Written by Weston Teruya:

In their collaborative exhibition, City Limit, Malcolm Kenter and Rachel Marino present an immersive exhibition inspired by the infrastructure and detritus of the city and invite us to reexamine our everyday surroundings by combining pieces in a playful sculptural environment rendered slightly askew. Familiar elements like mundane trash, rain gutters and duct work, fire hydrants, sidewalk curbs, and discarded food are combined in unexpected ways–giant fruit tumble from a fountain structure and visitors are invited to activate golf balls through a Rube Goldberg device mounted to a wall. Segments of stucco wall have been painted in muted pop colors that reference the color palette of the surrounding Little Hollywood, Visitacion Valley, and Daly City neighborhoods. Artificial turf has been cut into patterns, some reminiscent of the paver designs embedded in nearby driveways.

Drawing equal inspiration from their explorations of the Public Reuse and Recycling Area at Recology and careful observations on their routine commute to the studio, Kenter and Marino call attention to the details at the margins: the trash that has been tossed aside, functional home architecture, and street corner environments. There’s a joy to the heightened remix of elements in the exhibition, celebrating the parts of ordinary life that are too often viewed as disposable or beneath consideration.

Malcolm Kenter and Rachel Marino combine their efforts to create interactive and highly detailed sculptural environments. Marino often gathers inspiration from the easily discarded condiments of American cuisine replicating them on a fantastically large scale. Kenter’s work highlights the oft overlooked aspects of the pre-21st century architectural landscape. Through these different concepts, both artists have developed an intimate connection to the ideas of excess and how people perceive surplus in America. They have exhibited together at the Spring/Break Art Fair in New York and Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco.

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