415-386-7275
Stock car racing has broad appeal, from applied physics converting raw power into mechanical poetry in motion, to the thrill of knowing that at any moment something could go horribly wrong. In "Crash," Hilary Pecis deconstructs stock photos of cars mangled in NASCAR races and recombines them in collage as though grasping to control the chaos, but instead multiplying it exponentially. Metal is twisted further under her knife, the vehicles still recognizable but the evidence of actual damage largely obscured and replaced by the manipulation of her collage. The artist, a former SF Weekly Mastermind grant recipient, is akin to a surgeon re-breaking a fractured limb in order to set it properly. Whether Pecis seeks order from chaos or celebrates the mayhem as "a fertilizing rather than a destructive event" a la David Cronenberg's NC-17 Crash, like a train wreck — or a car crash — you can't pull your eyes away.
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