For creators.
Across
boundaries.
Art, fashion, music, media, and technology. In conversation.
We work with creators, brands, and cultural institutions to develop creative practices, build relationships, and open new possibilities for collaboration.
Rivers McCall
Sculpture, fashion, performance, and digital culture.
Our work with Rivers spans brand collaborations, commercial development, editorial opportunities, and contemporary art exhibitions.
New relationships.
New possibilities.
Creative practices move across disciplines. We build connections that help them grow.
Eterna Contemporary’s process.
Built into an app.
Explore an app designed to streamline how Eterna Contemporary researches markets, connects creators and partners, and develops creative opportunities.
Built by creators.
For creators.
An independent creative agency and contemporary art gallery based in San Francisco, working across art, fashion, music, media, and technology.
A changing
creative landscape
The ways we create, circulate, and experience culture are changing. Networked technologies are reshaping relationships between artists, audiences, institutions, and markets.
Creative practices increasingly transcend disciplines. Yet opportunities, relationships, and resources remain fragmented.
A new kind of
creative practice
Eterna Contemporary brings together artists, designers, brands, and cultural institutions to develop creative practices, build strategic relationships, and discover opportunities for collaboration and commercial development.
Our work spans creative direction, artist development, brand strategy, partnerships, and curatorial projects. We approach them as interconnected ways of supporting creative expression.
Across the practice
Creative development
Creative direction, artist development, and brand strategy.
Relationships & partnerships
Connections between creators, brands, and cultural institutions.
Gallery & curatorial projects
Exhibitions, curatorial initiatives, and cultural collaborations.
Art, commerce,
and experimentation
The boundaries between artistic and commercial practice are neither fixed nor necessarily oppositional.
Across our agency and gallery practices, we are committed to artistic independence, experimentation, and new forms of cultural exchange.
A home for defiant art.
A space for what is unseen.
Art can make room for experiences that ordinary language and familiar systems cannot hold.
The name,
and the possibility
Eterna Contemporary takes its name from Macedonio Fernández’s experimental novel, Museum of Eterna’s Novel: The First Good Novel. Its relationship to love, grief, and time offers a starting point: art can create a world in which contradiction does not have to be resolved, and what feels unbearable can find a place to rest.
Room for
the irreducible
We welcome work that refuses to fit neatly into a discipline, category, or market. Beauty, joy, grief, uncertainty, and love can coexist. A creative practice does not need to become smaller to become legible.
Independence,
with material support
Supporting artistic freedom also means building relationships, resources, and ways to sustain a practice. Eterna Contemporary connects creative expression with commercial possibilities while making space for experimentation.
Connection
as a practice
Exhibitions, collaborations, reading groups, and gatherings are ways to turn ideas into shared experience. Technology helps organize possibilities; people give them meaning.
Eterna Contemporary exists to help new forms of work—and new ways of being together—become possible.
Independent practices.
Open possibilities.
Rivers McCall
Sculpture, fashion, performance, and digital culture.
A multidisciplinary practice exploring materials, embodiment, and the boundaries between physical and immaterial experience.
From the archive
Works & objects.
Artworks and objects from Eterna Contemporary’s artists and creative practices.
Molten Balaclava
Rivers McCall
Soul Place
Bak Joo Young
Currently unavailable
Equilibrium
Bak Joo Young
Currently unavailable
Start a conversation
with a work.
For questions about artworks and objects, contact Eterna Contemporary.
Events & gatherings.
Spaces to encounter art, explore ideas, and bring new possibilities into the world.
The Technological
Condition
Art, Power & the Construction of Reality
A book club exploring how technology shapes perception, culture, power, and everyday life—and what we might create in response.
The world is made.
What else
could we make?
Followed by a four-week creation practice
San Francisco & online · Autumn 2026
San Francisco
Every other Thursday
6–8 p.m. Pacific
Starting October 29, 2026
Venue to be confirmed.
Remote · Theory
Every other Monday
3:30–4:30 p.m. Pacific
Starting October 26, 2026
Arguments, assumptions, and connections across texts.
Remote · Guided
Every other Tuesday
5:30–6:30 p.m. Pacific
Starting November 3, 2026
Context, key ideas, and concrete examples.
Stay in the conversation.
Receive updates on future exhibitions, reading groups, and gatherings.
The Technological
Condition
Art, Power & the Construction of Reality
How do technologies shape what we see, what we value, and what feels possible? What role can art, thought, and collective practice play in imagining something else?
Read & discuss
Six main discussions over 12 weeks, following six sections of the syllabus. Complete the core readings to the best of your ability; optional readings offer room to explore further.
Questions, connections to your own work, and half-formed ideas are welcome. Access readings through online sources or a local library; reach out if you need help finding something.
Then make
something optimistic
A four-week creation practice follows the reading series. Use the ideas and tools from our discussions to develop a work, experiment, or proposal that opens a possibility.
Hosted by Madison Mahre. Participate with curiosity, kindness, and respect.
San Francisco
Every other Thursday
6–8 p.m.
From October 29, 2026
Location pending.
Remote · Theory
Every other Monday
3:30–4:30 p.m.
From October 26, 2026
Examine arguments and make connections. Prior familiarity with the authors is not required.
Remote · Guided
Every other Tuesday
5:30–6:30 p.m.
From November 3, 2026
Build context, unpack ideas, and connect them to concrete examples.
Madison Mahre
aka Eterna.xx · @eterna.xx
Working across art, technology, and capital to build new possibilities for creative life.
Eterna Contemporary
San Francisco
Madison Mahre is the founder and director of Eterna Contemporary, an independent creative agency and contemporary art gallery. Her work connects artists, designers, and digital creators with collaborators, audiences, and commercial opportunities across disciplines.
She studied History of Art and East Asian Studies at Yale University and previously worked in technology-focused private equity, venture capital, and consulting. She brings experience in market research and commercial strategy into a practice centered on artistic independence and experimentation.
Her broader work asks how technology, capital, and networks shape culture—and how creators can develop new forms of expression, connection, and agency within those conditions. This work moves between the agency and gallery, product building, writing, community gatherings, and her personal Eterna presence across social platforms.
Creative practice & partnerships
Through Eterna Contemporary, Madison develops artist opportunities across exhibitions, fashion, media, retail, and brand collaborations.
Eterna Contemporary’s app demo
CultureWorks is an app in development, designed to streamline the research, relationship mapping, and opportunity development behind Eterna Contemporary’s creative agency practice.
Writing & research
Developing essays and video work on technology, art, power, and war: connecting critical inquiry with the conditions of cultural production.
Eterna · Personal brand
Eterna (@eterna.xx) is Madison’s personal brand across TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms—a space for ideas, images, conversations, and experiments that connect art, technology, fashion, and cultural life. Eterna Contemporary is the separate creative platform, agency, and gallery she founded.
It brings the questions behind her research into a more immediate, personal form: intellectually curious, expressive, and playful, with room for both serious inquiry and her own voice.
Reading & gathering
The Technological Condition brings people together to read, question, and use what they learn to make something optimistic.
Intellectually adventurous.
Commercially grounded.
Creatively independent.
Across research, creative work, and product building, the aim is to connect expansive ideas with things people can use, experience, and build upon.
The engine behind Eterna Contemporary.
Built into an app.
An app designed to streamline how we research markets, connect creative people, and turn possibilities into projects.
At Eterna Contemporary, we do this work by hand: understanding an artist’s practice, mapping people and brands, researching markets, and shaping collaboration or revenue opportunities. This demo brings that process into one place.
The app is called CultureWorks. It is a prototype in development, grounded in Eterna Contemporary’s creative agency practice.
More time creating.
A clearer path to opportunity.
Eterna Contemporary’s work connects creative practices with commercial networks. The research, relationships, and possibilities often live across separate documents, platforms, and conversations.
We’re building an app to make that work easier to organize and develop—first around the needs of Eterna Contemporary’s practice, and with potential uses for individual creators, agencies, brands, and other creative organizations.
From manual research
to a connected workflow.
Bring your world
Your creative practice, portfolio, past and potential collaborators, brands, spaces, and market reports.
Explore the connections
Map adjacent ecosystems and explore gaps where creative capabilities, audience needs, and commercial activity could meet.
Shape an opportunity
Develop concepts with potential collaborators, a market rationale, draft budgets, pitch directions, and next steps for validation.
The demo explores this workflow. Ideas, suggested matches, and draft budgets require review; they are not confirmed partnerships or guaranteed outcomes.
What could you build?
A creative collaboration
Connect an artist’s practice with a complementary creator, brand, or space for a project or commission.
A product or collection
Explore wearable art, merchandise, editions, or retail partnerships that fit a creator’s work and audience.
An event or activation
Develop ideas across dinner parties, mahjong nights, run clubs, exhibitions, wineries, bars, and restaurants.
A campaign or cultural program
Help agencies and brands connect creators, communities, and local spaces around a shared brief.
A local gathering.
A larger brand opportunity.
A creator-led mahjong night at a restaurant could bring together an illustrator, a local community, and a lifestyle brand—opening possibilities for a commissioned visual identity, limited objects, and a recurring cultural program.
CREATOR
For individual creators.
A self-serve direction for artists, designers, and independent creatives exploring opportunities around their own work and networks.
COLLECTIVE
For agencies, brands, and creative organizations.
A team and enterprise direction for mapping ecosystems, developing briefs, and coordinating possibilities across multiple creators, partners, and markets.
Help shape
what comes next.
Tell us about your work and the opportunity you want to explore. Your signup will help us understand which demo experience is most relevant and who may be a fit for early testing.
A mahjong night.
More than one possibility.
One community gathering can connect people, places, creative work, and commercial opportunities.
Start with
what is already there
A community organizer wants to host a recurring mahjong night. A restaurant has an underused evening. An illustrator has a distinctive practice. A lifestyle brand is exploring ways to participate in local culture.
Explore
the permutations
A ticketed gathering with an artist-designed identity. A limited edition print or object. A brand-supported series. A commissioned campaign built around the community rather than a one-off advertisement.
Each direction asks different questions about the audience, partners, economics, and creative fit.
Build a brief
you can test
Define the concept and audience, shortlist collaborators, draft an indicative budget, and decide which assumptions to validate first.
This example is hypothetical. No specific venue, brand, market demand, or funding has been verified.
What are you
trying to make happen?
Introduce yourself and the opportunity you want to explore.
We’ll use your answers to follow up about a relevant demo or early testing opportunity. Signing up does not provide immediate access.
Let’s make
something happen.
For creative collaborations, partnerships, artwork inquiries, and conversations about Eterna Contemporary.
Creators & artists
Introduce your practice or a collaboration idea.
Brands & institutions
Talk with us about partnerships and cultural projects.
Collectors & press
Ask about works, artists, and editorial inquiries.
Read the full artist biography
Performance works
In her performance work, Rivers McCall explores how networked technologies can convey what is raw, visceral, and human. The biological body meets constructed networks: yarn and thread, metal worked into textiles, and wearable sculptures that cocoon and protect while also restricting movement.
Childlike imagery and gestures unsettle familiar experiences of time, bringing memory, play, and bodily immediacy into the present. Across physical and mediated encounters, McCall asks how technologies of connection might return us to the vulnerable, sensory experience of being human.
Music and sound extend this exploration into a sonic register, blending and complicating the boundaries between the structured and unstructured, the biological and material, and the real and magical.
Selected works
Molten Balaclava
A wearable sculptural object that drapes over the head. Contact Eterna Contemporary for availability and details.
Head to base: 13″
Face cutout: 8″
Stay in
the conversation.
News on artists, exhibitions, gatherings, and collaborations.