FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

20TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Performance by Rulan Tangen and Drew Trujillo
Artist Talks with Scott Thrift and Ana González Barragán Opening of The Present: Scott Thrift
Debut of Anatomy of Extraction: Ana González Barragán Limited edition collaboration with GAG Bag
DJ Set by Winoka Yepa

PROGRAMMING

22 September, 6 – 9 PM

SCOTT THRIFT | The Present, 2025. Time-based media, diameter: 12 in (30.48 cm). Photo courtesy of the artist

(Santa Fe, NM) Railyard gallery Zane Bennett Contemporary Art celebrates its 20th anniversary with continued commitment to contemporary art, a vision for the future, and a party featuring new exhibitions, artist talks, a live performance by local artists, and more.

(September 2025) On 22 September, Zane Bennett Contemporary Art opens its 20th anniversary celebration at 6 PM with a live performance by Rulan Tangen of Dancing Earth and Drew Trujillo, artist and IAIA professor; artist talks by Santa Fe Art Institute Fellow, Ana González Barragán, for the installation of her sculpture, Anatomy of Extraction: PLAN O1, and Scott Thrift for his solo show, The Present; a preview of forthcoming exhibitions by gallery director, Carina Evangelista; remarks by gallery owner, Sandy Zane; and a party—food, drink, and a set by local disc jockey Winoka Yepa (7:30–9 PM).

Over the course of 20 years, Zane Bennett Contemporary Art has evolved from a cooperative artspace in Las Cruces, NM, to a boutique gallery exhibiting works on paper by modern and contemporary masters on Canyon Road in Santa Fe; to a white cube colossus in the Railyard Arts District; to a platform for form & concept, which has exhibited the playful and avant garde edge of craft and design since 2008 with a focus on underrepresented artists and challenging entrenched art narratives. “I believe contemporary art to be a conduit for the present—a way to ignite the senses with the electricity of today; the shortest path between the artist’s mind and the viewer’s thoughts,” writes Sandy Zane. She adds:

To mark the 20th year of channeling the present through art, we look back to moments that exemplify the gallery’s vision: N.
Scott Momaday writing about hozhoni, Navajo for the essence of beauty ‘past and present: indeed for all times’ for our Native Vanguard exhibition; cutting out a wall to install Mark di Suvero’s 11’-high kinetic sculpture titled Whence; mounting a drag show on our balcony and hosting an incredibly moving performance by Exodus Ensemble; serving as an outpost for Japan’s teamlab Kids; building Enrique Figueredo’s 15’-diameter zoetrope that, when spun, animates a storm rolling over Caracas, Venezuela; lining the gallery floor with dozens of Michael Petry’s hand-blown glass stones to allude to the crumbling walls of Jericho; hanging seventy five of Armond Lara’s winged blue buffalo to tell the story of the ‘lost bluebirds’—the children who never came home in three centuries of Native American slavery.

The arts are weathering a tumultuous time. And as future support becomes increasingly uncertain and discourse becomes increasingly fraught, Zane Bennett is doubling down on supporting living artists and using its programming to explore issues that are important to real people. Real people—their stories, thoughts, and experiences—make the Santa Fe and broader Southwestern art scene as diverse and rich as it is.

Evangelista notes, “We mark our 20th year on a Monday evening on September 22 (rather unorthodox but intentionally chosen for the autumn equinox) as a way to announce My Thoughts Are Minutes, the series of exhibitions we have begun mounting around the measure and meaning of time—with art that might capture how we grasp, kill, forget, honor, live, or breathe it. A Pueblo mantra goes:

I am not fully healed,
I am not fully wise,
I am still on my way. What matters is that
I am moving forward.”

This anniversary celebration is a small way to acknowledge and thank you—the artist, the patron, the inquisitive viewer—for the gallery that has grown with the community over the last twenty years. It is also an invitation to plug into your local community, because we are better and more resilient together. Come dance and move forward with us!

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For press or image inquiries, please contact Spencer Linford at spencer@zanebennettgallery.com.

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art | 435 S Guadalupe St, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | info@zanebennettgallery.com | 505.982.8111

About the Artists

Portrait courtesy of the artist

Rulan Tangen is a creatrix, dancer, and dreamvisioner. Her work values movement as an expression of collective and collaborative eco-cultural worldviews that envision dance as a functional ritual for transformation and healing that links the ancient with the future. This dance form is the guiding principle behind her dance company, Dancing Earth, which creates opportunities in contemporary dance for successive generations of Native American and global Indigenous performing artists.

Tangen is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including the Costo Medal for Education Research and Community Service and the Arts & Social Change Award from the Arts and Healing Network (2015); the Catalyst Initiative from the Center for Performance and Social Practice; the New Mexico School for the Arts Community Leadership Award; A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially

Engaged Art (2016); the Santa Fe Art Institute’s artist residency (2016-17); and the Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Award (2018-2019) for Service, Justice, Freedom, Courage, and Gratitude.

Portrait courtesy of the artist

Drew Trujillo (b. 1968, Albuquerque, NM) is a 14th-generation New Mexican with Mexica Mestizo ancestry. His art embodies storytelling by merging dance with custom technology to sonify movement. His creations have been exhibited across the United States, Asia, and Europe, where he has also presented and lectured, sharing his expertise in video art, animation, and immersive experiences.

Trujillo has had a diverse career, contributing to video games, software development, robotics, and immersive entertainment. He earned recognition as a 2021 SITE Santa Fe Scholar and previously served as Director of Technology at Meow Wolf and as a board member at the Santa Fe Art Institute. He holds an MFA in Experimental Arts and Technology from the University of New Mexico and is currently teaching and developing the Bachelor’s and Associate’s programs

in Computer Science (for the Arts) at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).

Ana González Barragán (b. 1989, Mexico City, MX) is a conceptual artist whose research focuses on the cultural, political, and geological significance of stones and minerals with long aesthetic traditions. Her sculptures and installations amplify the metaphoric potential of geologic bodies and pay attention to the complex histories detectable in veins, cracks, and gradations of tone.

The sculpture, Anatomy of Extraction: PLAN 01, completed this year, will grace the corner of South Guadalupe and Read Street outside Zane Bennett. A modernist totem assembled with parts recovered from quarries and mines in Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, the column of stacked components is framed at the bottom within a metal ring that may look industrially nondescript but bears historic weight as it was used to cut the marble columns for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

González Barragán has described her practice as one that operates “at the intersection of geology, gender, and extractivism to reclaim the discarded remnants of mining ambitions that have played a central role in shaping national identities in both Mexico and the United States.” She adds, “In my sculptures, core drill bits, stone fragments, and mineral waste become agents of resistance and reimagination.”

Using time-based media and oral history to document the extractive and often
exploitative processes long associated with these materials, she throws light
on the gender politics and labor practices of mining along with the ecological
impacts of industrial capitalism. Her projects “reflect on the intertwined legacies
of extractive industries that impact both territories and bodies through practices of slow violence” to heighten our awareness of the cultural narratives embedded in these ancient materials.

This research and documentation is conducted in locations including Sierra de las Navajas, Mexico, and Marble, Colorado, through relationships built with both mine workers and managers and impacted local communities. González Barragán has exhibited at Salon Acme, Material Art Fair; Momoroom in Mexico City; and Swab Art Fair in Barcelona, Spain; and elsewhere. She has installed a commissioned public art piece at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in

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For press or image inquiries, please contact Spencer Linford at spencer@zanebennettgallery.com.

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art | 435 S Guadalupe St, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | info@zanebennettgallery.com | 505.982.8111

ANA GONZÁLEZ BARRAGÁN Anatomy of Extraction: PLAN O1, 2025. White Yule Marble, obsidian, cast bronze, steel pipe, and mine- recovered objects. Yule Marble Quarry, Colorado: HQ drill pipe, diamond wire cutting ring; Twenty

About the Artists

Colorado. She holds an MFA in Sculpture and Post-Studio Practice from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Santa Fe Art Institute for the installation of Ana González Barragán’s outdoor sculpture.

Scott Thrift (b.1979, Winston Salem, NC) is a media artist and designer who explores how we perceive and experience time. For over a decade, he worked in the rhythm of cuts and storytelling as a filmmaker and co-founder of the multi-award-winning production company m ss ng p eces. His work took him to six continents, documenting design processes and telling stories about the shifting nature of human experience. Crafting films—bending, stretching, and compressing time—gave him an intimate relationship

with the meaning of a moment. But it also revealed a hidden truth about time: the way we measure the moment may limit our capacity to experience it.

Measured second by second, the present moment becomes a hairline fracture between the past and the future, never lasting long enough to matter. This realization led Thrift to the question: “How can we live in the moment if the moment changes every second?”

In 2012, Thrift founded The Present to reframe how we measure the moment. The result is a trio of long-lasting, kinetic sculptures that reveal the nature of time that our industrial clocks leave out: a truly abundant day, the gentle consistency of the lunar cycle, and the embedded wisdom of seasonal continuity.

SCOTT THRIFT | The Present–Day, 2025. Time-based media diameter 12 in (34 cm) Photo courtesy of the artist

These fundamental rhythms are missing from modern life. Thrift states: “The Present is a collection of timepieces that complement our narrow, industrial paradigm of seconds, minutes, and hours by offering new experiences of time itself. These instruments don’t count down; they don’t chase deadlines. They reveal a quieter dimension of time.”

The Present—Year (2012)
One revolution of the Earth around the Sun

The Present—Day (2016)
One full rotation of the Earth on its axis

The Present—Moon (2020)
One revolution of the Moon around the Earth

The Present—Space (2025)
A mirror into the present moment we share

The Present is a piece of contemporary art disguised as a product. It operates within the familiar language of consumer objects while quietly and irrevocably transforming perception. Since 2013, Thrift has made and shipped some 10,000 pieces to homes, offices, and owners in forty-three countries. Thrift’s opening on September 22 also marks the public launch of the most recent addition to the series, The Present—Space.

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For press or image inquiries, please contact Spencer Linford at spencer@zanebennettgallery.com.

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art | 435 S Guadalupe St, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | info@zanebennettgallery.com | 505.982.8111