General comment by AB: Well artsters, things are curiously quiet this month, especially at Ess Eff's creative cartel, 49 Geary, with only a handful of new shows on the docket (several galleries don't even bother opening their doors for the occasion). But that's fine 'cuz the circumstance presents a perfect opportunity to transit the outskirts and corral the whole shootin' match for your viewing enjoyment. Plus we've got a rare triumvirate-- a Pick of First Thursday, a Second Pick of First Thursday, and a Pick Runnerup. And just for good measure, I'm gonna throw in a Pick Honorable Mention. (Woah-- I've gone Pick happy!) Anyway, for those of you keeping score at home, both Picks, the Pick and the Second Pick, are equal in value; I just happened to see the Second Pick after I saw the Pick, which is why I call it the Second Pick, and as for the Pick, I suppose it should technically be called the First Pick, but that's too many "firsts" because then I'd have to call it the First Pick of First Thursday. You follow me? Excellent. Plus this green thought-- conserving words is good for the environment.

And now, let's take a brief moment as I prostrate myself at your collective tootsies and profusely apologize to all of you whose names I continually forget (you know who you are; I, of course, don't). And you're right, there's never any excuse for such improprieties, but I'm gonna make one anyway-- I suck at remembering names-- always have, always will. Between you and me, I'd forget my own name if it wasn't tattooed on my right ass cheek.

So OK. We got that one settled, and miracle of miracles, there's nothing left on the agenda but to see us some art. Got those loins girded? Beautiful. Off we go...

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Hackett-Freedman Gallery : Ann Gale - New Paintings.

Comment by AB: Ann Gale's grainy take on psychological portraiture has an oddly seductive quality about it-- kinda like rubbernecking as you drive by an accident. The sitters may not be pretty, but their expressions and postures reel you in, get you wondering about who they are and what they're thinking. She accentuates the effect with an atypical brand of brushwork that you might call abstract impressionism.

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Gallery Paule Anglim : Enrique Chagoya; Hung-Chih Peng.

Review by Eva Lake: Most impressive are the big paintings in this show, which feature a landscape as a backdrop with smaller figurative elements on top. These, often accompanied by slogans or sentences, provide curious?cultural narratives. There are sweeping waves in neon colors like fire orange invaded by aqua boats, strange figures and text. The works seem to deal with being lost or found or somewhere in between, both literally and culturally. The gestural approach in the bigger paintings, combined with collage bits (or at least it looks it)-- references various pop cultures, ours and others. The smaller pieces are much busier with more to read and look at, but I found the expressive color rushes of larger works more emotionally satisfying. It's all good though, very good.

Review by Jennifer Mullen: Enrique Chagoya has a range of work on display at the Paule Anglim Gallery; lots of pop art with political and cultural references. The show features some figurative yet surrealist paintings, some abstract paintings, mixed media, and printmaking. Hung-Chih Peng has a really cool video installation in the back gallery. It's footage of a dog licking a wall and revealing profound statements.

Comment by AB: Check out Hung-Chih Peng's amusingly intriguing hocus-pocus videos of dogs licking white walls and, in so doing, mystically materializing religious and philosophical quotes by the likes of Confucious and Guru Granth.

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Gregory Lind Gallery : Barbara Takenaga - Paintings.

Review by Eva Lake: Barbara Takenaga shows acrylic paintings in linen, made up primarily of layered dots, from big to small. She tells me she starts at the edges of the works and moves towards the center, never knowing exactly how they will turn out. While the works seem to reference Op Art when seen small in a JPG, in person they looked like Liberty peacock prints or a very obsessive William Morris design. The color stories are complex and subtle and not outrageously showy. It's all done by hand and it shows-- absolutely meticulous yet often spontaneous at the same time. In a few pieces she uses a milk frother to add her own comment on gestural painting and the Ab Ex guys-- really successfully-- you could look at these forever and not see it all. Evidently collectors think so too because the show looks sold out.

To watch Eva Lake's video interview with Barbara Takenaga on YouTube, click here .

Comment by AB: Exquisitely intricate, sumptuous, and mesmerizingly kaleidoscopic work. Pick Runnerup.

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Fraenkel Gallery : Lee Friedlander - America By Car.

Comment by AB: When I was a kid, my family would take one classic car trip every summer, some lasting as long as three weeks. Lee Friedlander's photogaphs taken through car windows remind me of those trips-- it's like I'm riding right alongside him as he chronicles fundamental America through the windows of basic nondescript cars, and in so doing, genuinely portrays the remarkably unremarkable essence of it all. To top off your artistic tank, each image is impeccably framed by windows, doors, seats, dashboards, and steering wheels plus many are seasoned with a hint of the very recent past via the inclusion of rear view mirrors reflecting remnants of what's just gone by. Pick of First Thursday.

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Toomey Tourell Fine Art : Matty Byloos & Kim Schoenstadt.

Comment by AB: Matty Byloos blends sections of houses with non-representational elements to form what you might call architectural abstracts. Kim Schoenstadt makes vinyl cuts to match the lines of architectural drawings, then lays the cuts on panels, then spray paints the whole shebang according to other people's instructions, then lifts off the vinyl cuts to reveal their unpainted outlines beneath, and voila-- art!

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Scott Nichols Gallery : Brett Weston - A Visual Journey (1925-1980).

Comment by AB: According to the ballyhoo, Scott Nichols Gallery holds one of the largest private collections of Brett Weston photographs anywhere, and you won't get a peep outta me on that one. The select images from that collection on display here represent every decade of the artist's long and distinguished career, and include landscapes, cityscapes, industrial scenes, and a healthy dose of Weston's signature abstract and semi-representational compositions.

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ARTworkSF Gallery : About Face - Portraits and Self-Portraits.

Artists: Pat Wipf, Alla Viksne, Andrew Ogus, Anna Seven, Annekarin Glass, Barbara Landis, Beryl Fine, Carol Kummer, Charlotte Niel, Cherie Pinsky, Chester Elmore, Christine Tsouo - Harvey, Crystal Silver, Dannell Powell, Eileen Graham, Eric Feathers, James Lee, Jan Small, Jeffrey Blankfort, John Fitzsimmons, John Wotipka, Kat Flyn, Katjia Fuentes, Kristen Cummings, Linda Mueller, Mary Lou D'Auray, Melisa Phillips, Michelle McCarron, Miguel Arzabe, Mira M White, Natasha Dikareva, Paul Morin, Pauline Crowther Scott, Rolando Rosler, Sherri Cavan, Tamery Avery, William Ulrich, Xiaoyang Zou.

Comment by AB: Figure, torso, head, front, back, side, and basically anything else that can be construed in any way as portraiture.

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Patricia Sweetow Gallery : Christian Nguyen - Place of Origin; Looking Back - Kim Anno, David Huffman, Bernhard Hartter, Fred Hayes.

Review by Isaac Amala: All evidence suggests, PSG is doing a little reminiscing these days-- but methinks those memories are truly sweet. The first half of the 77 Geary's Mezzanine features an ample decade of work by some of the gallery's more familiar faces. Occupying the floor's left wing, Kim Anno's paintings-- vibrant surfaces laced with stretched arabesques and candy-colored discs-- cast a warm glow over Bernhard H?rtter's oh-so-very Teutonic aluminum bars smeared with oil paint. Hanging nearby, the pensive charcoal portraits by Fred Hayes, and David Huffman's paintings, wherein a rude clique of robots obliterates your nice day in the park. Meanwhile, rendered on unprimed canvases, Christian Nguyen depicts a series of spare architectural scenes in which open structures lay dormant and unadorned beneath ink-black skies.

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Togonon Gallery : Hiroyo Kaneko & Chris McCaw - Each Sun; Jane Catlin - Cautionary Tales.

Review by Isaac Amala: Jane Catlin's polychromatic paintings on mylar and linen may very well be closely cropped dissections of your favorite organic matter. Of course, they might just as readily chart cosmic play or the more tangible tension that dangles between suggestive abstractions and our interpretations. And (depending on which way you choose to orient yourself on this part of our planet) Hiroyo Kaneko and Chris McCaw point their cameras east - or west - resulting in serene portraits of Japan, and vaguely cruel snapshots of the sun.

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Hespe Gallery : Robert Townsend - Recent Paintings.

Review by Uba Owl: I love old photographs, especially ones which I initially ignore or discard as uninteresting, but years later realize they possess aspects I couldn't appreciate then.

Robert Townsend's paintings tap into the same transformation . There is a richness in mundane objects and situations which can only be seen years later. I like the most "Bon Ami" and "It Gets the Corners."

Comment by AB: The watercolors are particularly spiffy.

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Newmark Gallery : Beryl Landau - San Francisco, The Changing City.

Review by Uba Owl: I like very much to stop by at Newmark Gallery and always go there first. The attraction is a genuine interest an art and people that one can sense from owners Mark and Margaret.

Tonight's artist, Beryl Landau, has a charming smile and an engaging personality. We talk about her trip to Warsaw in the 60s and her friend's trip to Stalin's USSR-- fascinating yet sad times.

It's always fun to look at images of The City and be able to see it from a different perspective. I don't know when Beryl painted these paintings but to me they feel during the winter, a time I especially like for viewing the West Coast urban environment. Everything seems cleaner, more distinct. Although the views are expansive, all details seem equally important.

Review by Jennifer Mullen: Beryl paints urban landscapes with a soft sheen and hazy, almost-L.A. skies. Her compositions are so evenly balanced with clean neat lines that you can spend a lot of time just gazing at them, slowly making your way across, without any incongruencies or contradictions vying for your attention to jar you out of your soothing reverie. I love her color choices; they contrast beautifully despite how soft and velvety they are. She makes busy and urban like look a cool summer breeze.

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Dolby Chadwick Gallery : Katina Huston - Field of Vision.

Comment by AB: Bicycle tire rims rendered against blank backgrounds in ink on mylar by Katina Huston. Doesn't seem like that big a deal when you describe it, but check 'em out in person. They've got an airy meditative weightlessness about 'em, like you can climb right in and become part of Huston's improbable floating utopias, leaving worldly cares behind.

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Jenkins Johnson Gallery : Rene Lynch - Secrets.

Comment by AB: Paintings of young girls in dreamlike settings by Rene Lynch explore that netherland of early adolescence where fantasy intermingles with reality.

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Hang Art : Tim Yankosky - Given This Set of Circumstances.

Comment by AB: Fish, birds, and whimsical landscapes by Tim Yankosky, often finished with beeswax or resin to impart a soft velvety translucence. I opt out of Jeff Hantman's mixed media show across the street at Hang Annex because the gallery's mobbed and a capella group Conspiracy of Beards is about to perform. But one thing I can see is Elaine Buckholtz's exhilarating light installation playing along the top line of windows above Hang Annex. I can hardly wait to see what Buckholtz comes up with next; she brings a building to life.

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John Pence Gallery : Florals.

Artists: Juliette Aristides, William Bartlett, Minerva Chapman, Tony Curanaj, Donald Davis, Jason Dowd, Adam Forfang, Carin Gerard, Mikel Glass, Nicholas Hiltner, Tara Keefe, Sarah Lamb, Dean Larson, Dana Levin, Steven J. Levin, Edward Minoff, Clark Mitchell, John Morra, Jacob Pfeiffer, Christopher Pierce, Travis Schlaht, John Christopher Smith, Chris Thomas, Patricia Watwood, Will Wilson, Sam Wisneski, Zack Zdrale.

Comment by AB: A bounteous bouquet of floral still-life paintings ranging in nature from typical to extraordinary, and then there's Mikel Glass whose warp on the matter is to substitute rubber gloves for flowers.

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Cafe Royale : Cameron Kelly - With Care.

Comment by AB: This one takes me by surprise. Cameron Kelly weaves up an appetizing assortment of distinctly peculiar "hair sculptures," some mounted on pedestals, others stitched onto stretched fabric or small pillows, then for good measure, throws in a pair of matching his and hers hand towels embroidered like antique samplers. Quite well done-- all of it. Galleries take note. Pick Honorable Mention.

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Varnish Fine Art : Michael Page - The Turning Time.

Review by Dennis Scherzer: All praises to Jennifer Rogers and Kerri Stephens, the founders and owners of the Varnish Gallery. They have created a spacious and comfortable venue for fine art to be viewed and appreciated. I urge everyone to visit and support this wonderful gallery.

Michael Page is quite fortunate to again be garnering the support of Rogers and Stephens at Varnish. His exhibit, "the turning time" opened here February 20th, and continues tonight with a cozy reception.

Michael says that he paints from instinct and attempts to recapture feelings he once had, then overlays his contemporary visions and impressions. This is coupled with exploitation of anxiety to reveal the darker side of his self. According to Page, this then becomes a mirror of our daily anxieties.

Page paints well, and was exhibiting acrylics painted on wood. Proportion, detail theme, are all good. The colors tend to be quasi-sepia, which, in turn promote a "remembered dream" feeling in the work.

Page's style is essentially Lowbrow, however he doesn't immerse his work in frenetic detail and uber-mundane imagery borrowed from television, cartoons and other more typical Lowbrow art. His commonly occurring themes are somewhat Maurice Sendak-like monsters clad in ninja-esque military garb, heavy trees, sharp objects, and women mostly situated at picnics. The picnics are almost always threatened by ninja monsters, and even a neo George Bush business executive emerging from a swirling intra-dimensional portal to disperse startled picnickers. ("Darkness in a Happy World")

This painting has a companion, "Happiness in a Dark World," in which picnickers stare in awe as furry otter-like animals emerge from a whorl of light. Probably the "nicest" painting of the exhibit, however you might not want to hang it in the baby's room.

The centerpiece of the exhibit, "Gifts from the Trees" has the picnic "guys" in the tree with spears and axes fending off ninja demons sporting even longer lances while mounted on flying war geese. Meanwhile, a woman watches from a nearby ledge in semi-dispassionate horror (or is it awe?) as the battle ensues.

Then there is the "The Hair-Gatherer," a potbellied, spider-eyed shaggy monster, designated in the exhibit texts as a "he," who skewers women on wooden spears and takes their hair to adorn his coat. Page's "picnic" is also a Freudian field day, within a theme of intrusion into a personal, peaceful life by a monstrous warlike world? Perhaps salted with some issues with women? ...Oh yeah.

That's likely why my first take on Page's work brings to mind a quote from Wing Sony, a character in Robert Downey's 1969 cult classic, Putney Swope:

"I dig it. Who's your shrink?"

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111 Minna Gallery : Jay Howell - Punks Git Cut.

Review by Jessica Whiteside: Jay Howell's solo show includes new paintings, photos and animations. Jay is one of those guys whose drive and talent have lead him to be one of those pervasive, multi-tasking sort of artists who is everything from a painter and cartoonist to a publisher and DJ. This exhibition is Jay's first major solo show and all his pieces are clever, whimsical, animated and contemporary. It's the type of work that really makes you smile! His drawing style is reminds me of illustrations that are published in the New Yorker-- very funny and incorporating a lot of social commentary. That said, Jay's work truly stands on its own, and I especially love his inventive use of color. Says Jay, "It sounds silly, but I just want people to laugh, it means so much to me and nothing else matters."

Comment by AB: Filling 111 Minna with any kind of art is challenging, let along filling it with informed intelligent lampoons on pretty much everything, ranging in tone from genteel to crass to hilarious. Jay Howell (whose work reminds me of vintage Tomi Ungerer ) displays a seriously formidable range of talent, and there's likely plenty more where this came from. The good news? Eminently affordable prices-- $250-$2250, most $800-$900. Second Pick of First Thursday.

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Hotel Biron : Romanowski - Monkey Treats For The Jet Set.

Comment by AB: Essential urban assemblage by Romanowski, my favorite piece being a portable functioning "electric log" fireplace in a suitcase. Apologies on the photo quality-- very dark (very nice) wine bar.

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Y'all know what time it is, don't you? Of course you do. It's time to click here and get it over with .

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First Thursday; February 7, 2008

First Thursday; January 3, 2008

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