Golden Prisn

Golden Prisn

Gallery 16

San Francisco, CA

Golden Prisn
Gallery 16, San Francisco, California

Golden Prisn is a two-person exhibition from longtime partners Cliff Hengst and Scott Hewicker. During the artists three decades as residents of San Francisco’s Mission District, they have witnessed significant change. For Golden Prisn, the artist's marry the word “prism” with the concept of the Gilded Cage or “Golden Jail.”

Describing a situation as paradoxically valuable and trapping, the Golden Jail limits the inhabitant, making any alternative to the current situation comparatively worse. The introduction of the Prism into the exhibition’s title promotes an uplifting opportunity to re-interpret the often-told tale of San Francisco’s gentrification through the unifying element of color. White light contains the full spectrum of colors, though only visible through a prism.

Cliff Hengst's found cardboard paintings and text pieces and Hewicker's brightly saturated abstract paintings and prints, the artists will expand their work into sculptural installation, ceramics and a wall mural. In doing so, the artists seek to activate the gallery space into a charged and inviting color environment, beckoning a creative community to celebrate resilience despite constant waves of change endured by artists in San Francisco.

Cliff Hengst performed as Bobby Coupon in Lounge Lessons: A Musical Journey of Life Reflections and Motivation Through Song—a lounge act meets motivational seminar of Hengst’s own creation, first debuting earlier this year in three consecutive sold-out shows at Machine Project in Los Angeles.