SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new work in diverse media from Bay Area artists Sarah Hirneisen and Kadie Salfi. Working independently, Hirneisen and Salfi have produced distinct but thematically interwoven installations for the Gallery space, each a form-based meditation on the cyclonic forces of tradition, religion, and violence that historically forged - and continue to shape – reality in the contemporary Middle East and Mesopotamia. A Levantine reliquary houses over 3,000 oil-filled glass vials. A life-sized dromedary camel silk-screened in crude oil on a plaster mosaic stands over a caravan of 100 miniature, lamp-lit camels hand-cast in bronze. Sharp green blades of living grass sprout from a suspended lattice of spent machine gun shell casings. Islamic devotional prayer rugs of colored glass, intricately patterned - lie shattered.

Hirneisen’s and Salfi’s objects captivate yet disorient. Imaginative and beautiful, surprising yet adhering to a rigid formal discipline, they tap into and animate our collective memory, our collective understanding, perhaps our collective complicity over the realities of this region of the globe known as the Cradle of Civilization. Oakland-based Sarah Hirneisen holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited widely in the Bay Area, at Southern Exposure, Lobot Gallery, and ProArts.

Kadie Salfi holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has mounted solo exhibitions at Live Worms and Fabuloid in San Francisco, and group shows at Southern Exposure, Magnolia Gallery, and A.I.R. Gallery in New York. She lives in San Francisco.