General comment: Hi there. How ya' doin'? Gotta get right to it this month; no time to dawdle. Or maybe I do have time to dawdle, but there isn't that much to dawdle about. You be the judge. The good news? The fare's not so paucitous that we don't have a Pick of First Thursday. And as we all know, a double negative equals a positive.

Oh, wait. Forgot to ask... you're here to see art, right? I though so. Me too. Then enough blather and off we go...

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Museum of Craft and Folk Art : The Art of Gaman.

Comment: Emotional, impactful, and informative display of arts and crafts, both decorative and functional, made by Japanese Americans who were held at interment camps during World War II. It's more than the art, though. The show also documents and gives a glimpse of what life was like in these camps, what the camps looked like, and offers similar somber insights into this relative low point in America's history.

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Heather Marx Gallery : Stephen Giannetti - Colorfield.

Comment: Paintings on "French polyester" consist of six layers of variously colored translucent circles (all produced by Stephen Giannetti from the three primary colors), each color applied at regular intervals over the canvas. The systematic application of individual colors in successive layers becomes subordinate to the overall impact of the completed compositions. The handbill proceeds to cite some historical color field antecedents to make it all official. And there you go.

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Catharine Clark Gallery : leonardogillesfleur 2006; Charles Gute - Revisions and Queries.

Comment: leonardogillesfleur is really two artists-- Leonardo Giacomuzzo and Gilles-fleur Boutry-- and their versatile multimedia art is mainly about collaboration. A significant percentage appears to favor the pair's dual directionality rather than their dyadic unity. For example, this latest group of work features a Fiat with two front ends, no rear end, the front ends joined together where the rear ends should be, and facing opposite directions. There's also this curious video of the pair looking like they're kissing, but when you get close up, you see their open mouths nearly touch and remain relatively motionless, except they're both drooling. Erk.

In the second gallery, Charles Gute derives his art from the act of proofreading, by editing actual text from a book by Hans Ulrich Obrist titled Interviews , then extracting only his editorial markings, and reincarnating them as sparse pristine precision scientific-looking drawings. Interesting.

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871 Fine Arts , 49 Geary, 2nd Floor: Peter Downsbrough.

Comment: Esoterica rules at 871 Fine Arts, this exciting episode pointing up the career of Belgian conceptualist Peter Downsbrough through reductive sculpture, graphics, and artist books (the earliest dating to the 1970's). From what I can tell, he sort of experiments with space and the ways we perceive it, including but not limited to the ordering of words, letters, and language. It's one of those shows where I'd love a quick down & dirty blurb on the dude. I mean if you're more than intelligent enough to say it in a notably unconventional and innovative manner for thirty-plus years, you're qualified to distill it for the rookies.

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Jack Fischer Gallery : Andrew A. Reilly.

Comment: This is one of those relatively uncommon shows where instead of thinking "OK, I've seen enough," I want more. Reilly tells me his photographs explore sundry iconic banalities of modern living, while his prints of rows of colored letters and numbers against plain white backgrounds are, upon closer observation, strings of abbreviations we see everywhere all the time, particularly in emails, text messages, and instant messaging. I wish I could remember more of how he describes his work; I do recall he's intently focused on where he's going and better yet, he knows how to get there (as opposed to artists who think they know where they're going and end up lost). I told him, "I understand" barely two minutes into his explanation, and a snappy understanding on my part means I'm talking to an artist who explains himself exceptionally well. Solid show; go see.

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Patricia Sweetow Gallery : Jane Harris - Recent Paintings; Weston Teruya - Collapsed System Aftereffects ('til we get there).

Comment: London artist Jane Harris exhibits a group of stunning symmetric metallic abstracts, most starring that geometry crowd favorite, the ellipse. They stop me in my tracks mainly because they're so impeccably harmonically precise. I mean it's not easy to paint perfect in large format like this, and with only two or three colors per canvas, flubs are tough to hide-- and there's no detectable equivocation that I can see. The results are hypnotic, not only from compositional standpoints, but also in the way Harris uses brush strokes to exploit the texture of the paint, thereby adding a reflective dimensionality to her art. She tells me she spends inordinate amounts of time conceiving, formulating, sketching, and composing her paintings, and that she only produces about ten per year. This one's easy-- Pick of First Thursday.

But wait; there's more. Weston Teruya spiffs up the side gallery with an impressive set of detailed dreamlike collage and paint investigations that, according to the crib sheet, have something to do with Teruya's work with juvenile delinquents (I'll need to read the long version if I expect to wrap my neocortex around that). However, anyone can appreciate their professional merit.

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Steven Wolf Fine Arts : Kent & Kevin Young - Another Monozygotic Experiment in Telepathic conveyance.

Comment: This combination art show and shindig, starring identical twin performance artists Kent & Kevin Young, is headlined by a telekinetic occurrence where one twin clairvoyantly conveys the clues to a randomly chosen crossword puzzle to the other twin. This goes on for 40 minutes; then the two tally the results; then they do kind of a twirly line dance to country music. Anyone who still has the temerity to be bored at this juncture can watch any of several entertaining videos, my favorite documenting Kent and Kevin standing in an athletic field heading a soccer ball back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and so on, and so on, and so on, again and again and again, etc, etc, etc... (They're really good at it.)

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Robert Koch Gallery : Jeff Brouws - Approaching Nowhere.

Comment: Jeff Brouws's photographs transform bleak dismal landscapes from forgettable to memorable. They're so convincing, you're not only looking at 'em-- you're there. Pretty slick trick. Desolation as art. Some of his images remind me of once-thriving now-deserted industrial sections of Cleveland (where I grew up).

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Gregory Lind Gallery : Wind Swell - New Paintings by Aaron Parazette.

Comment: Aaron Parazette takes surfing terms and makes letter paintings out of 'em. He's skilled technically, compositionally, and palette-ically. Question: What would a Gregory Lind show be without a mystifying press release? Answer: Not a Gregory Lind show.

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Modernism Gallery : Gottfried Helnwein - New Paintings; Valentin Popov - Venice at Night.

Comment: Commendable doubleheader pits the whiplash portraiture of Gottfried Helnwein against serene Venetian evening scenes by Valentin Popov. It's a draw-- two winners. This time around, Helnwein offers up a series of portraits of sleeping children from the perspective of standing directly over their heads and looking down. Some are immaculate in their undisturbed innocence; others are horribly blood-soaked and bandaged, which makes you wonder whether the "sleeping" children are really sleeping. Alexander Popov, meanwhile, always presents fresh new perspectives not only in his art, but also in himself, this time getting mysteriously misty about Venice after dark (note how he delicately drips his edges). And the best part is he executes each and every twist and turn in his artistic existence with aplomb.

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111 Minna Gallery : Utopia.

Artists: Suzanne Husky, Eric Joyner, Josh Keyes, Alexis Mackenzie, Chris Pew, Stephen Powers, John Sheridan, Casey Jex Smith, Winston Smith.

Comment: The premise is that the world is pretty far from utopian at the moment. Perhaps a little art on the topic will make the situation incrementally more bearable. I think so, but getting the divisive hate-mongering xenophobes out of the White House would be better.

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Fifty24SF Gallery : The Date Farmers.

Comment: Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma of Coachella Valley in Southern California, better known as The Date Farmers, know how to throw a show. They don't just hang their art; they conquer the gallery and make it their own. When that's done well (like it is here) they likewise subjugate every single person who experiences their artwork. A fringe benefit to their takeover approach, of course, is that they sell a lot of art. And there's nothing wrong with that. Among the creative bounty this time around are walls lined with carved boxed painted wooden figures, designed and painted by The Date Farmers, and carved by an artist in Oaxaca. $200 each. Bargain.

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Addendum:

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The compassionate among you may wish to click here . And thank you for your support.

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First Thursday; October 5, 2006

First Thursday; September 7, 2006