Generating Future Forms: Bay Convergences of Art and Music 1958-1972

A presentation by Laura Whitcomb of Label Curatorial

City Lights celebrates the publication of DILEXI: A Gallery & Beyond – By Laura Whitcomb – Forwards by Peter Frank and Jim Newman – Produced by Label Curatorial

The publication Dilexi: A Gallery & Beyond is the result of 8 years of research by Label Curatorial’s director Laura Whitcomb and the research director Narin Dickerson. The book presents the first accurate timeline of the seminal Dilexi gallery, founded in 1958 by Jim Newman and Robert Alexander. The Dilexi Gallery exhibited the works of Jeremy Anderson, Hassel Smith, Alvin Light, Leslie Kerr, Craig Kauffman, Irving Petlin, Deborah Remington, Jay DeFeo, Roy De Forest, Ed Moses, H.C. Westermann, Jess, amongst others. The gallery was at the nexus of California’s mid-century art scene. DILEXI: A Gallery & Beyond offers the first accurate accounts of lesser known artists William Dubin, Muriel Goodwin Francis, Gary Molitor, Leslie Kerr, Arthur Richer, Alvin Light, Julius Wasserstein, Philip Roeber, Raymond Rocklin, Arlo Acton, Horst Trave, and Alan Lynch, all of whom were key participants in the California art scene and who have been overlooked through time. The first English biography of the German artist Harry Kramer is also included as well as important historical essays on the Living Theater and Ken Dewey who had strong alliances with Bay Area alternative performance and theater. The book goes beyond documenting the gallery alone and ventures into the film, video and music programming projects which extended the gallery’s ethos and vision. Central to the narrative of the book is the important convergences happening from 1958 to 1972 between contemporary art and experimental music. These convergences in San Francisco would prove to be key inceptive roots of the art and music of the late 60s and the currents of minimalism and conceptualism that followed.

This evening’s presentation shall be arranged in different parts.

Opening discussion – Laura Whitcomb in conversation with Peter Maravelis of City Lights

Followed by a special series of pre-recorded segments: