RENA BRANSTEN - GALLERY 16 - HOSPITALITY HOUSE
BABYLON FALLING - PAUL MAHDER
05.21.09
(with assistance from RWM, Sandra Silvoy , and Georgianne Fastaia )

Rena Bransten Gallery : Eirik Johnson - Sawdust Mountain; Amparo Sard - The Error of Oversight, New Works.

Review by RWM: How nice to see the evocative photographs of the American Northwest. It is where many many trees come from, and where Erik Johnson depicts the extractive practices of the logging industry. His images remind us of a more bucolic time, but such places are endangered and could disappear if we do not heed the call of The Sustainability Movement. Conservation is not enough. At present, we can already document the lasting signs of our human footprint.

Comment by AB: In the rear gallery, Amparo Sard makes art with a pin, puncturing white paper countless times to create fine highly-defined white-on-white vignettes. About as subtle, delicate and disciplined as the creative impulse gets.

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Gallery 16 : Alice Shaw - (Auto)biography.

Review by Sandra Silvoy: Humorous anecdotes line the walls and intermingle with lovely nature-esque photographic works to depict Alice Shaw's (Auto)biography. She sought out analyzers of handwriting, tealeaf readers, psychics, and the like to interpret parts of her self she may not have even realized... or really cared to know. For example, "...you are going to be poor for the rest of your life"... super, something to look forward to! Included is a framed rubbing of her face, meaning she took a piece of paper and smooshed it around a little to leave behind an impression from her makeup... nice.

Review by Georgianne Fastaia: There is palpable excitement in the crowded room as people hover around a table, dropping five bucks into a jar, waiting to get their handwriting analyzed. I'm intrigued by the invitation-- "Alice Shaw has employed others, such as a handwriting analyst, an astral chart expert, a reader of tea leaves and a psychic, to tell her information about herselfŠ then taken what she has learned from these sessions and made artwork in response."

The show is part documentation of this process-- Shaw's original handwritten show proposal and the letter the handwriting analyst wrote in response, a palm reader's scribbled notes upon her handprint, a teacup and the notes "future health problems," childlike watercolors and photos of the artist in various personas interspersed with pairs of photographs and prints expressing dichotomies.

The first piece that catches my eye is "Face Print of My Colors," made by pressing paper onto her made up face... faint and wrinkled like a mounted skin, ghostly, yet still bearing the imprint of the artist. In that sad fleeting visage... mystery.

On my second tour around the gallery I focus on the photographs; distilled, mature, enigmatic, and come finally to a watercolor series of illustrated magic tricks suggesting that things are not always what they seem. I return to a framed envelope with a lipstick kiss on the back. Why, I wonder, in a room full of artworks priced under $1000 is a lipstick kiss on the back on an envelope priced at $10,000? This disparate price is disjointing and makes me consider the possibility of price as an intentional artifice, a clue requiring that I pay attention.

The envelope, mounted in a simple black frame, incongruously almost, freezes in time that particular kiss. It becomes a symbol of a kiss containing the promise of entering into another, and through them the hope of becoming complete; of understanding the unknowable you. Consider that most tricky of mirrors, love. The desire to be seen through the eyes of another, as much an illusion in the quest to know ourselves as a Russian woman reading your palm.

(Auto)biography uses our own fascination with ourselves to lure us in, as if through Shaw's exploration of her identity we might be let in on the secret. A friend comments that the work is hung too low, unevenly and looks unprofessional. My impression is that this is a deliberate choice serving to put the viewer at ease, by making the presentation more accessible, like a model with a chipped tooth. In imperfection you recognize humanity, and as such, I feel the way the show is curated beckons the viewer to an intimate place, as if whispering, "You can be yourself here." We have our handwriting analyzed, we see if we can predict the color of the next gumball out of the machine-- before we realize Alice Shaw is winking back at us, as if saying, "you don't really believe this stuff, do you?"

Comment by AB: Good show; go see.

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Hospitality House at Andrea Schwartz Gallery : 24th Annual Art Auction Benefiting the Community Arts Program.

Comment by AB: Packed house for the annual Hospitality House fundraiser event features a live auction conducted by Ess Eff's favorite fine art charity auctioneer, Stephen Tourell, and there's tons of silent auction art to bid on as well. Good deals here tonight.

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Babylon Falling : 'the end is near...' - A Gallery Retrospective.

Artists: Hal Lawrence, Robert Bowen, David Choong Lee, John Felix Arnold III, Le Bijoutier, Emory Douglas, Peter Simon, David Ball, buZ blurr, C3, Shawn Mortensen, David Young, Christopher Burch, Shaun Roberts

Comment by AB: Babylon Falling will soon be history as this swan song moment pretty much sums it all up. The store/gallery was noble endeavor uniting art, politics, progressive thinking, culture and literature in it's own unique way. I kinda think we'll be seeing an incarnation of this concept either here in the neighborhood or elswehere about town. It's too good not to pursue.

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Paul Mahder Gallery : Group exhibit.

Artists: David Baughan, Richard Bolingbroke, Ernest Ely, Yisrael Feldsott, Paul Mahder, Michael Markowitz, Marilyn Rodriguez, Corinne Whitaker, Elena Zolotnitsky, Sheryl Cotleur.

Review by RWM: Corinne Whitaker's digital images explode with color and vitality. They demonstrate the range of images available from digital sources with abstraction and movement. Colors meld and contrast displaying a full palette of opportunities for composition. Her "IoBioSynthoGeo" are fecund with life. Her "Fictionaries" burst off the wall with color and design. Super real and also surreal.

Comment by AB: I gotta go with RWM on this one. Corinne Whitaker's electric adventures in the digital realm are striking to behold.

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