The automobile is so central to American life that, a century after the debut of the horseless carriage, we both take it for granted and revere it as semi-divine. Car Culture at Peninsula Museum of Art features eleven Bay Area artists who consider the automobile as technological marvel and dream-machine. As the era of the internal combustion engine appears to be winding down, superseded by hybrid, electric, and hydrogen-powered cars that will drive themselves, this exhibition takes a look at the physical and mental Autopia (to use the name of the Disneyland mini-racecar ride) in which we all move— to here and there and back again.
Guest curator Tyler Hoare has designed and customized cars for decades, but the public knows him as the sculptor of the "Snoopy and the Red Baron" airplanes he builds and displays perched pilings in the Bay in front of Berkeley (those planes that look like toys are generally 20 feet long). One of Hoare's planes currently occupies pilings in front of Emeryville.
Artists: Evan Bennett, Jack Bishop, Frank DeRosa, Jack Fulton, Jon Gariepy, David Hamilton, Tim Horn, Tyler James Hoare, Michael Kerbow, Charles McDevitt, Joseph Slusky, William Wareham.
A Galaxie Far Far Away
Tyler Hoare