Situated round the corner from SFMOMA and down the block from the St. Regis Hotel is the unveiling of the newly re-located Catharine Clark Gallery with its opening show entitled “Breaking Ground, Ground Breaking”. Free from the confines of 49 Geary, Catharine Clark ambitiously stakes her claim as a forward thinking gallerist, albeit using carefully pre-conceived identifiers of contemporary gallery hotness. With its concrete floors, white painted walls and industrial vents, windowed garage door front and perfectly hip street nestled in the shadow of SFMOMA and Yerba Buena, one might think they’ve stumbled upon a missing block in that larger shadow of Manhattan’s Chelsea district. This is not an easy tightrope to walk when one accounts for the fickleness of a city that often lambastes more financially stable galleries with accusations of corporatocracy while simultaneously lauding smaller alternative spaces with little financial security.

That being said, Catharine Clark continues in her tradition of employing a more thoughtful installation and strives to present itself firmly on a line vacillating between the expected and unexpected far beyond many of her peers. Immediately upon approaching the space, Walter Robinson’s installation “Context” splashes boldly thru the slick garaged front, confronting the viewer with the vernacular often used in the context of art discussion. Ranging in size from 11- 24 inches in diameter, the glossy candy-colored circles appropriate the tactility of buttons or the slickness of pills, each with a different word sometimes repeated but in varying shades of colors, both in font and background. Although the installation is acutely installed, it is curious that we should be made self-conscious about the context of our surroundings under the rubric of anything “Ground Breaking”. Hardly anyone is unaware of the less palatable aspects of the art market, which often reduces a work to a sexy catchphrase. Nonetheless, the sculptures work as a visual feast buoyed by a somewhat neutral point of view.

Once entered, one encounters Ray Beldner’s “Ground Breaking of In Advance of the Broken Shovel”, a nod to Marcel Duchamp, which cleverly works its way throughout the exhibition space and fortunately is a one-liner which never feels stale or overworked. Its sculptural simplicity is employed with just the right dose of irony and earnestness, leaving one to wish that the entire exhibit were full of these gems. Indeed, what is particularly amusing is that this not so subtle gesture best fulfills the notion of “Breaking Ground” in part because it assumes the challenge so transparently while not overworking it’s subject and taking itself too serious.

On a somewhat opposite end of this spectrum is a painting by Julie Heffernan, which continues her affectations for combining mysticism and femininity in a somewhat neo-decadent pastiche of Rococo and Flemish styled mannerisms. Loaded with her usual 17th and 18th century inspired accoutrements, “Self-Portrait as Moth to Flame” interestingly invites the viewer to peer into a dramatic play underway but falls shy of inciting anything which might feel new or hence “Ground Breaking”.

Around the corner, however, is a full sized film/video space, clearly upping the ante in comparison to other local galleries, (which for too long have ignored this already accepted medium into their current dialogue). Be careful not to miss Reuben Lorch-Miller’s watercolor text “Lights Out” or “Move In Special”, which read like action directives without compromising it’s inherent ambiguity.

Moving into the video space are two pieces by Anthony Discenza. The first one is a 4-minute small digital video entitled “Dream Home” that features facades of wealthy homes broken into grids whose parts randomly interchange. The specific styles become irrelevant while the commonality is further enhanced by the consistent presence of a manicured green lawn and bright blue sky. The wealth necessitated to attain these homes isn’t of particular interest here, but rather the singularity of aesthetic for which our culture seems destined for.

The issues of conformity take center stage with the larger video projection “Drift”, an amalgamation of over 100 pixilated images of a suburban viewscape taken from above. The images appear blown up, muting any precise detail, and whether intentional or not, reference the detached almost clinical perspective of a google street map search. In a culture where anyone can view small and large towns alike by the simple click of a mouse, the blurry and anonymous cropping of rooftops, electrical poles, driveways, etc. constantly rearranged with a cubist’s eye for flatness and overlaid with an almost suffocating audio, offers up a dystopia where one soon realizes they have been ensconced in a mesmerizing trap.

Working within similar mediums is Lincoln Schatz’s “Cluster”, an interactive video software piece that records gallery visitors and displays them at various times causing the time between the recordings to become irrelevant, creating a unified but constantly evolving digital portrait. As savvy as the technology is for this piece, it’s surprising to see within another room Schatz’s “End of Boom”, a more mature video which greatly benefits from restraining its technical prowess and allowing the simple overlay of video shots taken from above an active construction site to realize its own narrative. Never before has the process of major construction seemed so tender and inherently fragile.

Along the same note is Inez Storer’s “Patriotism (#1-6)", a mixed media college of old photographs and wartime letters which almost overwhelms itself with their quietly nostalgic narratives of America during past war times.

Ultimately, though, it is unclear where anything appears to break ground or as the accompanying gallery pamphlet states “falls out of lock step with preconceived norms and breaks away from an established order”. However, the successes here certainly provides hope for a gallery itself which in its 12th year might signal a shift in the homogenous rhetoric often plaguing lesser risk taking San Francisco institutions. Looked thru this lens, perhaps the relocation is less of a “Breaking Ground, Ground Breaking” venture and more of a much-needed jolt to the often too comfortable status quo. In a city famous for its jolts, it remains to be seen whether this one will be a foreshock or a slight shake. Fortunately or not, one will just have to wait and see.