The current emblem of international art in print, widely known as an advantageous start-up by a small milieu of individuals in San Francisco in 1963 was not a traditional topic for an annual juried exhibition at Pro Arts, a member supported non profit gallery located in Oakland's Jack London Square.

Curator Christian Frock and guest juror Michael Wilson, a current associate editor for Artforum, concentrated efforts of historical nature, regional styles, and the trials of art world accessibility via the culturally constricted Bay Area region for the aptly titled Claim the World of Art as Our Domain.

When dealing in the history of art in the Bay Area specifically, the realities are as telling as they are revealing: the San Francisco of Artforum's 1963 founding was a very different place for artists than that of 2006. Institutional support for the emerging artist was building, Bay Area art movements and styles were drawing attention nationally, and Artforum's founding was in perfect sync with a climate that was on a constant upswing through the early 1980s. The fast forward to the Bay Area art world of 2006 is not as kind, leaving the idealism of Claim the World of Art as Our Domain not as optimistic as it is fantastical.

The conquest for Wilson to expand on an ongoing regional debate in Bay Area art while walking a line that scopes Wilson's New York experience forced atop a historical remnant of Artforum's original founding mantra was of curious positioning. Wilson's assertion of the visually apparent trap of the hermetic work submitted for inclusion assessed the juried topic dead on: has the Bay Area ever claimed the world of art as its own domain, or has an exclusivity of regional tendencies helped coin a type-casted aesthetical wash that has superseded the need to expand a dialogue into one of a more global scope? Also of note is the fact that most working artists in the Bay Area region today are so by specific intention, not by destitution. This particular understanding of working artists in the Bay Area is not inherent or so obviously observant for critics working outside the region.

The logistics of assessing a remnant of the past (some 43 years later) via a juried membership exhibition lead to an uncomfortable artificiality showcasing a disoriented contemporary Bay Area. From the tightly supposed aesthetics of Tim Sullivan's personal prop C-Print ventures, to the clever mechanics of Bryan Yerian's "Line Drawing" device, Claim the World of Art as Our Domain ended up wearing the loud marker of a pre fabricated and constructed conquest. The final selection consisting of twenty-two works by eleven artists made Wilson's concession clear: the final selected would represent a conservatively defined and barren show of Bay Area artists.

Oakland photographer Uri Korn's "Six Angels in East Oakland", a black and white print of six Oakland Hell's Angels tombstones connected a historical faction with rebel reality while placed among other more playful and light selections including Scotty Enderle's "Prism" (multi colored streamers) and "Pendulum" a black glass plated floor level disco ball. Possibly the most engaging part of the juried exhibition lain in the three page Q&A between Frock and Wilson displaying a broad critical dialogue that is certainly missing from most juried exhibitions in the Bay Area. Alas, a perfect show of scope and space in complete opposition to one another evolved as the several restrictions did not allow for a wide enough survey for the dialogue to surpass the printed dialogue between Frock and Wilson.

Though its measurement and appeal may be confused with its clashing event and location, Claim the World of Art as Our Domain was not a wasteful exhibition: positioning a juried show on the basis of a venture never realized, while restricting a savvy Artforum editor to a specific membership pool of a few hundreds tops, and housing such a concentrated effort in a non profit showcase gallery, equivocated to a complex challenge. With its multifaceted set of intricacies regarding history, location, realities, and varied art professionals, such a complicated task was what the Bay Area needed to get the critical dialogue started proving that even if the exhibition went unnoticed due to location, on ambition alone, Frock is a genius.

Uri Korn, 'Six Angels In East Oakland', image courtesy of Pro Arts Gallery