SFMOMA - SCULPTURESITE - CHANDLER - GALLERY THREE - NEEDLES & PENS - LITTLE TREE - ROBERT BERMAN - ANON SALON - 01.17.09

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art : Public Dialogue - Situation Room - Scott MacLeod.

Comment by AB: Lemme see if I remember this correctly. As part of the exhibit "Public Dialogue," German artists Blank & Jeron and Gerrit Gohlke are allotted a room where they invite other artists to create installations. Once completed, the right to reconfigure these installations is auctioned off on eBay, week by week, during the course of the exhibit. So if you have the winning bid on eBay, you get to redo the room for the coming week, the only caveat being that you can't remove anything the previous artists have put there-- you can only rearrange it. You can add stuff though. So Scott MacLeod wins the right to captain this week's rendition with a high bid of $108.50. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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Sculpturesite Gallery : John Toki - Landscape Abstractions.

Comment by AB: Imposing earthy clay and porcelain sculptures by John Toki have an upbeat uplifting archeological quality about them, seeming almost as if they'be been excavated from some fantastic advanced long lost civilization. Priced $2500-$40K.

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Chandler Fine Art : Alex Schneiderman - The Corrections.

Comment by AB: London artist Alex Schneiderman photographs painted-over graffiti on train trestles, his series totalling 27 images in all. A splendidly uncomplicated concept that works. You got railroads, industryscapes, high adventure in the dead of night, scaling steel structures, risking injury and arrest, and the pitched battle between outdoor muralists arting up the environs with urban oeuvres vs the aggressive obliteration of same by maintenance crews-- all summed up in satisfying rectilear abstractions.

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Needles & Pens : Bill Daniel & Santiago Mostyn - Some Word Pictures.

Comment by AB: Multimedia callaborative endeavor, mainly photography, by documentarians Bill Daniel & Santiago Mostyn focuses on the more romantic, genuine and adventurous aspects of travel including train hopping, hobo lifestyling, freeform agendas, and luxury chain resort repudiation. Daniel trends somewhat more local in his images while Mostyn, with an impressive worldly upbringing, extends it a bit more global. Prices range $25-$900. Nice show; stop on by and have a gander.

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Little Tree Gallery : David O. Johnson - Identity Crisis.

Comment by AB: David O. Johnson self-portraits himself into The Raider Nation, the Presidency, and related aspects of who we are versus who we wannabe or maybe what we might be like if we were.

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Robert Berman Gallery : Pre-opening Celebration.

Comment by AB: California is essentially unrivalled in terms of forward thinking, freedom of expression, creative license, concern for the future of the planet, and all kinds of comparably crest-of-the-wave stuff (not the least of which is surfing). That said, one curious interleague squabble I've always had difficulty understanding is this trumped up San Francisco/Los Angeles chasm-- or Los Angeles/San Francisco chasm if you live in LA. But now in a bold and courageous move, Robert Berman of the eminently venerable Robert Berman Gallery at Bergamot Station LA (well, Santa Monica to be exact) sets geographic differences aside and dares to open a northern branch here in windswept fog-ridden wackie-jackie SF. Yes, he's perpetrating to bridge the gap, I couldn't be more delighted, and tonight's intimate gathering marks that trepidatious toe-in-the-water moment.

There's not really any art to see, oddly enough, but we do have an awesome inaugural celebration featuring some formidable LA talent including The Niche Makers, M.S. Garvey and the Hootenanny Allstars, Famous Bob Rokos, Raymond Pettibon in an uncommonly uncommon and gratifying performance, Old War Shirt, and Robert Berman himself both in spoken word and on the trumpet. (When was the last time you saw a San Francisco gallerist perform under any circumstances whatsoever? For me... never.) And this is only a sampling of what a more unified state can provide-- a cultural exchange par excellence-- we have so much to offer each other and so much to gain by it. Meanwhile back at the hoedown, Berman tells me the art's definitely in the offing, but as for right here, right now, lucky guests are gifted with one of the great mementos of collaborative California artland souvenir schwagabilia ever-- a Raymond Pettibon T-shirt screened by Reyes. North and South united. Yo!

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Anon Salon : ANON/N!NE - CLOWNAROUND.

Artists: Lee Harvey Roswell, Peri Pfenninger, Lynne Cook, Mark Bava, Abbie Rabinowitz, more.

Comment by AB: And a superb time was had by all-- that's extremely highly likely the way the evening turned out. But I'm here way too early for anything. By the time the Anon Salon gets going in earnest, I'm curled up under the covers transiting dreamland with my teddy bear Snuggles.

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