Reintroductions - by Todd Gilens

Opening reception Thursday, April 17, 6-9pm, show runs March 28 through June 30

Levy Art & Architecture is pleased to commission and present "Reintroductions" by Todd Gilens. This show is a continuation of the Endangered Species Project that Gilens completed with San Francisco MUNI in 2012. The intent is to bring attention to our environment through fauna that are endangered, central to the San Francisco Bay ecosystem, and largely unseen by the local human population. The show runs from March 28th, through June 30th, there will be an opening reception on Thursday April 17, 2014 from 6-9 pm. The installation will be in place for 6 months.

The photographs document the juxtaposition of the wrapped buses and the urban context as they travel through The City. A new project on the gallery's facade extends this work by returning images of the Sacramento Sucker (Catostomus occidentalis) to Noe Valley. The LA&A studio, which is the backdrop for the installation, is immediately adjacent to the historic course of The Precita Creek, that these fish likely inhabited. The creek ran from Twin Peaks to the Bay shore, along what is now upper 24th Street, prior to the development of the area in the early 1900's. This hundred and fifty square foot print brings the fish back to an original habitat and into our collective imaginations.

The exhibit coincides with the 2014 "bio-blitz" a project sponsored by National Geographic and The GGNRA to discover, count and document the living creatures in the parks.

Inside the exhibit continues with a collection of archival pigment prints The thirteen photographs are based on Gilens' 2011-12 project Endangered Species, in which he designed four buswraps for San Francisco Muni buses, each wrap an enlarged photograph of a local endangered animal. This is the first San Francisco exhibition of these photographs.

Todd Gilens is a visual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His website is Follywog.com