The Other Side of This Life, 2008; oil on canvas; 50 x 72 in. With assured brushwork and equally deft needlework, Narangkar Glover has made a group of canvases that feature a homemade concrete skateboarding bowl located in her own Oakland backyard. This extraordinary structure, fondly referred to by those who know it as 'the pond,' is painted in real life a color that can only be described as swimming pool blue (an homage, perhaps, to the oft-practiced appropriation of empty pools as places to skate). Glover depicts tranquil scenes bathed in bright California sunshine. Three of the six... Read More

For his latest installment of the long-running Grey Invaders series, John Colle Rogers transformed Blankspace Gallery into a war zone. In this room-sized diorama, titled Crazy Train to the Land of Pure Imagination, the Grey Invaders battle the Green Defenders on a post-modern battlefield writ large in model-railroad scale. Armed with caches of simulacra and fueled by thematic revulsion, the combatants in Rogers' phantasmagorical campaign are icons stolen with equal abandon from pop culture and military history. The Defenders (comprised of U.S. Marines, Civil War cavalry, knights in armor and a few ghosts thrown in for good measure) wage a... Read More

This House is Not a Home is a highly formal show about being alienated from form and from architecture. This was among the most carefully considered and sparely curated group shows I've seen in Oakland. Artists James Gouldthorpe, Alexander Cheves and Moira Murdock seem to be reflecting on home as a commodity or as a fabrication, in which one might live out a facsimile of life. Closed, monolithic and silent, these structures offer no comfort. They are beautiful and cold, desirable and yet foreboding. Alexander Cheves' sculptures resemble toys - blown-up Monopoly mansions, or farmhouses that would dot an Astroturf... Read More

Pete Nelson's recent exhibition at Blankspace Gallery/Oakland titled ain't no party like a holy ghost party is an installation for occupying a sculpto-virtual headspace, leftover by the artist in the gallery and open to interpretation on the meaning between boozing it up fountain-style, sound-byte holy-roller shock attack, and close-ups of sexy lips, i.e. yours, mine, his or hers (well, to be determined, I guess...). I'm immediately reminded of the film Being John Malkovich...so, have I found myself partaking in the art-vessel of Being Pete Nelson? Occupying the entire main gallery of Blankspace, Nelson has laid out three objects relating to... Read More

"One object in particular creates a situation that hands are laid on you--not literally but figuratively...I'm hoping it'll be a transcendental moment," Peter Nelson was quoted as saying in an SF Chronicle review of his recent installation at Blankspace gallery in Oakland. Later in the review he's attributed with: "I'm hoping that a connection is created so that the situation is similar to the revival." Artists are often filled with such hopes for their work. This seems perfectly natural, especially if one views their work as a medium for communication--an attempt to articulate things that cannot simply be spoken... Read More

Pieper is one of those elusive types of artists that people can refer to but can't possibly recall how intrinsically beautiful his work is until another exhibition arrives to his credit. Blankspace provided another opportunity to take a look July 15 through August 19th with Makings, a solo show of Pieper's selected images taken from packing materials and discard at spaces where Pieper works as a preparator.... Read More