tag:,2008:/1 2008-05-01T16:47:59Z Movable Type Open Source 4.1 tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.264 2008-05-01T16:18:58Z 2008-05-01T16:47:59Z

Every once in a while I walk into an art show and find myself happily disoriented. It's a rare feeling of being instantly affected by the work, without initially knowing why. And to clarify, what I'm talking about is a feeling beyond the intellectual recognition that something is well executed, interesting, or smart. It only happens about once a...

Every once in a while I walk into an art show and find myself happily disoriented. It's a rare feeling of being instantly affected by the work, without initially knowing why. And to clarify, what I'm talking about is a feeling beyond the intellectual recognition that something is well executed, interesting, or smart. It only happens about once a year and I think it has less to do with the art itself and more to do with a certain chemistry of the situation. It also depends on factors such as how much art i've seen in the same day, my current emotional state and what's going on in my life at the moment. When I walked from the gritty world of 6th and Market Street up the steps of the Luggage Store gallery I was beginning a night of visiting galleries -- excited to be out and with friends on friday night -- and I was immediately drawn in to the world of 'Feral.' It was early and not too crowded. I had space to move from one tableau to the next, relishing in the dense details of collaged wall pieces, the elegant iconic forms of cut paper murals and the layers of tattered lace and fabric sewn together and strung like spider webs in hidden spaces. I wondered at the vast amount of work resulting from the collaboration between Swoon and Monica Canilao, and how the whole thing felt so specifically crafted for the space. I learned later that the artists spent 2 weeks living in the gallery with a crew of around 10 helpers working under their direction to transform the space, incorporating pre-made elements transported from the artists studios in Oakland and New York. As I conveyed my excitement about the show to others I found myself using the metaphor of music. I was initially concerned that my enthusiasm for the work may turn out to be a shallow pleasure lacking substance, like a catchy pop-song -- seductive at first but turning to bubblegum after a couple of listens. I went back a week later to see the show a second time. I found there were layers to explore, details I had missed and stories still unfolding. Unpacking the music metaphor; the show is like an album with tracks featuring guest artists. There are distinct chords and rhythms provided by Swoon and Monica throughout that tie it all together, with additional voices and instrumentation adding layers-- creating a rich orchestration. ]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.263 2008-04-27T01:11:15Z 2008-05-09T17:31:24Z

I am certainly biased, but there is something great about a solo show that could be mistaken for a group exhibition. Rather than offering a one trick pony collection of ho-hum iterations, such shows present a network of varied artistic production that can, when successful, weave a spell far more complex than the standard frontal assault. Admittedly such shows are...

Zachary Royer Scholz http://zacharyscholz.com Figure Below, Nickolas Mohanna's solo show at Eleanor Harwood, is one such exhibition that I found worth the effort. installation view The show consists alternately of three works or twenty-two, depending on how you count the large grid of framed works on paper. Each of the 20 mid-size ink and watercolor drawings employs a varied language of striated accretions akin to morphed sedimentary rock. Their double-row-of-ten hanging reinforces their layered logic and introduces a horizontality that tugs against each individual work's portrait orientation. Counterbalancing the gravitational heft of the works lithic structure is the fluid openness of Mohanna's inky textures and the tranquility of his line work. The interplay of mass and lightness within the work is reinforced externally by the tension between the stolid grid formation and delicate white wooden frames. U To the left of the grid, Mohanna's 2nd/21st work, titled U, "leans" against the wall. I say it "leans" because, while it stands angled against the sheetrock like a John McCracken plank, the weight of the triangularish protrusion, bulging from its center, pulls it forward into space, so much so that it needs to be screwed to the wall to keep it from falling. It is constructed from stacked plywood layers that, if you turn your head to one side, look a bit like a pyramid or anthill. The profile of this mass has been ground and sanded into a surface that looks more weathered than fabricated. On its tip a small rectangular mirror glints. The piece would look innocuous if casually tucked away somewhere in a workshop, but standing in the gallery it has a deliberate and austere presence. Its layered and eroded form wonderfully employs a geologic logic similar to the neighboring grid. However, its potency derives largely from its awkward leaning/pulling relationship with the wall. The tipped orientation of the work wonderfully negates the stratified weight of its layered construction, like a cartoon mountain being picked up and looked under. The dumb honesty of screwing the thing to the wall deflates any slickness, while simultaneously making present and palpable the work's tragicomic desire to go crashing into the room. During the opening the work included a projector that, as Mohanna describes it, shot "a condensed 16mm transferred to video onto the center of the 3x2 square/mirror, which then produced feedback onto the ceiling." Though I never saw it installed with the video, I conceptually like the additional layering of the projected film and reflection displaced feedback. Knowing about its earlier media enriched existence complicates my appreciation of its current state, which is sufficient and substantial on its own. Ground Cloud & video still from Ground Cloud The final work in the show, and the largest, Ground Cloud, fills the space between wall and floor along one side of the gallery. A thigh high rectilinear mass, it hulks menacingly in the corner. Its surface, which looks to be sheets of mud-encrusted steel, like those used to cover road work in progress, is punctured along its front by two pyramidal arrangements of small rectangular openings, and in its top by an opening for the screen of a monitor. The punctures reveal little of the interior and the inset monitor screen, wreathed in black trash bags, displays a looping video. The structure of the videos swirling inky images seems related to the ink markings of the works on paper hanging opposite, but are more fluid and watery. The placement of the monitor is awkwardly near the gallery entrance and I had to stand nearly in the doorway to watch it, but I very much liked the odd earth-clad feel of it. The barely audible sounds coming from inside it intrigued me as did the faint light seeping out from the holey pyramids. I learned later from Mohanna that I should have stood on the Ground Cloud. The sounds on the loop within it are in large part sub audio frequencies that resonate the box and occasionally shake the debris on top. Standing on top of the box I would have felt the vibrations, and not have had to stand in the doorway to see the video. I also learned from Mohanna that at the opening sound artist Jim Haynes played on and with Ground Cloud using instruments and contact mics that he dragged over the work's surface. L: That Hath A Core And Not A Code C: Exiting From A Flue R: Tephra Fill Though lukewarm on openings, I wish that I had made it to Figure Below's inaugural night. Much as I like U the way it is, seeing it with its mirrored projection would have been nice. Similarly I would have liked to see Ground Cloud function as both stage and instrument. Regret aside, there is another part of me that is glad that my encounter with this work was in the quiet restive space of an empty gallery because much of what I like most about these pieces would have been lost in the hubbub of an opening soirée. While it is a little frustrating that the work that I encountered in the gallery and the work that was at the opening are so different, the fact that these pieces adapted to thrive in both mayhem and stillness is admirable. Admittedly, the density of such multivalent work can be difficult to unravel, but being easy is not always a virtue. In a landscape saturated with so much soft-serve ice cream it is refreshing that Mohanna's work requires mastication. Whether what you get after you have chewed and digested it is worth the effort, is up to you. Figure Below will be on view at Eleanor Harwood through May 9, 2008. ]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.261 2008-04-25T20:11:52Z 2008-05-09T17:41:40Z

Ever since I saw that animated polar bear slip off that bit of melting iceberg to its watery doom in the movie An Inconvenient Truth icebergs and polar bears seem to be everywhere. It is therefore not so strange that Lauren Davis solo show, When Hell Freezes Over, at Gallery 16 contains both bears and bergs. What is however strange,...

Zachary Royer Scholz http://zacharyscholz.com An Inconvenient Truth icebergs and polar bears seem to be everywhere. It is therefore not so strange that Lauren Davis solo show, When Hell Freezes Over, at Gallery 16 contains both bears and bergs. What is however strange, and wonderful, is the deft way that Davies weaves these topically pertinent subjects into a quirky and complex tapestry inflected with humor, sadness, and nostalgia for small town charm. Twillingate Bear Much of the back-story pinning this show together comes from the small village of Twillingate in Newfoundland where a young polar bear was shot, stuffed, and placed in the tiny town's museum. Davies has produced her own life size version of the Twillingate bear which, as a juvenile, is a bit undersized. Sheathed in shimmering white fur the bear stands in the middle of the gallery on a plinth draped in night-sky blue fabric dusted with fake snow. Eerily the bear's white fur is seamless, lacking nose, mouth, and eyes. Snowball Fort To the front right of the bear a "snowball fort" balances. Not for protection, but rather, delicately made out of tall towers of frozen orbs. The wonderful pun of this construction aside, the gently undulating spires vibrate with the tenuous energy of a Bill Dan stone stack and the humorous bluntness of David Hammons' snowballs for sale. In front of the fort, in a high-school-play-set-like lump of snow is jabbed a flagpole whose banner whips motionless, frozen mid-ripple. The flag marks its patch of gallery broadcasting the shows title, burned into it as if by a Boy Scout. installation view Ranged about the bear, the snowball fort, and the flag are a number of curious objects. Hung on the wall, resting on shelves, and slouching nonchalantly on the floor, this odd assortment exhibits a DIY aesthetic somewhere between natural history diorama and elementary school craft project. An incomplete model iceberg clings to an ice-water-blue wall partially revealing the skeletal wood structure beneath its frosty surface. Sugar cubes, piled high on a floating white shelf, approximate a glittering pixilated version of an iceberg's visible mass, while the shadow it casts on the bare wall below implies an elusive dark mass of ice beneath a surface of water that isn't there. Employing everything from digitally printed images of embroidery and delicate ethereal drawings on translucent vinyl, to wonkely transformed bits of polar fleece, wood, foam, flocking, and thread, Davies has produced icebergs, hillocks, waterfalls, and landscapes that are as sad as they are lamely fun. The Facts Embroidered Experienced together, the works force us into a strange set of shifting scalar relations. The slightly outsized snow-fort and flag casts us diminutively and a bit nostalgically as children. The underpowered stature of the bear denudes it of the full menace an adult would engender. This impotence is magnified by its helpless lack of eyes nose or mouth. Its strange vulnerability forces us to feel protective, even responsible, for this bizarre bear-like thing. The bergs and other various modeled landscapes situate us, through their diagrammatic language, in a position that is familiar but of ambiguous size. How big is that iceberg supposed to be? Is that a mini berg, a big berg, or a giant one? Construction and Reconstruction In combination, the works set us adrift in an unstable terrain more treacherous than their benign appearance belies. How do these patched together recreations, models and mock-ups relate to our relationships with the places and things that they index? The answers are not clear but there is a challenge in the work lurking darkly and massively beneath the surface. Berg There is not much fault to find with this show, but I do wish that it hit a bit harder or landed a few more body blows. Its levity makes the show refreshingly approachable, but allows an overly light reading. That said, I am sad to have missed the snow cones at the opening. Regardless, it is impressive that without resorting to overt politics or other didactic modes When Hell Freezes Over manages to implicate us concretely in the complex terrain of relationships and cultural desires that swirl around icebergs, polar bears, and the mysterious place they occupy within our constructed landscape of collective mythology. When Hell Freezes Over will be on view at Gallery 16 through May 31, 2008. For more information at visit the Gallery16 web site.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.259 2008-04-23T20:31:50Z 2008-04-26T22:08:33Z

It is rare for a show of small works not to feel diminutive. Misfits, Todd Bura's second solo outing at Triple Base Gallery, manages this with style. Triple Base's small space helps the modest sized work shine, but the lion's share of credit must go to Bura's pieces and their disparately cohesive installation in the space. Installation view Due to...

Zachary Royer Scholz http://zacharyscholz.com Misfits, Todd Bura's second solo outing at Triple Base Gallery, manages this with style. Triple Base's small space helps the modest sized work shine, but the lion's share of credit must go to Bura's pieces and their disparately cohesive installation in the space. Installation view Due to his delicate mark making, muted tones, and softened forms, the work could be described as "slight", but there is meat beneath its subtle surface. The language of Bura's gentle approach is indebted to minimalism, but blends in a povera aesthetic whose modesty keeps the work firmly rooted in the business of day-to-day revelation. The pieces employ a range of techniques and motifs, from nearly invisible pinholes and swirling masses, to angular wooden volumes and dense graphic forms. There are a number of works that could be described as "pictures" and some that might gain the tag "sculpture," but since all the works operate as both physical objects and visual conduits for the meaning flowing amongst them, such designations are nearly meaningless. While I have favorite works, the shows disparate cohesiveness is what I find most intriguing. The diverse objects in the show function concretely as a single work. This Gesamtkunstwerk encompasses not only the objects and the void space of the gallery, but the idiosyncratic details of the rooms architecture. Untitled (LOS) and Untitled (USEE) Bura's variously sized "pictures" hang about the gallery at generally standard spacing and height. However, each of the twelve works employs a slightly different center-height, creating a gently undulating wave of energy that softly pulses from piece to piece. No two works in this show are the same size, and this scalar variation is further modulated by Bura's orchestration of each works medium, ground, density, and presentation (framing etc.). A more overtly radical move is Bura's extension of his hung line of works past the normally accepted boundary of the gallery wall. One work hangs on a section of wall poking into the gallery's front bay windows, another, a diptych, is partially installed on the frame of the window itself. Untitled (DWHE) and Untitled (TOG) Bura's two "sculptures" are tucked unobtrusively into the back corners of the gallery; one hung unconventionally low, the other resting on the floor. Each is constructed of angular sections of wood that mirror the frames used in the show. Their forms reflect the joined logic of framing but have shaped themselves to echo the architecture of their environment. One is comprised of three rectangular arms, the longest filling the seam where two walls meet, and the other two, jutting perpendicular and flush along each extending wall. It floats a short distance above the floor, mirroring the intersecting seams of the white walls and wooden floor some foot or so below it. The other's two white arms meet at a similar right angle to the corner of the room in which it sits. Its shifted orientation to the intersecting walls triggers a cascade of 45 and 90-degree relationships. The forms of these sculptures are not only in sync with the architecture and the framing of other works, but are also echoed within the worked surfaces of the paintings that surround them. This total unity produces an expanded consideration that brings previously innocuous elements into play; electrical outlets, switches, doors, windows, baseboards, and bulwarks all become part of a shifting set of relationships. What is genuinely surprising is the level to which this succeeds. The architecture plays along so well that one may begin to question if the art has been orchestrated to the architecture or the architecture to the art. Untitled (YTHI) and Untitled (NGYO) As much as I appreciate the way that Bura's show at Triple Base manages to bring forward a present and curiously considered awareness of space, place, and our position within it, part of me wishes that, having gotten this far, it would go just a little further, or at least provide something more substantial to grab onto. I really like Todd's work but it often seems to slip away graying out into a barely audible texture glimpsed only in peripheral vision. I can't quite put my finger on what it is that keeps me slightly unsure of this work, but it is there. I usually shake my doubts off but I can never quite forget them. In part it may be the work's delicacy and precious scale which makes them prettier than I am generally comfortable with. While the works elusive quality is a little frustrating, I have to admit that there is something poetic and honest about it quietly slipping off stage to let us make meaning on our own. Misfits will be on view at Triple Base Gallery through May 4, 2008. more info at: www.basebasebase.com]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.256 2008-04-22T06:28:40Z 2008-04-22T17:21:35Z

Todd Bura's second solo show at Triple Base Gallery entitled Misfits is a tidy collection of minimalistic pieces that are both quiet and rebellious. Bura's honesty for his medium and style show with the cavalier and intentional formal quality of his work. Bura's work reflects an artist who takes himself and his work not at all seriously and very seriously...

Bessie Kunath Misfits is a tidy collection of minimalistic pieces that are both quiet and rebellious. Bura's honesty for his medium and style show with the cavalier and intentional formal quality of his work. Bura's work reflects an artist who takes himself and his work not at all seriously and very seriously at the same time. View of gallery When entering the gallery, the amount of white space could be concerning at first, but Bura's paintings, consisting demurely as shapes, smears and lines come to the surface amid the installation like a sparse constellation of 3-D elements. In addition to the paintings are actual sculptural elements discovered as you navigate the space. These few sculptural moments also seem to break the surface of the white room; the use of a raw canvas, a tiny shelf, a wooden shape lying on the floor lodged in the corner of the gallery, a shimmer of hardware, a tiny cleat barely viewed from the side of a painting on museum board. Bura's pieces work together as an installation in that they reference each other or pick up where the others leave off. But because each piece is so unique, it's easy to have a favorite, and each individual piece can hold on its own. View of gallery Bura definitely exploits his medium by pushing and framing his materials in such a way that reveals their luscious nature. A couple pieces, both untitled, keep standing out in my mind. The first of which is the painting on raw canvas. It is a simple stroke going across the canvas. Upon closer inspection, you see the blurred edges where the outer brush bristles only partially saturated the canvas, leaving a soft graduated trail on either side of the expected thicker mark. Another piece, on the back wall of the gallery, is a white on white painting hovering over a completely useless and diminutive perfect little white shelf. Untitled I am going to assume that the installation of the pieces in Misfits was carried out as intuitively as the works themselves. Misfits could be referencing a Suprematist composition; visually by way of geometric shapes, and conceptually, with deliberate decision-making in the composition of the installation of individual works. Bura does not, however, rely on the reference to the likes of Suprematist artist, Kasimir Malevich, but happens to share a similar rebellious attitude. When asked about Malevich as a possible influence, Bura replied (via e-mail), "...That dude is dope." And so are you, Todd. Misfits runs through May 4, 2008. For more images of the show and more information about Triple Base visit: http://www.basebasebase.com/ Bura's timely show at Triple Base is accompanied by similar pieces featured in a group show, Form +, curated by Lawrence Rinder, (Dean of California College of the Arts) at Meridian Gallery through May 3, 2008. ]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.250 2008-04-19T19:12:43Z 2008-04-20T16:54:11Z

Curator Patricia Maloney uses "Brass in Pocket" by Chrissie Hynde/The Pretenders to set the stage for Make You Notice at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. Hynde stands in the shadow of women rockers like Patti Smith, Joan Jet, and Pat Benatar--all women who didn't appease commercial interests to play in dotting girl groups. Female rockers possess/ed gritty hard-edged sex...

Genevieve Quick Make You Notice at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. Hynde stands in the shadow of women rockers like Patti Smith, Joan Jet, and Pat Benatar--all women who didn't appease commercial interests to play in dotting girl groups. Female rockers possess/ed gritty hard-edged sex appeal and powerful personas that challenge/ed the male-centric rock world. In "Brass in Pocket" Hynde assertively lists some of her assets (arms, style, fingers, imagination, etc.) that she is going to employ to demand your attention. The four artists in Make You Notice (Lisa Anne Auerbach, Kate Gilmore, Laura Swanson, and Jenifer Wofford) use their bodies, personas, and narratives to halt the viewer's attention while subtly paying homage to the feminist performance artists of the 1970s. While Make You Notice addresses gender politics, it clearly has a larger and more nuanced agenda that engages the viewer after a period when the art world has become so fatigued on issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Laura Swanson The focus of Laura Swanson's photographs is the difference between being looked at versus being seen. Swanson's photographs underscore our unease about physical differences, maladies, and disabilities in a society where we must negotiate both the rudeness of staring and of ignoring. Swanson is acutely aware of the viewers' dilemma and slyly plays with them by hiding or camouflaging herself from the viewer. Moreover, at first glance, the viewer is unaware if these are self-portraits; the very act of representing oneself or being represented is at issue and calls to mind the controversial work of Diane Arbus. Moreover, Swanson represents the range of her personality (from dark and gothic to playful and humorous) without being didactic in representing her "otherness". Kate Gilmore, video still from Anything, 2006 Kate Gilmore shows videos that present her engaged in impossible and extreme tasks. "Anything. . ." shows Gilmore attempting to reach the video camera that is suspended high above her head. After grasping towards the camera--the unattainable--Gilmore moves a table over and climbs on it to reach the camera. Unfortunately the table does not provide her with the requisite height. Gilmore then piles chair upon chair in a heap and bundles the whole mess together with string. "Anything. . ." has the sculptural sensibility of Nancy Rubins and the comical grace of Mary Catherine Gallagher. The viewer is acutely aware of the impossibility of her task and the foreboding doom if she fails and plummets to the ground. In contrast to the gothic and abject quality of many female performance works of the 70s, Gilmore's work uses a refreshing and novel sense of physical comedy. The artists in Make You Notice play with ideas of performing identity and the balance between desiring credit, attention, and possibly approval, whilst making the viewer aware of their talents, individuality, and range of being. Moreover, to Maloney's credit she doesn't mention the hook line in "Brass in Pocket". Anyone who knows the song, automatically completes the lyrics in his/her mind. The specialness of Make You Notice is the way that the artists command the viewer's attention and further the dialogue of performace/perfoming. Make You Notice will be on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery through May 24th.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.249 2008-04-18T18:13:14Z 2008-04-19T05:07:28Z

The first Saturday of April, I dropped by the Castro's stylish little hotspot for art, Femina Potens Gallery, to check out the opening reception of their current show, Neu Wave Feminism, which runs through April 27th, 2008. As one might have expected, the small space was noisy, high energy, and packed with cute young hipsters and older folks alike. The...

Isabel Santos Neu Wave Feminism, which runs through April 27th, 2008. As one might have expected, the small space was noisy, high energy, and packed with cute young hipsters and older folks alike. The founder and curator of Femina Potens Gallery, bondage model and up-and-coming Feminist porn mogul Madison Young, was there mingling with the crowd. For someone who runs numerous high profile web sites and was the recent recipient of a Feminist Porn Award for Hottest Kink Film, Young came off as refreshingly mellow and approachable. Her other accomplishments aside, as owner of Femina Potens she has a lot to smile about--she has curated one hell of a show this month. In promos, Neu Wave Feminism describes itself as an art show in which "three feminist artists explore identity, gender, and sexuality." This description fails to hint at the intensity of this mixed media tour de force. The artists responsible for this, in the best sense of the phrase, are former commercial photographer Jenny Rocksusto, papercut artist Lex McQuilkin, and traditional oil painter of jarring contemporary images Alicia DeBrincat. Each of these artists could easily hold their own in a solo show. Presented together in Neu Wave Feminism, they serve up a powerhouse of an art show. Jenny Rocksusto In poster-sized photos, as seductively lush and glossy as any Vogue spread, Rocksusto makes the intimate territory of sex and body a jarringly public affair. In one photo, the viewer is confronted with a pregnant woman's torso, slathered in paint, her breasts bound with standard-issue police handcuffs. As the viewer stares at the pregnant woman's nipples straining against the handcuffs, the image suggests fun and titillating S&M play, but also introduces sour flavors of authoritarianism, police brutality, and patriarchal control. In another large-scale piece, condoms fresh out of their wrappers are arranged on a chessboard. What are the opposing pieces on the chessboard? Egg yolks. It is unclear who will win this externalized reproductive game of strategy, but the effect is fresh and witty. Joining Rocksusto's work is that of Lex McQuilkin, who is in full control of her highly original medium of choice. McQuilkin, a self-described "papercut artist," carves paper into delicate silhouettes and arranges these ephemeral lines, words, and images into intimate and sometimes layered compositions. In one striking piece, a young, mustachioed figure wears a partially transparent dress shirt. The transparent paper of the shirt allows the voyeur, err viewer, to look through the shirt to see the figure's breasts and taped nipples beneath her clothes. This striking paper construction quietly urges the viewer to meditate on the complex nature of appearance, assumptions, and gender. Alicia DeBrincat Rounding out this stunning show is the work of oil painter Alicia DeBrincat. DeBrincat's style evinces an impressive degree of technical mastery that is increasingly hard to come by in galleries these days. She seems confident in her paint handling, and her figures' flesh has a degree of lifelikeness that is positively eerie. In one large-scale nude, the realism of the veins in the woman's feet was nothing short of unnerving. The freshness of DeBrincat's work, however, lies in the marriage of traditional oil painting technique with brave portrayals of female identity such as the Old Masters never dished out. In one painting, a larger-than-life nude woman strikes a cheesy pin-up pose against a backdrop of lemons. She wears a beauty-queen-style sash that reads "Round Ripe Juicy Tart." It remains unnervingly ambiguous whether this phrase is referring to the lemons or to the woman herself. While her alluring pose and the lushness of her painted flesh encourage the viewer to objectify her with their stare, the unwavering directness and intelligence of her gaze halts the viewer in mid-ogle. If this woman is an object of desire, she is one who is fully in control of her power over those who would desire her. The piece broaches some interesting themes of voyeurism, sexuality, objectification, and control, yet at the same time the painting is undeniably eye candy. The result is both creepy and thought-provoking. With Neu Wave Feminism, Femina Potens treats the public to an undeniably strong show. Rocksusto, McQuilkin, and DeBrincat, though working in quite dissimilar media, combine to present a notion of Feminism that has a strong, thoughtful voice and evinces a deliberate approach to art making. What with the rich history and highly-analyzed nature of Feminism, it would have been easy to fall back on clichéd images and ideas. But, thankfully, Neu Wave Feminism breaks fresh ground. Neu Wave Feminism will be on view at Femina Potens through April 27th.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.248 2008-04-13T17:20:33Z 2008-04-17T22:18:00Z

A dirty handprint on the pristine white wall of an exhibition space is usually something to cover up--not call attention to, but the five-fingered smudge beneath the frame of When Paradise Arrived, the anchoring image in Enrique Chagoya's Borderlandia exhibition at Berkeley Art Museum, was so fitting I had to wonder whether it was intentional. The hand and the tracks...

Mary Wilson When Paradise Arrived, the anchoring image in Enrique Chagoya's Borderlandia exhibition at Berkeley Art Museum, was so fitting I had to wonder whether it was intentional. The hand and the tracks of its direct contact with charcoal and paint is a signature symbol in Chagoya's visual lexicon--a riotously idiomatic language in which one super-added sign deserves another. That the print was still there on a subsequent visit a few days later strengthened my suspicions. When Paradise Arrived, 1988; charcoal and pastel on paper; 80 x 80 in. The first major retrospective for the Mexico-born, San Francisco-based artist, Borderlandia is a comprehensive survey of the historical records Chagoya revises. Ranging from multi-colored, densely layered maps, codices and cartoons to starkly dichotomous large-scale paintings in red and black, the media Chagoya uses varies widely. His lack of allegiance to a single technique or form mirrors the irreverence of the wholesale cultural appropriation his work explores--a message that is consistently relayed through the use of a hodgepodge of recurring symbols that call historical authorship into question. Figureheads of established Western political, religious and cultural canons--Mickey Mouse, Ronald Regan and Pablo Picasso, stand trial for their roles in the approbation of cultural obliteration. Chagoya's re-writing of history often hinges on depicting a cultural clash at the moment of collision. In When Paradise Arrived, for example, Mickey Mouse's sooty black outsized hand, fingers poised in mid-flick, dwarfs the figure of a girl whose only defense for the toppling devastation Mickey waits to deliver is the red Kahloesque heart she proffers in return. By freezing the action, Chagoya checks its inevitability and explores the potential for revision. This happens again in Liberty Club #1, in which a car hangs on the face of a cresting wave in a turbulent sea. Referencing the 2004 escape of a group of Cubans to Florida in a 1959 Buick, Chagoya's version of the historically-doomed vessel is still afloat and the viewer is left to ponder the what-ifs. Liberty Club #1, 2006; Acrylic and water-based oil on canvas; 60 x 80 in. Chagoya provides new cartographies to guide the lost through his alternative narratives. His maps, however, further scramble the cultural and geographic boundaries of the accepted legends. Road signs in "The Pastoral or Arcadian State, Illegal Alien's Guide to Greater America" direct a motley crew of international immigrants aboard a river barge to various waypoints. One direction offers a choice of destinations: State of Utopia, State of Denial or State of War; the way other leads directly to State of Shock. Chagoya's wry sense of humor is written on the side of a border patrol canoe that guards the shoreline of Arcadian State. Manned by military-clad natives with guns and headdresses, it reads "Part of the charm is the elusiveness of meaning." Untitled (The Burden of Freedom), 2006; Charcoal and pastel on paper mounted on canvas; 60 x 60 in. Indeed, it is this cartoonish play with historical narratives that characterizes Chagoya's work. Everywhere, signs, symbols, icons and legends are twisted, defaced and superimposed to reveal their hidden origins. Untitled (The Burden of Freedom) transforms the figures of Christ, Mohammed and Arnold Schwarzenegger into an abhorrent triumvirate ballerina dancing on a stage of blood-red handprints. Shadows and eerie afterimages often float or hang in suspension above their figures. Former California governor, Pete Wilson, minus his head, is a regular character. Bodies, seen skinless or dismembered in cooking pots, allude to rampant cultural cannibalism and the hand, whether used as subject or as tool, is both a humanizing and an active sign of resistance. Chagoya's codices, non-linear narratives of repossessed and altered symbols printed on gorgeous accordion pleats of amate paper, serve as an important key to the legends and maps of the larger codex of Borderlandia itself. In such a place, a handprint on a wall makes a perfect guide to the half-written and nearly erased histories that Chagoya salvages from obscurity and rewrites for the record. Like his local compatriot, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Chagoya offers viewers passage through Borderlandia with the surety and confidence of a reliable coyote who knows both sides. Borderlandia will be on view at the Berkeley Art Museum through May 18th, 2008.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.245 2008-04-02T16:01:34Z 2008-04-17T22:21:06Z

The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, showing at the Berkeley Art Museum until July 20th, is Joan Jonas' second retrospective at the university's art museum; in 1982, the museum (then the University Art Museum) organized Jonas' first video and performance retrospective as well as published the first monograph of the artist's work. In this second retrospective of...

Jacky Hayward The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, showing at the Berkeley Art Museum until July 20th, is Joan Jonas' second retrospective at the university's art museum; in 1982, the museum (then the University Art Museum) organized Jonas' first video and performance retrospective as well as published the first monograph of the artist's work. In this second retrospective of her work, Jonas considers the Hopi snake dance, which she first experienced in the 1960s during a trip to Arizona in relation to an essay by the German art historian Aby Warbur (1866-1929), who also observed Hopi tradition during a trip to Arizona. The resulting exhibition is stunning and multifaceted, but sometimes cryptic. Jonas began her career in New York City as a sculptor but by 1968 she began mixing performance with props and mediated images, situated in various natural and/or industrial environments. Jonas first visited Arizona and the American Southwest in the 1960s and was greatly moved by the snake dance and other Hopi rituals she saw during her trip. Aby Warbur, a 19th century German art historian, visited the American Southwest in his lifetime and was equally influenced by what he saw when he was there; thirty years after he returned to Europe, Warbar gave a lecture on the Native American serpent ritual, which he in fact had never seen, but described the ritual with great knowledge and concern for the culture. Jonas felt a parallel between herself and Warbur, finding Warbur's essay particularly salient and incorporating the text as well as the ideology into her work; specifically, in The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, Jonas uses his lecture as the text for the work. Since being initially produced by the Renaissance Society in 2004, Jonas continued to develop this work, adding live performances, video footage of which is on view in the gallery, and music composed by jazz musician Jason Moran. In its present state, The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things draws on various sources to extrapolate the power of universal narratives. Jonas' work is very compelling but is also complex as it considers Hopi traditions, the changing environments of the American Southwest, the human body, as well as a 19th century art historian's view; Jonas' work thus requires an in depth understanding. The installation of The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things at first feels overwhelming; when entering the exhibition, multiple video projections of performance, image, and sound compete for the viewer's attention. Jonas' work is complicated and not initially accessible. Unfortunately, only a short introductory statement was included in the exhibition, which only briefly explains Jonas' work. In this manner, the visitor who does not have a background in Jonas' work, will likely, and unfortunately, be left confused by the exhibition. When visiting this show, I would advise to do a little research beforehand. Jonas' work is complex and compelling. The Berkeley Art Museum has a history of collecting Jonas work but, until 2006, had much of her earlier work but little of her later films; in 2006, the museum acquired The Shape, the Sound, the Feel of Things, which, as Lucinda Barnes says in her accompanying essay, helps the museum represent "the fuller range and scope of Jonas' work." For more information about Joan Jonas: The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things visit the Berkeley Art Museum web site.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.244 2008-03-23T23:13:13Z 2008-03-24T01:36:06Z

The title of this show had me expecting water misters and dry ice machines as I walked through the front doors of the relatively new galleries at San Francisco non-profit Southern Exposure. That didn’t happen of course, because that would have been silly and SoEx, as those in the know call it, isn’t silly, but a serious contributor to our...

Raman Frey http://www.freynorris.com Vapor. You can borrow a bike and pedal your way around instead of driving to improve air quality, similar to a program tried in Paris on a much grander scale and in other cities around Europe. “Civic Cycle creates a temporary bike share program, a public bike pump, and a public forum on Saturday, May 3, 2008. This charrette [with artists Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine] will present existing city bike share programs and open a discussion to gather input on how San Francisco’s city bike program might look and operate,” says the brochure. Futurefarmers, Civic Cycle This is civic participation in real change that is badly needed and could catalyze similar progressive efforts elsewhere; it’s also quintessentially part of the larger cycle of programs and projects put together by Futurefamers, the moniker that Franceschini and Swaine go by. The stated curatorial angle for guest curators Alison Sant and Jordan Geiger is to “survey [sic] new art, architecture and design that takes our declining atmospheric conditions as the subject matter, medium and metaphor for creative work.” So, it seemed to me, kudos galore to all these savvy and celebrated people (Franceschini won a much deserved SECA this last go around at SFMOMA); maybe their ideas will blossom and catch on and we’ll all be better off for the effort. Artist Natalie Jeremijenko’s invited everyone to wear white cloth facemasks…yeah that’s right, so you look like you’re protected from SARS or bird flu. But I thought we still had comparatively great air here in San Francisco? All that ocean breeze and electric buses? Not so. These masks “blacken with contact to air pollutants to read ‘Clear Skies?’” Jarring! Fantastic! And I was certainly intrigued, maybe a little too frightened by how quick mine might discolor if I wore it around town. Jeremijenko’s design for a Greenlight was a beautiful living object and looked like something you’d see at the San Francisco Green Building Expo/West Coast Green each September (next year they’re going to move this mammoth event to San Jose). Many of the projects engaged with practical solutions to hidden problems with air quality and these came the closest in my mind to resonating with the show’s title. Natalie Jeremijenko, Greenlight Eric Paulos and Urban Atmospheres have designed a slew of objects “at the intersection of science and citizenry.” Repurposing signage and other everyday objects familiar to us in public places, they make suggestions around electronic networking (e.g. Bluetooth and wireless technologies) that would monitor air quality. Here’s a suggestion: Maybe these could translate into big signs that would sternly reprimand citizenry for driving gas guzzlers when skies grow hazy. “YOU THERE, IN THE HUMMER, PULL OVER IMMEDIATELY AND START WALKING!” Visit their web site and you’ll see the intelligence and humor of many of their projects. Want to carry a combined GPS device and pollutant sensor around with you today? Preemptive Media’s got you covered and you can check out one of these box-like doohickies from the SoEx staff and freak yourself out all over town—even monitor what other networked doohickies are picking up in other “pollutant hotspots.” Preemptive Media, AIR device, illustration With Living City, David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang, have created physical models and computer animation sequences to propose a city that breathes, not as sci-fi impractical as you might think. If the facades of buildings could somehow more fully come under control by city government (leases?), they could be designed to communicate air quality with one another across internet based networks. The result would be buildings that recycle their filtered internal air when smog prevails and open their gills to fresh breezes when the sky is clear. They’ve offered this platform as a proposal at www.thelivingcity.net. Fascinating stuff. David Benjamin + Soo-In Yang, The Living City, prototype So what’s Vapor really about? Well, it’s certainly about becoming more aware of the “invisible” (out of sight, out of mind) atmosphere around us. I suppose this is beyond laudable, more Bay Area art with a progressive agenda; it’s a survival prerogative that we all go beyond awareness to feel our own unique sense of stewardship for the natural world and that this sense becomes a kind of conscience related to the whole gigantic biosphere. This conscience can spur each of us to action, to changing habits and maybe help us all to breathe a little easier. Vapor will be on view at Southern Exposure through May 3, 2008. Several Vapor-related events are taking place during the run of the exhibition. For more information visit www.soex.org A note about biomimicry and related reading: Architects, designers and engineers familiar with the latest trends call efforts to emulate ecosystems “biomimicry." You can learn more about it in a book by the same name, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus. If you’ve now opened your book wish list, you might also want to try Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolutions, a deeply inspiring and revolutionary volume by luminaries Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins; this one is a big favorite of Big Al Gore. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart is also worth a solid read for those interested in practical solutions to climate change (and the new thinking we’ll need to adopt).]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.243 2008-03-23T22:50:03Z 2008-03-24T01:17:50Z

Do you love Jack Hanley Gallery? For better or worse, in many ways Jack’s our King Midas, the only guy in the last decade to make a deep and convincing dent in the international art scene from a perch in “provincial” San Francisco (Paule Anglim deserves credit for doing this a decade or two earlier). Jack does deserves more credit...

Raman Frey http://www.freynorris.com Installation view at Jack Hanley Gallery Johanson’s “big break” was probably his participation in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, though a SECA through SFMOMA in 2003 certainly helped boost his international notoriety as well. Like many recent talented Bay Area artists (very sadly) he’s relocated to Portland, Oregon, I’m guessing for great quality of life and cheaper cost of living. Where’s the city government subsidized work/live spaces for our most talented artists, Gavin Newsom? What happened to that big report on arts in the city and implementing your committee’s suggestions? OK, that’s a digression… You and I were there, you and I are there, 2007 16" x 22.75" Johanson’s current offerings at Jack Hanley’s unassuming Valencia Street space are best described as a chaotic installation of pounded 2 x 4 and plywood lumber punctuated by bright pictures. It’s a rats maze of surprisingly placed “paintings” in a naïve and erotic/quixotic tangle of color and vague forms, interacting figures and hard to discern activities. If you look for them, references to other artists seem to abound; Hockney in You and I were there, you and I are there and a wide range of Op artists in pieces like Contemporary Situation #1 and That no longer matters. Contemporary Situation#1, 2008 31" x 44" One thing you can often count on with programming at Hanley is that it will be dangerous, not like visually dangerous, but literally dangerous. To get through Johanson’s built up maze, you’re going to have to duck and step over lumber. There may even be a protruding nail or screw here or there. And you might get vertigo and wonder how he did that in such a small space. I wish he’d used a box of rusty screws and that the gallery staff would blithely offer tetanus kits as you leave. And this isn’t the first time they’ve gone for dangerous; Johanson’s recent A Collaboration with Kal Spelletich was full of buzzing, whirling and pounding machines that could really hurt somebody—it was huge fun to press buttons and play with them; kids were especially fond and parents had to closely supervise. That no longer matters, 2008 37.5" x 45.375" If you can sneak away at lunch from the 9 to 5, going in and getting disoriented by Johanson’s current project is certainly worth your time; you’ll walk away confounded at how he fit so many ideas and images into such a small area, and maybe you’ll even feel a little pride at his significant career which sprang from a launch pad right here in the Mission. And maybe you’ll bang your head on one of those gray painted 2 x 4’s. Chris Johanson's work will be on view at the Jack Hanley Gallery through April 12th.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.242 2008-03-20T06:43:20Z 2008-03-21T02:07:51Z

The Bush administration has made a fine art of creating and disseminating its own historical reality, driving the American public into either complicit belief or angry, uneasy doubt. Psymulation, a group show at Hamburger Eyes curated by Chris Fitzpatrick, invites the viewer to participate in that anxiety-producing moment when we have to ask ourselves if the facts reported to us...

Jeanne Storck Psymulation, a group show at Hamburger Eyes curated by Chris Fitzpatrick, invites the viewer to participate in that anxiety-producing moment when we have to ask ourselves if the facts reported to us are truth or fiction. Should we believe the history unfolding before us on the TV or Internet? Each artist presents documents (photographs, video, mixed media and works on paper) that offer “evidence” of our post-9/11 world where everything is viewed through the prism of terror. The show is prefaced by an actual tape-recorded interview between conspiracy theorist Dr. Armen Victorian and retired U.S. Army Major Ed Dames, a specialist in psychic espionage. The two converse in an atmosphere full of secrets and paranoia about UFOs, creatures from Mars and the US Army’s clairvoyant techniques. The listener might want to dismiss these two characters as fringe theorists, but their chatter sets a disturbing mood for the rest of the show. Gerald Edwards III, Investigation into the Disruption of Power, It All Came From the Same Place, 2007 The composite photos of Gerald Edwards III use digital manipulation to create menacing, hyperactive realities. From the waiting room of a nameless airport, planes engaged in rendition flights swarm through the air, taking off and landing in impossible numbers. Men in ski masks stand against a background of celestial star fields, staring out through mouth and eyeholes, but they have no identifiable features, no mouths, no eyes, only anonymous, featureless skin. Another photo (whose title sounds like an urgent IT alert—Investigation into the Disruption of Power, It All Came From the Same Place) shows a Hazmat worker standing in a corporate office, papers strewn on the floor and a computer flashing: “You’ve been hacked.” Edward takes iconic images that call up our deepest fears—torture behind closed doors, random violence, technology and science as the bearers of viruses and toxic materials—and turns them into photos that are unsettling and very close to believable. An apocalyptic film loop by video artist Squirrel throws out a steady stream of haunting images: Bush speechifying about nuclear holocaust, armies gearing up with gas masks, the iconic A-bomb mushroom cloud or young war victims with severe burns. Some images are plucked from our Cold War past while others are contemporary, and the mixture of old and new, creates a sense of déjà vu, a realization that the war on terror operates under much the same paranoia as the Cold War. Brennan Hill’s photo, Threatening Chair only adds to the anxiety. The chair is simply an empty optometrist’s chair, a medical device, but we can’t shake the feeling that something bad might have happened here. Brendan Threadgill’s mixed media pieces claim to be fragments of car bombs, but there is no way to prove this. A mangled car roof sits in the middle of the gallery like some uninvited alien. Is it real or is it representation? Psymulation successfully raises the question of whether in our current political climate we can tell reality from fiction. A nagging doubt runs through every piece in the show so that even when you exit into the alley, a cloud of unease follows. But better unease than complacency.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.240 2008-03-11T06:45:58Z 2008-03-13T06:11:36Z

James Gobel has been portraying a subculture of the gay community for the past 5 years, a group he willingly decided to join when he got tired of the ubiquitous images of homosexual males. Bears are big men proud of their way-above-average weight and their hirsute dermis. Their most habitual garb is checkered shirts and jeans making them kind of...

Jano Cortijo I Love You and I Always Will 72" x 60" acrylic felt, wool felt, yarn, & acrylic on canvas, 2007 Stylish but in a rather domestic way, Gobel’s paintings are made of very tactile materials that, while still 2D, make them spring out of the frame. The vivid felt and yarn he uses have a wholesome, grandma quality which, in a bizarrely perfect way, serves the purpose of depicting his subjects as burly odalisques amidst some gloomy yet colorful elliptical narrative. Setting his images apart from what is commonly expected from gay artists, while retaining qualities usually associated with their craft, Gobel chooses to keep his subjects clothed because it is ultimately the outfit that bears the idiosyncrasy of his characters. Their hairy aura has been turned into a thick surface of rainbowy drama, you know, the kind that has kept Morrissey in the business for so long. It is the crafting of this surface that reveals the queer antics in Gobel’s art: polished and meticulous, using a kind of patchwork technique of feminine associations to dress testosterone filled men who emote their masculinity rather explicitly via their massive humanity. Their specific quirks or kinks are earnestly hinted or blatantly exposed by their attire and affected poses, further defying the most conventional notions of male homosexuality. Holding Tenderly To What Remains 35" x 28" acrylic felt, wool felt, yarn, & acrylic on canvas, 2007 Like John Banskton or the Spanish artist David Trullo, Gobel appropriates the labels that pervade the seemingly endless niches and cliques of contemporary gay men to create a bubble both eerie and joyful where the Sisyphean cycle of affirming an identity while reinventing the self is a never ending charade of dress codes, body modification and signal emission that can either scare away or attract so many epithets and monikers. By fiercely owning the title of “bear” James Gobel manages to have fun and amuse his knowingly-or-not audience instead of whining about labels’ annoying ability to make everything easier to remember while shedding a tainted light on their grouped subjects. Bear Hunting will be on view at Marx & Zavattero through March 29th.]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.238 2008-03-04T03:53:39Z 2008-03-08T20:24:41Z

Leonora Carrington: The Talismanic Lens, showing at the Frey Norris Gallery in San Francisco, offers a taste of the brilliance of the English-born painter Carrington who has made her home in Mexico for over 50 years. The exhibition includes eleven oil paintings, several gouaches, watercolors, drawings and spans forty-five years of her career. Carrington is 90 years old and is...

Lani Asher Leonora Carrington: The Talismanic Lens, showing at the Frey Norris Gallery in San Francisco, offers a taste of the brilliance of the English-born painter Carrington who has made her home in Mexico for over 50 years. The exhibition includes eleven oil paintings, several gouaches, watercolors, drawings and spans forty-five years of her career. Carrington is 90 years old and is one of the last surviving surrealists. She was part of a magical circle of ex-patriot artists, many part of the surrealist movement that found refuge in Mexico after Word War Two and included Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, Luis Buñuel, and Wolfgang Paalen. Carrington reluctantly calls herself a surrealist because “I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse. I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.” Bird Bath Surely Carrington’s personal history influences her work. Carrington is a writer as well as a painter and draws from the Celtic fairytales her Irish mother told her as a child, the Italian painting she studied at boarding school, the experience of motherhood, and her friendships with other artists. As a young woman she went to live with a married Max Ernst in France. When he was taken prisoner as an enemy combatant, she had a nervous breakdown. Afterwards, they both arrived separately in New York, Ernst as Peggy Guggenheim’s husband, and Carrington with a Mexican diplomat who became her first husband and later took her to Mexico. Untitled The modest but beautiful sampling of her work featured in this show is able to transmit the truth and power of Leonora Carrington’s alchemical painting. Her personal language of signs and symbols: handwriting in reverse, (that can be read in a mirror), animals that serve as guides and spirits, and the themes of cooking, eating, and magic can be found throughout the gallery. Inspired by Whitney Chadwick’s seminal book Women and the Surrealist Movement, Raman Frey and Wendi Norris started collecting Carrington’s work as well as other artists from this circle several years ago. An introduction by art historian Susan Aberth to Leonora Carrington led to a personal friendship with Carrington that shows in the love and care taken with this lovely show. Her son, the poet and professor, Gabriel Weisz-Carrington suggested the title. Weisz-Carrington as well as art-historian Ara Merjian contributed essays to a 60-page catalogue that accompanies this show. Leonora Carrington: The Talismanic Lens will be on view at the Frey Norris Gallery through March 30, 2008]]> tag:www.shotgun-review.com,2008://1.232 2008-03-02T20:04:14Z 2008-03-13T16:53:20Z

In an election year, it’s inevitable that Americans will tend toward solipsism with even greater ease. This is an interesting moment to investigate contemporary American identity while we are internationally reviled, in the midst of a seemingly endless war halfway around the globe, and divided into various camps of us and them (blue and red, recent immigrants and descendants of...

Valerie Imus Reconciling America: Miraculous Encounters with the Mundane, currently on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, is a compelling presentation of portraits of Americans, from artists’ family members to total strangers glimpsed on the web, and addresses the relationship of contemporary artistic practice to various strands in American cultural identity. Many of the artists in the exhibition attempt to valorize the everyday details and stories of contemporary American life but at times struggle with a patronizing ironic distance in relation to their subjects. Some of the artists in the show use personal stories to examine the significance of the mundane in our day-to-day existence. Jennifer Durban’s audio work, I Met my Dad on Friendster, is set into the doorway of an unused elevator in a dark side alcove off of one of the galleries, giving one the odd impression of either worshipping in a small chapel or having trespassed into a creepy private backspace. The autobiographical narrative is reminiscent of an episode of This American Life, the National Public Radio show built around the narrative value of the fine details of everyday life. Durban intersperses her story of meeting her birth father through Friendster with recordings of testimonials by friends and family. It’s a tribute to the engaging nature of the work that I was left wanting more information from the story. The piece closes with her musing on the new possibilities of social networking sites not only to create deeper connections between people but also to produce new conflicts in managing the public nature of our private lives. Ellen Lake and Zefrey Throwell are each tireless documenters of others’ personal stories. Lake’s experimental video shorts portray collectors of all sorts of mundane objects, from macaroni and cheese boxes to plastic straws. These portraits of accumulation poetically describe our efforts to define ourselves through our belongings. Zefrey Throwell’s radio show Frank Prattle is an energetic and prolific series of conversations between creatively paired artworld personalities. Throwell’s interviews are being conducted in the SFAC gallery regularly throughout the run of the show, and are archived at www.frankprattle.com. Lynn Marie Kirby 34/400 (Standardized) Screen Tests, 2008 Two of 34/400 Screen Tests Digital Video Still In the rear of the gallery, behind a dark curtain is an elegant and somber video installation by Lynn Marie Kirby. 34/400 (Standardized) Screen Tests features video portraits of two adolescent boys, James and Paul, presumably Kirby’s son and a peer, who, given the title, seem to be auditioning for manhood. The hypnotic black and white video of the boys gazing, bored, into the camera is set off-center into a graphic white square outline on a black background, as if one is viewing them through a viewfinder or crosshairs. Close-ups of James and Paul fidgeting awkwardly are alternated with longer shots of them answering pointed questions posed off-screen such as “When do boys become men?” and “What is a hero?” The projection is accompanied by two framed essays, each titled “War,” and carefully hand-written by one of the boys. The texts, meditating on the nature of war in their childish scrawl, at times seem to parrot an adult’s perspective while also comparing battle to their personal experiences of arguments and video games. The piece reflects our deep anxiety about the fate of our children and calls attention to the ways in which mythic and heroic narratives circumscribing the gender identity of children are reinforced. JD Beltran is also collaborating in a sense with her young son, Sebastien Bachar. Her vertical portraits of him from the Adventures series, which seem to portray a small figure within an almost oppressively vast sky of possibility above, are installed next to a few snapshots taken by Sebastien himself, suggesting the flipside of the quip "my kid could do that," namely, 'that kid's work has the studied amateur look that many contemporary photographers aspire to.' Julia Page’s First Kills series of reproductions of newspaper photographs of children celebrating their first successful deer hunt looks at another way in which images of children are used. The circulation of these newpaper photographs reinforces this ritual as an important rite of passage. The original newspaper dot patterns throughout Page’s prints point to the images’ origins, but their recontextualization into the gallery environment carries an air of condescension. Brendan Lott’s work originates as photographs uploaded by unknown individuals to a publicly accessible website. Lott then hires master painters in Dafen, China to reproduce the images, often snapshots of adolescent girls in provocative poses, in oil on canvas. (One exception to this is the piece “I Just Want to Run Out of Here Screaming,” the intriguing image used on the show’s postcard of a teenage boy with his hands in front of his face.) However, the fact that none of this background information is actually provided within the context of the exhibition and is only briefly mentioned in Lott’s artist’s statement, casts the sense of an elitist in-joke over the work. In commissioning the hand-made replication of digital images, Lott attempts to recast them as one-of-a-kind objects with a greater caché within the global capitalist market. However, one degree of separation from their infinitely reproducible context doesn’t remove them from a smugly exploitative Girls Gone Wild genre. Lott directly refers in his artist’s statement to this work as “the contemporary exotic,” placing it squarely within the very long problematic history of a white upper-middle class male portrayal of the other as an exotic object. Both Lott and Paul Mullins refer to their work as “elevating” their poor, uneducated, working class white subjects. The patronizing quaintness of this formulation frames these subjects within a high vs. low culture divide. Despite any claim to elevation, the sense that it is only through the privileged position of the artists that the true value of these subjects can be revealed merely reinscribes them as the naïve purveyors of raw artistic material. Mullins’ hand-drawn pencil and acrylic pieces seem to be trying to inhabit both a position of irony and a slightly more sympathetic place. His human subjects are often peripheral to the frame while animals and machinery take center stage. The goofy nature of some of these pastoral scenes – a dog humping a football helmet for instance – imbues the work with a certain whimsical tenderness. Tucker Nichols We Do Smog, 2008 155 Grove Street store front Tucker Nichols’ hand-written phrases on scraps of paper and cardboard retain the air of random analog-style eaves-dropping, appropriated from anonymous sources who are outside of the global image market. Collectively, the gleaned shards from the detritus of our everyday background noise, form a portrait of Americans preoccupied with lists and convenience which suggest an undercurrent of anxiety or anticipation, yet the message “lost bees” casts a note of despondency and the window painting at 155 Grove Street, “We do smog,” seems to shout in desperation. Dina Danish All My Life I Have Tried to Fit Cheese on Toast, 2007 Objects from Walgreens on Filmore and Haight that are the same size as toast Digital Video Still All My Life I Had to Fit Cheese on Toast, is a repetitive video by Dina Danish in which hands place objects purchased at Walgreens upon a slice of bread on which they fit perfectly. The slap-stick sped-up video robotically catalogs the seemingly endless parade of uniformity and consumability of all the objects in our everyday lives. Richard Haley is an anomalous romantic within the show. His Bas Jan Ader-influenced piece is a more allegorical way of exploring identity, following a tragic hero in his quest for the sublime. His installation, Pre-Enactment of Being Lost at Sea, includes a handmade wood boat which features two holes in the bottom, fitted with threaded tubes and caps, and a video of two attempts to sink his boat at the same rate as the setting sun in what appears to be a small pond in the midst of suburban traffic and power lines. As in Ader’s projects, Haley’s simultaneous unlikely and nonsensical acts of rehearsing the process of getting lost and of chasing the sun are offset by the very real labor involved in fabricating the boat and rowing and the sense of panic in the handheld camera movement as the water rises. The title of the exhibition also brings to mind the title of Ader’s project, In Search of the Miraculous, which ended with his ill-fated sea voyage. If the contemporary romantic quest ends with the discovery of the sublime within the everyday details of American lives, a balance must be sought between endless navel-gazing and projecting sublimity onto an ‘other.’ Without this, maybe Americans are just lost at sea in a small pond. Reconciling America: Miraculous Encounters with the Mundane, Curated by Meg Shiffler, Joyce Grimm, Dana Hemenway, and Zefrey Throwell, will be on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery through March 11, 2008.]]>