Like the break of a line or page and the bleed of various elements beyond the edge or boundary of a certain area, the artworks in Break + Bleed oscillate between ideas of linearity and geometry and overlapping planes of color and form. Drawn primarily from SJMA’s permanent collection, the exhibition features artwork by Josef Albers, Karl Benjamin, Linda Besemer, Tony DeLap, Sam Francis, Sonia Gechtoff, Helen Lundeberg, Brice Marden, John McLaughlin, Ted Stamm, Frank Stella, Patrick Wilson, and Leo Valledor, among others.
SJMA presents the landmark video installation, Hito Steyerl’s Factory of the Sun (2015), a joint acquisition with the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and SJMA. Interweaving genres of video games, internet dance videos, news reportage, and documentary film, the installation tells the surreal story of workers whose forced moves in a motion capture studio are turned into artificial sunlight. Factory of the Sun probes the pleasures and perils of digital image circulation, while exploring possibilities for collective resistance when surveillance has become routine in an increasingly virtual world.