It takes a moment to orient yourself upon walking into J Rivera Pansa’s exhibition Imagers at San Francisco’s Et al. gallery. The brightness of the space’s tall white walls almost eclipses the delicate items arranged within it. Presenting works that the transdisciplinary artist has made over the past two years, the current show is their most comprehensive exhibition to date, and demonstrates how the artist’s practice has grown to encompass larger work and new materials. As your eyes adjust, the works assert themselves, reveling quietly in the power of this expanded scale.
Ringing the walls of the gallery are five hanging grids composed of photo prints and X-ray film that are cut into slender rounded rectangles and then carefully linked like chain mail with metal grommets and rings. The gridded tapestries drape a few inches off the walls. As you move towards them, they stir gently in the disrupted air, giving the impression that the artwork is breathing.
Indeed, in G.M.R. x 220 (2024) Pansa’s use of X-ray film calls to mind imagery of body parts that are normally hidden. While the works made with photographic prints depict change on the scale of nature — through moon rises, agricultural fields and horizons — the shiny gray of the flimsy X-ray film reflects minute changes in the environment of the gallery itself. This piece, especially, makes visible an embodied subjectivity that shifts from moment to moment.
Four low lavender platforms dominate the center of the room and frame the stained glass sculptures carefully placed on and around them. These works take the form of a three-dimensional grid and encase rounded forms of ball chains, copper grain and wheat pennies. It is not clear why these similarly rounded metal forms were chosen, though they do provide a pleasing contrast to the rigid structures that hold them.
As the photos and X-ray material respond to movement, the variously colored glass containers glimmer and reveal the objects inside as the viewer’s position shifts. Two rose-colored works and one yellow piece create a pastel tableau alongside the soft purple of the platforms. The grid is replicated throughout the space.
