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ALL RISE at Denny Substation Site Concludes with Artist Jesse Sugarmann

The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture’s collaborative temporary art program ALL RISE at the site of Seattle City Light's future Denny Substation is concluding a year and a half of programming with artist Jesse Sugarmann.
Photo of Jesse Sugarmann with a metallic sculpture he created.

Jesse Sugarmann will be the final artist featured in the ALL RISE series at the site of the future Denny Substation.

The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture’s collaborative temporary art program ALL RISE is concluding a year and a half of programming at the site of Seattle City Light’s future Denny Substation with artist Jesse Sugarmann.

Friday, Sept. 25, and Saturday, Sept. 26, from 6 to 10 p.m. (all ages 6 – 8 p.m., 21+ after 8 p.m.) Sugarmann will present an installation of four video and sculptural works from his recent Wake Up Sleeping Giant series.

Photos of a dying Ford Bronco buried in the desert by Jesse Sugarmann.

An image from Jesse Sugarmann’s “Wake Up Sleeping Giant.”

Photo of Sugarmann burying a Ford Bronco in the desert.

An image from Jesse Sugarmann’s “Wake Up Sleeping Giant.”

Photo of a vehicle covered in a blark tarp.

An image from Jesse Sugarmann’s “Wake Up Sleeping Giant.”

The works investigate a Connecticut land mass called Sleeping Giant, SITE’s 1978 installation Ghost Parking Lot, and the sculptural possibilities of vivisepulture (live burial). Previous elements of this series have been exhibited at Space 4 in San Diego and The Grammar Center in Medford, Ore.

Based in Bakersfield, Calif., Sugarmann has long explored culture and commodity through the lens of the American auto industry. The artist’s fascination with the potentiality of his material is at the heart of his practice: Cars balance and fall or teeter to imply a fall are buried or obscured. Sugarmann explores auto components as sculptural objects and the car’s demands on infrastructure and production.

His video experiments have involved American landscapes, from Pacific Northwest forests to the California desert and the vacancy of suburban car dealerships. Sugarmann has exhibited at venues including the Getty Institute and Human Resources in Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo in Mexico City; the Portland, Ore., Institute for Contemporary Art; the Banff Center in Canada; Filmbase in Ireland; the 21C Museum in Louisville, Ky.; and Les Recontres Internationales in Paris and Berlin.

ABOUT ALL RISE

ALL RISE is a series of performances and temporary art installations organized for a city block in the Cascade neighborhood, the site of the future Seattle City Light electrical substation. The series includes artworks in a variety of media through September, 2015. Exhibitions and events are free and open to the public, and provide a platform to support and challenge artists, offer the neighborhood transcendent experiences and inspiration, and further the contemporary art dialogue of the region. By nature of its openness and transformation, the site, formerly a Greyhound bus garage, has become a stage that is watched, if even unknowingly. ALL RISE works with this natural interest by delivering a series of artworks that unfold over the course of the project, and create a sense of wonder. The title for this series is ALL RISE, invites viewers to participate in the unfolding of events.

All RISE is commissioned with Seattle City Light 1% for Art funds and administered by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. www.allriseseattle.org

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