Julia de la Torre

A Digital Search For Nature: Marina Fini's Upcoming Exhibition

Open Color Presents

The Secret Paths to M a r i n a F i n i

July 15th 6-10pm Open from July 16-29

Heron Arts, San Francisco

Open Color will present its third quarterly event on July 15th at Heron Arts in San Francisco, this time featuring the otherworldly Marina Fini.

Fini’s latest exhibit, The Secret Paths to Marina Fini, is rooted in humans’ digital search for unattainable elements of nature. Online media’s saturation of nature-related content cannot satiate the desire for organic connection with our surroundings, and Fini will illustrate this theme through new works of art alongside interactive components.

The installation will sit inside a lush indoor jungle full of palms, cacti and other plant life, complete with hidden altars of Fini’s signature plexiglass pieces. Illuminating neons and converted vintage computers spilling over with natural imagery will also be present amongst the flora, serving to highlight Fini’s juxtaposition of the natural and the digital.

Trigger technology will be synced to a multitude of sensory elements, such as a start up noise that goes off when a plant is touched, or a scent that is released via a keyboard. To provide a taste element, raw, organic vegan food will be served by incarnations of Fini’s vision, referred to as the exhibition’s Goddesses.

The installation will also be outwardly introspective; Fini’s juxtaposition of her plexiglass work with natural surroundings outlines the very real conflict that can exist between creation and sustainability. Fini’s concern for climate change is also an underlying theme; the clash that exists between the universal use of technology to appreciate nature without a universal agreement on its protection.

Fini’s personal life experience as a vegetarian and environmental studies student have also contributed to the show’s composition. The title is inspired by Secret Paths to Your Dreams , a video game developed by Purple Moon in the late 90s.

About Marina Fini

"At the intersection of fashion, photography, film, stagecraft, and design, artist Marina Fini creates hallucinatory, alternative worlds. Based in California, she collaborates with friends and artists alike in the staging of these otherworldly scenes, using colorful costumes and her own handmade, plexiglass jewelry to turn her photographic subjects into ethereal cyber goddesses... All of her characters exude a captivating power, like the whimsical and intangible figures seen through a psychedelic dream. By exploring alternative selves in familiar contexts – a convenience store, or the Californian seaside, for example – Fini explores how subjecthood is fluid, and how such creative 'shape-shifting' can alter the way we perceive our immediate reality." - Hayley Evans, Beautiful Decay.

Fini's work has been touted by such notables as Baddie Winkle and Miley Cyrus , and has been covered by VICE, Dazed , Galore , LA Weekly , Nylon , and numerous other well-respected publications .

“A multi-disciplinary performance artist slash photographer slash filmmaker slash designer, Fini... is most famous for her art installations that transform unremarkable dwellings into pop-up fever dreams.”

–DAZED

The installation is presented by Open Color, a new arts collective bridging the divide between the established and the underground.

More About Open Color

Open Color was founded to connect emerging artists to both their cities’ established creative communities and the primary demographics fueling the overall local economy (such as the tech sector in our home city of San Francisco, the finance sector in New York and the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, among others).

It’s no secret that creative communities across the country are suffering from a severe lack of financial support, even when a city’s overall economy is thriving. Our goal is to create a neutral space for three key demographics (established members of the arts community, underground creatives, and business professionals) to organically connect, learn about each other’s work, and subsequently grant the artists who make a city great access to the driving force behind its financial success.

If artists continue to be forced out of major cities economically, art capitals from San Francisco to New York City will lose a cornerstone of their cultural foundations. That’s why we’ve been working diligently toward a viable solution to this dire issue. Our model for success is built around quarterly events, a digital magazine featuring interviews, photo spreads, art reviews and more, and a web store (launching soon) that will include exclusive originals from partnered artists who share our passion for reinvigorating their local creative economies.•