Mermaid.

He wasn’t the real evil here. It’s like this house used him as a vessel to create something way, way worse.

Marie-Claude Marquis’ “We’re All Kinda Fucked Up” at Recess.

Opening on Saturday, January 11th, 2020 at Recess in San Francisco, California as their inaugural show, is artist Marie-Claude Marquis’ solo exhibition, “We’re All Kinda Fucked Up.”

Through clever (and often hilariously obscene) typographical interventions, MC Marquis gives new life to vintage found objects. With a keen eye for color, aesthetic, and contemporary femininity, she pokes fun at everything from technology and consumerism to religion and sexuality - while reminding viewers to consider the environmental impacts of artistic production and consumption. Considering her own “creative carbon footprint” as a found-object artist, Marquis hopes to inspire others to appreciate “the soul and the story” of old objects still rich with more stories to tell.

Her quippy, irreverent one-liners serve as a criticism of tech-influenced narcissism and voyeurism. The title itself - We’re All Kinda Fucked Up - speaks to the egocentric fragility of human nature and the dishonesty inherent to our digital age. The modern human is a walking contradiction - curating our social media selves to project superficial truths, cherry-picking value systems to qualify every situation, reveling in normalcy while laying claim to a uniqueness completely our own. Our digital landscape has plagued society with a tunnel vision toward curated, superficial perfection. Marquis is here to strip the blinders off, to refocus our attention on candor, communication, and a communal self-awareness: “We have trouble understanding people who come from another sphere or place… So often, we don’t understand people who don’t understand us anyway. But what is important is that, in the end, we’re all kinda weird. No one is perfect, everyone has problems and a story. We all want to love, to be loved, and to have a goal.”

The exhibition will be on view until February 1st, 2020.

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