After quickly perusing the Internet for Jacob Ciocci, I thought his work might be a gimmick, made of the same soft stuff that produces mustachioed teenagers and the book section at Urban Outfitters. It wasn't. Less than five minutes into his screening at Queen's Nails Projects, it was obvious that the infantilism in evidence concerned only the material. Ciocci is extraordinary at harnessing narrative arcs within spurious commercial imagery. His editing is aggressive and accessible. It retains the quality of a YouTube discovery that, upon finding, one immediately re-gifts via Facebook. Paper Rad, the artist collaborative to which Jacob,... Read More

Tony Labat's exhibition Bulk opened to throngs of art students, smoking and drinking on the sidewalk. At first, the event seemed like any other gallery reception. However, as a show focusing on the manifestation of social relations in an art event, the students hadn't come to see anything in particular, but to rather simply be with one another. With the gallery's main space converted to a bar, complete with amateur bartenders, swill cocktails at criminal prices, and makeshift wooden tables; Bulk turned Queens Nails Annex into a speakeasy, one built like a cheap theatrical set. Wheat-pasted on the gallery... Read More

OHHH did you SEEE IT? I did, and if you didn't you missed out on supporting one of SF's finest local Artists' spaces Queen's Nails Annex and one of SF's finest musicians, John Dwyer. John arrived in town roughly 9 years ago, had nothing and made something happen, and is continuing to make it happen with THEE OH SEES. While developing vibrant new Visions and Fuckin' Rockin' Hip Swayin' Music, John has been simultaneously developing these visions on paper and in a variety of media. The installation consisted of drawings hung all over the walls. There was a painted orifice... Read More

Until the recent rise of the nexus of gallery/art fair, the museum has been the single most undeniable fact of the art delivery system. As an arbiter of meaning, as architecture, as embodiment of social architecture, as art history manufacturer, as biographical Madeleine, ad inf ad nauseum it is one of the juiciest of all the subjects currently of interest to artists and curators. In her recent exhibition at Queen's Nail Annex artist Erlea Maneros, of Los Angeles, and originally form Basque Country in Spain (read: Bilbao and the Guggenheim Bilbao) used photography, paper objects drenched in ink (as opposed... Read More

Upon attempting to summarize MarcelayGina (Marcela&Gina), what initially popped in my mind was 'Sweet debutantes with a penchant for violence'. They probably aren't debutantes (despite the gold framed image of them in pink satin dresses in a Victorian era room on the left wall of the gallery), and their 'penchant' is probably more of an interest in violence than a like of it.... Read More

I stopped in to have a second look at Eamon Ore-Giron's solo show at QNA a few hours before the official closing this afternoon. It had been almost a month since I first saw the work at the opening and I wanted to compare my memory with the real thing. I was vaguely underwhelmed during my initial encounter. Not because Ore-Giron had departed from his more conventional paintings, which I saw a year or so ago on a visit to the Headlands, but because he had combined aspects of his past work with what appeared to be formal investigations of... Read More