General comment by AB: Wow. Here it is October already. Halloween's right around the corner, and as if that's not scary enough, the economy is in the process of coughing up a monumental hairball. I gotta tell you-- I don't normally go politico, but when I think about where we were eight years ago compared where we are today, it's way way weigh weigh incomprehensibly beyond my comprehension how far America has fallen. I mean we've become the toilet seat of the universe (and that's on a good day). Then there's Barack Obama-- hope-- which is about all we've got at this juncture. Please oh please, all you voters out there, take a precious few moments to cast those ballots. Lipservice is not an option this time around. And that includes convincing your friends and family in battleground states to do the same. And that includes you revolutionaries too-- consider perhaps briefly suspending your quest to smash the machine and going for door number 2. Our nation needs help fast, and lots of it.

Woah. I got derailed there for a minute. Back to artland reality. You know something? Art is as necessary now as ever, perhaps even more so. Because when life gets you down, art sets you right back up. All you have to do is look at it and let the healing begin. Here... I'll show you how it works....

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Caldwell Snyder Gallery : John Hartman - Cities.

Review by Jennifer Jeffrey: Artist John Hartman's large canvases depict aerial views of big cities, from Seattle to San Francisco to Manhattan. Highways and on-ramps bend around neighborhoods marked with towers and blocky buildings, while bubble-like clouds hover above. San Francisco appears on several canvases, painted from different angles-- from Twin Peaks to Telegraph Hill to above Treasure Island-- revealing the many charming curves of our fair city. Hartman tells me he lives in the countryside in Toronto, where he quietly conjures the electric energy so evident in his work.

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John Berggruen Gallery : David Bates - The Tropics; Paul Wonner - A Memorial Exhibition.

Review by Jennifer Jeffrey: San Francisco artist Paul Wonner is the focus of the upstairs gallery at John Berggruen tonight; called In Memoriam, the show commemorates the artist's death at the age of 88 in April of this year. Wonner is known for detailed still life paintings of tables festooned with a variety of objects, from beer bottles to fruit, with a lively balance of humor and gravity.

The downstairs gallery is hung with an exhibit titled The Tropics; here, a collection of paintings by artist David Bates depict lush scenes of tiny fishing villages in the Caribbean. He uses a palette of watery blues and emerald greens offset with heavy black and brown lines that outline human characters and buildings. In one of my favorite pieces, a conch shell is splayed open in a fisherman's hand; I can almost feel the bony spines of the shell against my own palm. Bates' characters are dignified and noble, and his work conveys a deep respect for this little-known community.

Comment by AB: This is a rare opportunity to see primo early works by Paul Wonner, some dating as far back as the early sixties. And the award for the most environmentally incorrect show announcements goes to John Berggruen Gallery. I didn't know they made paper that thick. At this rate, pretty soon he'll be printing 'em on slabs of mahogany.

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Suite Five Salon : John Zissimos - Hair as Art.

Review and images by Jennifer Jeffrey: Suite Five Salon is hopping tonight, as a high-spirited crowd buzzes around artist John Zissimos, who is showing sixteen photographs created in collaboration with the salon. The photos feature dramatic hairstyles shot from unique vantage points. Some of the shots capture the stylists' hands, revealing the tension and energy between stylist and subject, while other shots of striking faces framed with gorgeous hair radiate the sleek, polished beauty of a fashion piece. Also enjoyable are the photo "strips" that show the stylists as they work on their subjects, snipping, shaping and turning hair into art.

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Gallery Paule Anglim : Katherine Sherwood - Recent Paintings; Annabeth Rosen.

Comment by AB: In the main gallery, Katherine Sherwood's meaty textural abstracts subtly accentuated with glaze conceptually originate with the neuron, those little tiny dealie bobs in the brain that operate between synapses and allow me to write this. In the antechamber, Annabeth Rosen goes bananas with ceramics weaving them together in labyrinthine assemblages that, unless appropriately protected, are gonna be bodaciously hard to dust.

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Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery : Wade Hoefer - Recent Paintings.

Comment by AB: You might call Wade Hoefer's soft muted atmospheric landscape paintings contemporary American Barbizon. Whatever their ilk, they'll likely proffer solace after a hard day of watching your net worth evaporate.

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Fraenkel Gallery : Garry Winogrand - The Sixties.

Commenty by AB: Garry Winogrand captures both ordinary and extraordinary moments of the turbulent 1960s not only from documentary perspectives, but also from emotive ones, his images perhaps even more substantive and powerful in retrospect that they were at the time. It's not easy to pack pretty much everything into simple black & white photographs, so modest in size yet overwhelming in content, but Winogrand's clearly got the chops to do it.

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Toomey Tourell Fine Art : Brian Rutenberg - Star and Tide.

Commenty by AB: According to the debriefing, Brian Rutenberg blends elements as diverese as music, poetry and landscape into his sumptuous impasto abstracts, notable in their depth and richness of color.

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Room for Painting Room for Paper : Judith Belzer - The Inner Life of Trees; Tama Hochbaum - Composite Trees 07>08.

Review by BTN: Room for Painting Room for Paper, aka RFPRFP, puts together a lovely show of nicely complementary works. In the Room for Painting, Judith Belzer's The Inner Life of Trees presents a series of canvases whose representational strategies include the lights and darks of grains of wood. The imagery evokes not only the material quality of wood, but also topographical lines of landscapes, ocean waves, and sound waves, conveying echoes, rumors, and a sense of narrative. Tama Hochbaum's Composite Trees 07>08 in the Room for Paper tells its own tale in composite compositions created from photos taken from a laptop camera while traveling. The imagery ranges from still "portraits" of trees with titles such as "Christmas Eve at Rite Aid" that suggest warm summer nights to pieces that abstract the landscape into interlaced forms. RFPRFP also publishes useful hardcover books for each artist. The show is well attended.

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Dolby Chadwick Gallery : Jim Phalen - Nature Morte.

Comment by AB: The meal has yet to be prepared, or maybe it's over and waiting to be cleaned up-- that's what Jim Phalen's spare serene still lifes appear to focus on-- antecedents and aftermaths rather than the events themselves.

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Scott Richards Contemporary Art : Patrick Hughes - Superspectivision.

Review by Jennifer Jeffrey: Walking into Scott Richards Contemporary Art, I'm immediately captivated with the work of British painter Patrick Hughes. Hughes has created innovative cut-away structures upon which he's painted a pastiche of recognizable pop art, borrowing liberally from Warhol, Lichenstein and others. Brillo pads, Jackie O, dizzy-fied psychedelic shapes-- they're all here, and it feels like a party. Unfortunately, the 3-dimensional shapes of these structures are flattened by my camera lens, so they're hard to appreciate unless you go in person. So go already-- this is one of the most fun exhibits I've seen in a while.

Review by Dennis C. Scherzer: Patrick Hughes graciously poses for a portrait. It's later that I see he shares his vision, literally, with my camera. He has an open-eyed gaze (augmented a bit by his eyeglasses, a bit like Ansel Adams) that takes in the entire room. He has an uncanny ability to reverse/inverse proportions and perspective. Convex/concave-- exhale/inhale: simultaneously. This mastery of perception allows him to put these images into the field of play, to the delight of all who view his works. Thus it is called "Superspectivision."

Field of play-- Perspective in art was "invented" in the Renaissance. Patrick Hughes plays with it as a virtuoso musician improvises and "plays" with the structure, cadence, rhythm and sound of his instrument.

And he's British! He teases us by montaging Warhol ("Warhogram"), and Hopper ("Hopperational") or incorporating bits of Mondrian ("Broadway Boogie Woogie", Mondrian's most American piece), Pollock, and Indiana into larger pieces. They are painted in oils and mounted in 3-D, enabling Hughes to literally poke us with them. (And the gathered guests simply adore his salient creativity.)

I try to capture what this art does with a my camera, however, a video is actually required to visually describe what it does. Familiar modern American artworks embrace a median horizon, which, when viewed straight on appears to be a series of deep perspective views. But wait-- that's not really what's happening in this construct. Well, the images do stick out from the wall, but what about the horizon line on the beach? Something's not "right" here.

See? Now I'm playing with the paintings, too. They actually are a series of adjoining truncated pyramids. Huh? And the horizon line migrates atop the flattened crests of the pyramids. With four trapezoidal flanges migrating outward, or deep angular wedges, each adorned with replicas of familiar modern art.

Mr. and Mrs. Richards (Scott and Alina) are in on this as well. They host this wonderful reception for Patrick, and people come and genuinely engage the art. More so than I have before witnessed at such a gathering. Everyone moves about, viewing the perspectives-- entire compositions change within a pace to the left or right. They stroll about, leaning, looking, sharing, laughing in wondrous amazement at the genius of Patrick Hughes, who came all the way from London, England just to mess with our heads and taunt us with our American art.

Finally, "Professor" Hughes educates us as to the limits and idiosyncrasies of our natural visual perception. Hughes could wreak havoc on our senses creating disorientation, even vertigo. However, the Brillo boxes and Pollock splatters create a bit of whimsy to buoy our eyes from certain confusion. There's power in this art, and it's shared in a most pleasant and cordial manner befitting an English gentleman.

Comment by AB: Patrick Hughes is the originator of this fascinating illusionary take on painting, messing with your mind, duping your brain into seeing three dimensions as two, the upshot being art that moves along with you as you transit about a room. He tells me he came up with the idea 45 years ago-- and he remains the undisputed champ today. It may be tricky, but it's high trickiness. Check it out; you won't believe your eyes. Pick of First Thursday.

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Hespe Gallery : Erin Cone - Possible Outcomes.

Review by Jennifer Jeffrey: Standing in Hespe Gallery surrounded by Erin Cone's paintings, I'm put in mind of the theatre. Her figures are smooth-skinned and distant, with lithe ropy limbs, angled as if deliberately holding poses. Cone has a deft hand with light and shadow, expertly capturing the crisp crease of a shirt sleeve or the hollow at the base of the neck. I feel as if I'm standing on the sidelines of a stage, covertly watching an actor explore a character.

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Baer Ridgway Exhibitions : Tim Roda - Family Album.

Review by BTN: Tim Roda offers a vision of his personal and familial world whose particulars he hopes will resonate with various viewers. His Family Album, consisting of photos created in collaboration with his wife and son, exudes a liberated sense of carnivalesque play. Each photo has a cinematic stage set with props/toys of masks, wigs, and costumes that Roda and his son use as a launching point for poses, looks, and expressions of love between father and son. Performance props also include hardware usually reserved for behind the camera-- lights, wires, cords, and ropes. Roda weaves these items into some of his narratives and improvisations, tinging his scenes with haunting feelings of danger and vulnerability. Dare I say Pasolini meets Mr. Bungle? I arrive here on the late side, so perhaps the show was better attended earlier on. Whatever the case, I highly recommend a visit.

Review by Libby Nicholaou: Tim Roda's photographs take you to rooms inside his home, each rich with odd placements of old objects, providing a sculptural element. ?He enables the viewer to enjoy the distinct shapes, gray textures, and positionings of humans to objects, by printing in black and white. ?The expressions on the face of the young boy (Roda's son) seen throughout the images give the viewer someone to identify with. ?It's as if he knows this is a game or experiment and is playing along to see what happens.

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SF Camerawork : Guillermo G?mez-Pe?a and La Pocha Nostra; Second Front; Oliver Herring & the artists of multiTASK.

Comment by AB: This is just plain chaos-- three simultaneous shows, entirely unrelated. Or maybe more. I feel like I'm in the padded ward of the boo-boo hatch zoinked up on shrooms. SF Camerawork-- get a grip.

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Frey Norris Gallery : Susannah Bettag - Things You Shouldn't See.

Comment by AB: According to the stipulations, Susannah Bettag "creates and elaborates upon a world without men" in paintings and video. Now even though I'm a dude, I'm not gonna let whatever that premise intimates bias my coverage of her show. But how 'bout this idea? A world almost without men-- like maybe me, Barack Obama, and a two or three others. That's a reasonable compromise, don't you think? Anyway, Bettag is a skilled portrait and figure artist who here waxes largely decorative with elaborate pattern paintings (and several videos). She incorporates fully painted portraits and figures into a few of the pieces, and subtle line drawings into the backgrounds of others, however decorative aspects dominate, at times so much so that certain compositions perpetrate to approximate the appearance of wallpaper.

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Hangart Gallery & Annex : Jennifer Damas - Traces of Time; Do I Know You? - A Group Show.

Artists from Do I Know You?: Jeff Dikio, Erik Jacobsen, Philippe Jestin, David Lippenberger, Mark Oberlin, Daniel Ochoa, Freya Prowe, Kathryn Valentine.

Review and photos by Jennifer Jeffrey: Tonight Hang Gallery shows assorted works in the front, while the back room is hung with the work of Jennifer Damas. Here, large rectangular canvases are stippled with restrained textured color. Something about the solemn mood of the pieces feels appropriate for fall. Across the street and up the stairs at the Annex you'll find a fun, lively group exhibition with solid work by emerging artists.

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Cafe Royale : Jessalyn Aaland - Secret Garden.

Review and images by NTB: Inspired by Hogson Burnett's novel of the same title, Jessalyn Aaland's collages build landscapes out of figures, architectural structures, and colorful foods such as cherries and donuts-- landscapes in which innocence and a sense of resolution are possible. In line with her aim to create works that share her internal place of calm, Aaland confidently values the white areas within the frames as breathing room in her world. This is curator Alicia Escott's last show at Cafe Royale, which is well-attended by a supportive crowd.

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111 Minna Gallery : Henry Lewis + Keli Reule - Captain and Commander.

Review by Libby Nicholaou: Henry Lewis large watercolor paintings contain less contrast than his color rich paintings, leading the viewer to take a closer look. ?Their strong and elegant movement take me to ancient Rome where gladiator games were standard entertainment. ?Knowing a little about Henry Lewis, they offer an introspective thought process, asking who are these warriors today?

Comment by AB: A celebratory hurrah for studio mates Henry Lewis and Keli Reule with the big news being that Reule's off to graduate school in London. She's appropriately excited about her impending adventure, as well she should be. Meanwhile back at the show, both go black & white tonight, fantastic and expansive, with Lewis approaching the assignment from a powerful personality study perspective while Reule wends more imaginative and exploratory.

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Fifty24SF : Koralie - Haiku; Catalyst.

Artists from Catalyst: Aaron Horkey, Josh Graham, Aaron Turner, Seldon Hunt, Justin Bartlett, Stephen Kasner, Dwid Hellion, Florian Bertmer.

Comment by AB: I don't ordinarily comment on appearances, but French artist Koralie is cute as a button. Now that that's off my chest, her rigorous and intricate Geisha-esque characters lavish themselves against splendiferously opulent backgrounds. Next door and up the stairs is Catalyst-- a group show of artists affiliated to varying degrees with heavy metal music (assuming that's still the appropriate term). Options include posters, paintings, drawings, fashion, limited edition prints. Good art at both locations.

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Ghost and Bread : Anh Bui - Le Bien Et Le Mal.

Comment by AB: According to a conversation with the artist's manager, this apparent homage to Salvador Dali represents Anh Bui's calling to reintroduce Americans to Surrealism. That's a tall order, but I suppose somebody's gotta do it.

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Addendum:

American flag composed of polyester-resin doll heads by Clint Imboden at Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art installed opposite a television showing the Palin/Biden vice presidential debate.

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No matter what the economic conditions, there's always this option . Generous gestures often come back to you in wonderful ways.

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First Thursday; September 4, 2008

First Thursday; August 7, 2008

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