Images from select exhibitions. For more exhibition information, please contact me!
Cara Levine: To Survive I Need You To Survive, Feb - July 2023, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA
Press: SF Chronicle DateBook Review by Letha Chi’en, Jewish News SF Instagram
images by Impart Photography during the first week of the exhibition. For images from programs see the corresponding work page (ex. Carve, This Is Not A Gun).
Regardless of The Weather, New Work by Cara Levine, May - June 2022, Mothership HQ SuperCollider, Beacon Arts Building, Los Angeles, CA
BIG KNOT, Cara Levine & Alee Peoples, November 6 - December 18, 2021, Elephant Art Space.
For more information see project main page.
This Is Not A Gun, 2016 - 2019
on view at Regime of Images, Durden and Ray, Los Angeles CA, August - September 2019
FREEZE-THAW: FIELD RESEARCH + WORKS FROM THE ARCTIC CIRLCE
3S Artspace / 319 Vaughan St. / Portsmouth, NH 03801
June 16 - July 22
This Is Not A Gun, 2016 - present, in Into - Action, Los Angeles, CA, 2018
INTO ACTION is a large scale pop-up art exhibition, cultural gathering and community organizing action hub in Los Angeles featuring hundreds of inspiring works of art. INTO ACTION will also house dozens of professionally crafted installations by world-renowned artists, as well as over 25 hours of live performances, symposiums/panels, and workshops. MORE INFORMATION AT INTO-ACTION.US.
The Box Impossible By Jerry Andrus By Cara Levine As Podium for Alternative Facts, 2017 for Uneasy Structures, Hayes Valley Art Works, Mar 4 - 14 2017
Dear Pierre, YoungArts Gallery, Miami Fl, Miami Art Week 2016
The Elements: Water, Krowswork Gallery, Oakland, CA Sept- Oct 2016
The final residency/exhibition in a 4-Part series, Fire, Earth, Space, Water. The work in this show is entitled Between A Rock And A Soft Place
Between A Rock and A Soft Place: Is This Water , Workshop and exploration around the healing properties of water, through metaphor, movement and conversation. October 8, 2016, Krowswork Gallery, in conjunction with The Elements: Water residency and exhibition.
How Many Times Surrender, 2 hour participatory performance in devotion to Black Lives Matter. Commissioned by C3 Initiative, Portland, OR, for their project Camp Colton, Sept - Oct 2016.
Below: 2 hour time lapse video in 3:00, photographs documenting the event, real time video documentation 1:43
How Many Times Surrender, 2 hour participatory performance in devotion to Black Lives Matter. Commissioned by C3 Initiative, Portland, OR, for their project Camp Colton, Sept - Oct 2016.
A Tale of Two Cities: A Modern Day Mail Art Collaboration, a project I co-curated and facilitated along with Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA, and Veronica De Jesus and Aragna Ker of United Cerabral Palsy of Los Angeles. Work from my series Between A Rock and A Soft Place is featured in the project space concurrently. Culver City, CA, Sept 2016
New Quarters Inaugural Exhibition, Hayes Valley Art Works, San Francisco, CA, July-Aug 2016
Once An Island, Artwork from the Sim Residency May 2015, SIM Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland, 2015.
Included in the gallery, Rope from Mother Trigger, and Family Ties, a 2 Channel Digital Video, 27:43, 2015. The Rope is a collection of many of the materials used in the making of the video installation piece Mother Trigger, which tells the tale of my coming into my adult form as a chronic migraineur and how my family tried and failed to heal me--but the spiritual integration with my Maternal Grandmother, the other migraineur in my ancestral line, and a journey to the Ice Cave of the glacier in Jokulsarlon on the Southern Coast of Iceland, led me to a path of healing and love.
Twice in Awhile, Documentation of work by myself and Jess Wheelock up last Spring at the Royal NoneSuch Gallery!
Excited to have a very thoughtful review by Sarah Burke in The East Bay Express, entitled These Artists Want to Alleviate Your Anxiety!
“These Bold Artists Want to Alleviate Your Anxiety
For Twice in a While, Jess Wheelock and Cara Levine illustrate the exhaustion of endurance at Royal Nonesuch gallery.
By Sarah Burke
Jess Wheelock’s works speak to the anxiety-inducing circumstances we encounter in our everyday lives. In Jess Wheelock’s piece “Pushing Back Avalanches,” a compilation of avalanche videos is projected onto a wall in front of a bicycle pump. When the viewer compresses the pump, the sound of an inhale plays loudly, and the avalanche rewinds, moving backward up the mountain. The pump provides temporary hope for surviving the simulated snow, but ultimately no one can keep pumping forever — arms grow tired. One has to let go, and let the hypothetical avalanche roll over them.
The piece evokes the feeling of an impending panic attack, and an attempt to stave it off with deep breaths. It’s one of many such pieces that trudge through mental and emotional landscapes in Twice in a While, a show currently on view at Royal Nonesuch (4231 Telegraph Ave., Oakland), which also features works by Cara Levine. By translating those headspaces into video work, the two artists invite viewers into their personal experiences with anxiety and relief.
Another of Wheelock’s works shows her balancing a towering stack of books that were assigned to her in graduate school. Left alone, the video loops — with the stack threatening to tumble at any moment. But the books don’t fall until the viewer squeezes a horn mounted in front of the video projection, which cues Wheelock’s collapse under the weight of her required reading. Similarly, in “Burning the Candle at Both Ends,” Wheelock holds a dripping candle in front of her as two flames appear to grow nearer to her burning fingers at the center. The pull of a fire alarm beneath the video triggers a wave of water to put out the flame and soak Wheelock in the process.
The interactive videos speak to those anxiety-inducing circumstances we encounter in our everyday lives. In offering Wheelock relief, the viewer experiences that relief vicariously, even if only for one fleeting, therapeutic moment.
While Wheelock’s work expresses emotional struggle through physical analogies, Levine’s work could be read as doing the opposite. Levine suffers from chronic migraines, and practices yoga and meditation in order to get through them. Her two-channel video piece, “Re-Mother: What is Love’s True Perspective,” shows various sharp-edged polygons made of blue paper, in front of a blue backdrop. Eventually, hands penetrate the space through black holes and begin moving around the shapes until a big, black-and-white zigzag disrupts the entire scene. The work poetically illustrates Levine’s experience of physical pain, and her attempts to mentally suppress it.
While inspired by personal struggles, Twice in a While manages to articulate the constant effort that is required to exist in the world, and that is often hidden by attempts to seem — for lack of a better word — effortless. That mysterious reservoir of existential motivation, which is a resource in all of our actions, in fact very often threatens to run dry. This show bravely acknowledges that limitation.
Show runs through April 26. RoyalNoneSuchGallery.com
”
Proud to have Lizzy Brooks write a review of my solo project at Ramon's Tailor for the website Curiously Direct. Click here to see the full review in its original context or see it pasted below. Thanks!
“Cara Levine’s Gravity: A Fact Everyone Knows About uses playful sleight of hand to disorient the viewer and to undermine assumptions about time, space and the grounding of the human form. The work is whimsical and deceptively light. In a series of works on paper, the artist cast and inked her elbows and knees to create circular imprints. Like giant fingerprints or veined maps of unknown interior territories, the prints push into the white surface of the paper and remind us of the weight of our physical bodies. They are artifacts of movement, a document of our straining, creaking and joyfully bending limbs.
Video works on three of the gallery’s walls form a counterpoint to the prints. In the videos, Levine poses between two bright lights. Crouching and partially obscured, her figure disappears and reappears in new postures, sometimes replaced by a dog, a piece of fur, or a set of crystal candlesticks. Another video shows Levine upside down in her studio, legs stretched as if she is hovering in midair. The videos play in and out of sync with one another on the gallery’s three screens. The effect is disorienting. Like watching a short loop over and over again, the images stick in the mind and we begin to see relationships that may not actually exist. I expect that this magic is exactly what Levine wants to cultivate, a sort of disappearing act that replaces self with object, self with self, self with the dog (who is clearly a willing and inspired collaborator). The effect is substantive and fun. I left the gallery thinking about the weight of my feet on the sidewalk.
This kind of restrained and provocative work is typical of Ramon’s Tailor, a relatively new project space and salon, in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Ramon’s Tailor is the brainchild of architect Frank Merritt and designer Teri Gardiner, a husband and wife team who curate a slate of thoughtful artworks that engage with the neighborhood, the city and the larger culture of the Bay Area. The gallery takes its name from the building’s former occupant, the original Ramon’s Tailor, an homage that reminds visitors of the passage of time and the changing cityscape in San Francisco. In certain installations, Ramon’s ironing board opens up to form part of the bar. Frank and Teri refurbished the interior of the shop with honey-colored wood paneling that defies the convention of the gallery’s blank white walls. The result is that each installation becomes an artwork inside an artwork— the resident artist is necessarily collaborating with the peculiarities of the interior and the architecture of the Tenderloin. In a neighborhood where galleries trend toward the aesthetics of street art and spectacle, Ramon’s Tailor is a quiet space for understated conceptual work that lingers and unfolds in the viewer’s mind long after she has ducked out of the low doorway and onto Jones Street. ”
Photographs taken by my mother, Jan Levine, on her visit to my residency last winter ('14) at Anderson Ranch. She captured the studio pretty well! Thanks mom!
Install shots from Anderson Ranch Art Center Gallery, December 2014.
Documentation for "Four Choreographies"
Listen to the audio recording of the talk HERE.
Read the essay about this show by Katherine Sherwood, Prof. in Department of Art Practice and Disability Studies at UC Berkeley, HERE.
Artist Talk
Featuring David Bufano, Peter Bufano, Cara Levine, Shari Paladino with collaborator Michele Bousquet, Sadie Wilcox, & Guest Curator Amanda Eicher
5 - 7 pm, Tuesday, November 18th, 2014
Please join us for a conversation between David Bufano, Peter Bufano, the artists in the exhibition “Four Choreographies”, including Cara Levine, Shari Paladino with collaborator Michele Bousquet, and Sadie Wilcox, as well as Guest Curator Amanda Eicher. We will be considering the relationship between Lisa Bufano’s creative practice and that of the other artists in the exhibition, and discussing how each of these artists’ personal experience with disability has informed, expanded, and enriched their work.
The Eye Never Gets Enough of Seeing, The Ear, Never Enough of Hearing: Jewish Concepts on the End of Life, In collaboration with Jennifer Kaufman, Manresa Gallery, Wed. May 21, 2014
Thresholds of Faith artist Cara Levine together with Sinai Memorial Chapel’s Mourner Care Coordinator, Jennifer Kaufman, led a walking meditation and discussion inside St. Ignatius Church. The workshop included three parts: text study, contemplative practice and an overview of traditional Jewish burial practices with a specific concentration on Chevra Kadisha, the Holy Burial Society serving the Northern California Jewish community. Discussion and open dialogue followed.
Greens, Grains, and Fruit in collaboration with Carol Koffel, 18 Reasons, San Francisco, CA, 2014
I produced 25 Blind Pinch pots in earthenware clay for this event. The guests of the meal were asked to eat the food from these bowls using their hands with their eyes closed.
Four Faiths, Manresa Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2014
Jailbreak! Tmoro Projects, Santa Clara, CA, 2014
Read the essay Life is a Limbo Dance written by John Murchie in conjunction with the show here.
Crane Arts, Ice Box Project Space 20/92, September 2013
Signal Fire Residency, Mt. Hood National Forest, 2013
Cumulus or Other, Make Hang Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2013
One-Limb-Less performed at Ictus Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2012
Cream Puff, California College of the Arts, Project Space, 2011