruz's first West Coast institutional show: a new film, installation, paintings and prints riffing on Chaplin's Tramp in Oakland.
More in San Francisco
Somewhere on the tape, butoh performer Hiroko Tamano, in a bowler hat and baggy Tramp suit, presses a sunflower to her face, eyes closed. Whether you catch it is up to the machine: the film was moved to VHS and runs on a modified deck that plays, stops and fast-forwards at random.
Justin Caguiat and Rafael Delacruz remake Chaplin's The Tramp, shot in Fremont in 1915. Tamano, actor Wesley Hrubes and his dog Chips drift through Oakland underpasses and pick up trash in Half Moon Bay's flower fields. You watch from a car's back seat turned couch, facing a CRT, inside walls salvaged from the film set. The gallery guide gives the running time as "infinite", so there is no start time to be late for.
ArtReview read Tamano as "a proxy for artists mourning the slow demise of radical culture in the Bay Area". The catch: its critic only spotted the sunflower after several viewings, so stay for a few loops. Free, Wednesday to Saturday, noon to 6pm.
Look for
The Tramp on the Toshiba
Sit on the car-seat couch as the VHS loop jumps between Tamano, Hrubes and Chips wandering Oakland streets and Half Moon Bay flower fields.
The acid-green Tramp paintings
Look for canvases based on set photographs that show Tamano's silhouette, a wilted sunflower and a skeleton looming over sleeping bodies.
The papier-mâché Tramp
An effigy of Tamano as the Tramp, its body assembled from newsprint.
Tweaker
Fresh-looking bootprints track across the canvas and run into collages of torn, twisted pages stuck to the surface.
The Long Walk
A vitrine of patterned etchings on thin gampi paper, which ArtReview read as possible blueprints for the paintings around it.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Going Solo
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You want a film with a start and an ending: the tape plays, stops and skips at random.
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Image credits
7
- Caguiat Delacruz: The TrampCCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
- Martin Venezky: Process WorkLetterform Archive
- Type for All! Ten Years of Type WestLetterform Archive
- Rex RayCourtesy of Minnesota Street Project
- CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary ArtsMariwlqs / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Letterform ArchiveClyde Charles Brown / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Minnesota Street ProjectPigeonChickenFish / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0