SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES OPENINGS
FIRST THURSDAY; 04.02.09
(with assistance from Laura Chenault, DeWitt Cheng,
Dormain Geyer , Sandra Silvoy , Lynnore Goldfarb , and R.W. Miller)

General comment by AB: People often ask me why I don't trash-talk subpar art. Some even call for carnage-- exhorting me to mince perpetrators of creative calamities into confetti-esque shreds. Well, you've probably figured out by now that I don't do that. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who's compelled for whatever reason to make art and show it in public deserves all the support they can get. I mean why take a life choice that's already difficult and make it even harder? Artists love doing what they do, and if I've learned anything over the years, it's that no matter how aesthetically challenged a work of art is, someone somewhere will bask in its beauty and cherish it dearly. So what if to your refined eye it looks like roadkill? You don't have to live with it. Besides, there are worse problems in the world than an artist who makes bad art or someone who thinks bad art is good.

Uh oh. The clock on the wall says it's time to switch gears. Yes, my artful darlings-- the moment has arrived to gird our collective loins for yet another nail-biting episode of First Thursday art openings. We've got great gobs of voluminous varieties of art on tonight's docket, all of which deserve our respect, the large majority of which is good, and the acme of which is outstanding. Don't believe me? Witness this...

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Jenkins Johnson Gallery : Sherrie Wolf - Animal Life.  

Review by R.W. Miller: Amazing depictions of those other denizens-- our wild cousins-- who we share the planet with. You can revel in these renderings which make the animals and flowers presented look almost real. The depictions are beautiful, but there is something else that is also going on here that is perhaps somewhat unsettling. The representations remind of our commodification of the natural world. We have turned the creatures of the wild world into pets, zoo animals, and food choices. It is how many of us relate to the Animal Kingdom. Wolf's work allows us to revel in their beauty, but at the same time considers that some have lost their place in the wild as a result.

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Caldwell Snyder Gallery : Suzanne Crocker - Recent Paintings; Michael Azgour & Tracy Taylor Grubbs - Moments of Impermanence.  

Review by R.W. Miller: Need a little of that country-fresh open air real estate? A house or a barn-- firm and upright on solid ground? A serene pastel colored sky? Suzanne Crocker's wonderful paintings are alive with color. They evoke the outdoors in surprising ways. The colors are also unexpected, but in pastels soothing nonetheless. It is nice to see an odd colored sky once in a while.

Comment by AB: In the rear gallery, you'll find wistful figural works by Michael Azgour, and paintings of aging dilapidated cars by Tracy Taylor Grubbs that kind of epitomize America-- once great, now rusting away while the rest of the world looks on.

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John Berggruen Gallery : Mark di Suvero - New Work.

Review by R.W. Miller: These fascinating abstract sculptures defy the imagination and remind me of the Cubists and others. It is surprising to see metal turned into such strange shapes. You have oddness, but also balance. Quirky, yet resilient.

Comment by AB: Heavy metal in delicate balance is the tale of the tape here as Mark di Suvero demonstrates that grace can indeed coexist with rough-cut industrial product. Special added bonus-- you can touch and manipulate the sculptures to make 'em move ever so sensitively. Priced $75K-$525K.

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Gallery Paule Anglim : Dean Byington; Dean Smith - thought forms 2003-2009.

Comment by AB: There's pencil drawings and there's pencil drawings. Dean Smith's forceful renditions more than hold their own in the realm of graphite on paper, but broading it out, impact the viewer with an intensity more like paintings-- and that's saying something 'cuz the multitudes generally gravitate toward paintings over drawings. Smith's art is direct, determined, dramatic, and eminently well executed. Plus it's pristine-- not easy to pull off in graphite.

As for Dean Byington's art, the gallery calls 'em oil paintings, but they're unequivocally not. Oil painting is part of it, yes, but look close and you'll see (assuming you know how to distinguish one medium from another) that there's more going on than that. The obfuscatory liner notes state that silkscreening is involved, while continuously referring to the art as oil paintings-- a slick linguistic maneuver indeed. I'm guessing that in addition to everything else, some type of digital reproduction process is also employed. Thinking about buying one? Find out what it is first.

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Gregory Lind Gallery : Mel Prest - Sky Black Ray.

Review by Laura Chenault: The dark lines on darker backgrounds in Mel Prest's oil paintings at first appear perfectly straight, but a closer look reveals colorful textured brushstrokes. Her striped patterned compositions are just as effective in her large pieces spanning a couple of feet across as they are in the smaller versions displayed in a line along a side wall. On the back wall, a series of gauche on paper paintings hanging in a grid pattern are dark and gestural with bursts of colors running through them.

Comment by AB: The art's affordably priced, particularly the smaller pieces which are selling rather well.

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Jack Fischer Gallery : Ema Sintamarian - One for Every Day of the Year. 

Comment by AB: Elaborate meandering abstract mixed media works on paper by San Jose State University art instructor (and alumnus) Emanuela Harris-Sintamarian have a festive whimsical vitality about them.

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Toomey Tourell Gallery : Lyndi Sales - in transit.

Review by Laura Chenault: From the crowded hallway at 49 Geary, the viewer is first drawn into the gallery by the floor to ceiling cut paper installation. Spanning almost the entire length of the gallery, red strings run from the ceiling gathered up in a line of red spools along the floor. Suspended on these wefts are woven cut paper shapes that could be butterflies or lungs. It is definitely the most organic piece in this stunning selection of work by Lyndi Sales.

In her other works, Sales cuts beautiful, intricate designs into boarding passes, life vests, and other ephemera from the airline industry. Some of her images, like lungs and veins, evoke a human presence in these inanimate objects. Others look like shattered glass and route maps. Each piece is beautiful and instantly powerful, and more so with the underlying themes of death and loss, themes which stem from Sale's father's death in an airplane crash.

Comment by AB: Intense effective presentation, incredibly labor intensive-- and good art too. Pick of First Thursday.

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Braunstein/Quay Gallery : Susan York - Porcelain & Graphite.

Review and images by Lynnore Goldfarb: Braunstein/Quay is a fairly large gallery South of Market. I enter the space and am instantly part of the breathtaking exhibition consisting of black graphite sculptures, dotting the stark white walls and the industrial cement floor, like punctuation marks without words, on sheets of paper. Susan York explains to me that she heats the graphite, which starts as a powder, to extreme temperatures turning it into solid masses. While gazing at the wall featuring four hand size graphite sculptures, I ask my friend if they are supposed to be asymmetrical. He assures me (without knowing anything about the artist, the gallery, or the exhibition) that however it is, is exactly how the artist intended it to be. I look around and I am struck by the exactness of the beautiful and thoughtful installation. However, walking out of the gallery onto the street I am tempted to run back in, grab a few cups of the complimentary wine left out for the guests of the opening, and pass it out to the people who are getting ready to go to sleep in the alley, laying on makeshift beds of cardboard, alongside everything they own.

Side Note-- enjoy gallery selections in one of the smaller areas off the main floor, worth popping your head into, with pieces of art from artists they represent and estates they procure.

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ArtHaus Gallery : Carolyn Meyer and Kenney Mencher - In BLACK and WHITE.

Review by Lynnore Goldfarb: The art in the main gallery exhibition at ArtHaus consists of black and white paintings, hence the title of the show, in BLACK and WHITE. However, it is that particular similarity, which in turn highlights the differences between the two artists' work. Carolyn Meyer's creamy rich layers of oil paint, in an impressionist style and carefully revealing areas of San Francisco, are standouts. Somehow by using a gray palette, the paintings feel real as well as dreamlike, I think, because San Franciscans know that it is gray here most of the time.

Kenney Mencher's paintings of people are reminiscent of Dick Tracy comics, with a little soft porn thrown in. Walking around looking at the art, one of the owners of the gallery, James Bacchi takes it upon himself to give me a grand tour of the space. I am equally impressed with ArtHaus and its many rooms filled with exquisite works of art, hand-picked by him and co-owner Annette Schutz, as I am with Bacchi's graciousness, knowledge and passion for art.

Review by DeWitt Cheng: Monochromatic works by two figurative painters, Carolyn Meyer and Kenney Mencher. Meyer makes heavily impastoed oils of urban landscapes that look back to Bay Area figuration (with perhaps a nod to Wayne Thiebaud), while Mencher uses his classic realist technique to explore enigmatic/humorous narratives, the restricted palette here pointing up his love of cinema imagery.

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Dolby Chadwick Gallery : Marius Bosc - Éclat de Lumière.

Comment by AB: Twenty-year retrospective of classic modernist figure, landscape and still-life paintings by Marius Bosc.

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Scott Richards Contemporary Art : Photorealism - A Closer Look.

Artists: Tom Blackwell, Thomas Boone, Robert Gniewek, James Gucwa, Gus Heinze, Cheryl Kelley, Ron Kleeman, Bertrand Meniel, Cesar Santander.

Comment by AB: This capable cull of vintage and contemporary photorealistic paintings at Scott Richards Contemporary art is certainly worth a perusal.

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SF Camerawork : Sean McFarland - The 2009 Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers; Julie Blackmon - Domestic Vacations; Liu Gang and Wang Jianwei - Even in Arcadia.

Review and images by Laura Chenault: Sean McFarland creates intimate black and white Polaroids in an era where bigger is better. Stating that he strives to capture the largeness of nature in a small frame, his results definitely meet his vision. "Tornado" and "Lunar Eclipse" are both examples of his success, capturing dramatic natural events with beauty and simplicity.

Julie Blackmon's lush color photography offers a glimpse into a vividly colored world of perfect moments reflecting everyday life. But something is a bit off in these Domestic Vacations. Beautifully composed and exquisitely arranged, the images have a common darkness within their colorful environments-- attempted escapes, unlikely prisons, and upside down babies abound.

"Even in Arcadia" features large digital collages from Liu Gang's "Paper Dream" series and Wan Jianwei's documentary, "Living Elsewhere," the show curated by David Spalding. Gang's collages range in imagery from tranquil mountains to urban landscapes. His re-photographed ads are presented complete and as-is, the halftone patterns and wrinkled source material somehow adding to the slickness of the images and revealing empty promises of happiness. These broken promises are also the theme of Jianwei's video of jobless farmers living at the edge of the promised land, and struggling to survive with no modern conveniences.

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Back to the Picture : City Subject - San Francisco Urban Studies.

Artists: Glenn Caley Bachmann, Ezra Cattan, Randy Figures, Peter Kupfer, Sarah Newton, Trish Tunney, Hilary Williams.

Review and images by Dormain Geyer: Within the Back to the Picture frame shop is a gallery space, where the current show "City Subject: San Francisco Urban Studies" will be on display until May 1. Hilary Williams' brightly colored serigraphs combined photographic elements with drawing. Aquatints and lino-cuts by Sarah Newton round out the portfolio of printmaking on display. It's great to see Ms. Newton's full color, multiple-plate aquatints up close. Though not as distinctly San Francisco as many of the other pieces, Trish Tunney's colorful photography is quite pleasing. I also enjoy a pairing of black and white photos by Peter Kupfer, which captures and contrasts the city's tradition of parading in costume.

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Hilliard Architects & Gallery : The Benecia Plein Air Group - Landscapes of the North Bay, Carquinez Straight, & Delta.

Artists: Florie Baumann, Melinda Cootsona, Mike dadasovich, Catherine Erickson, Catherine Fasciato, Kristen Garneau, Terry Hughes, Susan Johnson, sherrill Miller, Cheryl Morgan, Kary Stickney, Marcy Wheeler, Roz Zinns.

Review and images by Laura Chenault: This show, featuring a group of Benicia oil painters, presents various outdoor scenes of Northern California. Their images come alive through a variety of techniques and in a range of sizes. The works are a celebration of the beauty, the bounty, and the variety found in the North Bay landscape. The festivities are lubricated by jovial winemaker, Gary, from Dutch Henry Winery.

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Hangart : David Fullarton - Once Again I Fail to Live Up to My Advance Publicity; Time Lapse (at Hangart Annex). 

Artists in Time Lapse: Anthony May, Lea Feinstein, Phillip Hua, Carolyn Meyer.

Review Dormain Geyer: Time Lapse focuses on the artistic processes of four local artists. For Anthony May, the gallery displays a collection of small sketches as well as two large canvases. Lea Feinstein's paintings reflect the artist's use of gravity to distribute paint onto moisture resistant Tyvek (think FedEx packaging). I'm intrigued by the metal base on which Feinstein's painting is mounted. Phillip Hua is present to explain his process of "manufacturing" works that ultimately degrade over time. His "re:action" series is well represented at the show and fits very well well with theme, given it's unique artistic process and continuing evolution after completion. Also included are a couple of small pieces that Mr. Hua was "prototyping" when we spoke last fall. In these works, the tree image becomes more visible with time as the paper fades with exposure to sunlight. Finally, Carolyn Meyer's artistic process is exemplified by an installation of her studies, both in traditional journals as well as non-traditional surfaces, like Crayon boxes. Examples of her completed paintings, marked by their impasto, are also on display. 

David Fullarton's show "Once Again I Fail To Live Up To My Advance Publicity," will be up through the month of April. In addition to some larger collage canvases, many of Fullarton's pieces used non-traditional materials. The hand-written text was often humorous and self-depreciating. 

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Public Barber Salon : Robert Johns.

Review and images by Laura Chenault: Robert Johns' Warhol-esque silkscreens fill the walls of this long narrow salon. His stated homage to Warhol's Elvis is modernized using Springsteen. Other images include a sex wax label from his surfing days, and his own version of Marilyn. In addition to everything else, Johns' is a bold speaker who commands the attention of this appreciative crowd.

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Academy of Art University 625 Sutter Street Gallery: Tobias C. Hutzler - The New Frontier, An Observation of the Contemporary West.

Comment by AB: Fulbright Scholar Tobias Hutzler explores the changing face of the Western American urban landscape, particularly in Las Vegas, with some good solid photographic examples.

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Cafe Royale : Emily Clawson- Navigating Fragments.

Review by Laura Chenault: This corner cafe and bar is filled with beautiful square encaustics. These works by Emily Clawson have imagery based on bee and dragonfly wings. The layered surfaces reinforce this insect subject matter. Soft, subtle colors are enriched and enhanced with beeswax, becoming wings and cell studies at the same time. This thick beeswax coat has been carved into using a variety of tools, adding another textural layer of depth.

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Frey Norris Gallery : Dana Harel - Kin.

Review by Laura Chenault: The graphite drawings of Dana Harel take over this large gallery space. The smallest ones still run about 2 feet on their short sides and many are 8 feet tall. Combining the anatomical and fanciful, these gorgeous works feature combinations of human and animal body parts. The texture is hyper-realistic but manages to evoke the whimsy of making hand shadow puppets on the wall or poetry by Shel Silverstein. The fanciful nature of Dana's work is rendered meticulously with an eye for the smallest detail and an incredible use of space.

Review by Sandra Silvoy: Dana Harel's architectural background lends to her exquisitely rendered graphite works on paper. The hands that create shadow puppets actualize into the animals portrayed. This is subject matter that could be considered a bad dream to some, a vision to others. I highly suggest a visit.

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Ever Gold Gallery : The Newspaper Show.

Artists: Ryan Coffey, Tim Dwyer, A.A. Hurry, Mary Joy Scott, Colin Hill, Steve Johnson, Gina Contreras, Sara Wanie, Mardi Burnham, Jakcob Clark, Jeremiah Jenkins, A.L.W., Amber Young, Beau Abbott, Jason Grabowski, Kit Rosenberg, Paquerette, Marina Crawford, more.

Review by Laura Chenault: This busy gallery is currently showing over twenty artists working in a wide variety of mediums. Large floor to ceiling paintings in dark colors and a wooden sculpture emulating a stained glass window dominate the front room. Intimate collaged and painted patterns are grouped in a hallway. Erotic, almost naïve drawings on newsprint contrast with bold comic style paintings on cardboard. A highlight is a site-specific corner sculpture made of string and buttons displayed next to tiny modern string art paintings. Another favorite is a duo of Victorian ladies' busts that appear to be bleeding from the bottom in black ink. This eclectic show has an amazing range of work to enjoy.

Comment by AB: Packed high-energy group grope makes this the eve's venue of choice for hipsters, hep cats, trend puppies, fashion plates, and culture copters. Yowzah!

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111 Minna Gallery : Ted Lincoln - Complementary Compounds.

Review by Laura Chenault: Ted Lincoln has filled this massive SOMA gallery with his process-driven paintings in shades of gray. He begins with the traditional Pomo Chinese method of chance based landscapes, and then applies combinations ranging from traditional acrylics to automotive paint. The resulting creations are beautiful, ethereal, organic images that evoke water swirling or clouds moving across the sky. Each piece of rice paper is piled on top of the next sandwiching the paints in between their layers to achieve this effect. The papers are then sorted and the undesirable ones go to a stack to be re-used. Once the main images are selected, they are enhanced with binary, solid geometric shapes and the artist's name as a bar code.

Comment by AB: East meets West in the art of Ted Lincoln as he combines traditional Chinese sumi ink on rice paper painting techniques with decidedly nontraditional elements such as steel, aluminum, acids and auto enamel. The upshot? The art satisfies from both classic and contemporary perspectives.

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Fifty24SF Gallery : Hush - Veiled Beauty.

Review and images by Sandra Silvoy: Hush spends a bit of time with his artistry in Hong Kong and comes to us with an exhibit pulsing with energy. Womanly Japanese characters play foreground to screen print abstractions, graffiti, paper, hearts and butterflies. Giant murals grace the walls in an elegantly brutalized manner with an aged street art feeling-- ya feel me?

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Addendum:

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So OK. Now click here and tell me what you think.

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First Thursday - March 5, 2009

First Thursday - February 5, 2009 >

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