STEVEN WOLF - MARIN MOCA - GUERRERO - ELEANOR HARWOOD

ROOT DIVISION - MICHAEL ROSENTHAL - MARKET STREET

GRAY AREA - SHOOTING GALLERY - WHITE WALLS

09.11.10 - PART II

(with assistance from Clare Coppel , RWM and DeWitt Cheng)

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Steven Wolf Fine Arts : Castration Myth - Rudolf Schwarzkogler.

Review by Clare Coppel: Steven Wolf's inaugural show at his new location, Castration Myth, features bizarre, intense, sexual black and white photographs by artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler that meld well with the super bright lighting (love it) and smell of freshly painted walls.

Comment by AB: Rudolf Schwarzkogler feigns self-castration in a sequence of performative piques, and then for posterity, documents the progression of events around his trumped up wiener deficit disorder.

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Pacific Felt Company Lofts #107: Rodney Ewing - Keep in a Cool Dry Place.

Comment by AB: Intense expository on African American history and politics expressed in a compelling selection of works on paper by Rodney Ewing.

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Marin Museum of Contemporary Art : Walter Kuhlman.

Review and images by DeWitt Cheng: "I deal with the shadow, the dark side of our nature. You have to accept the shadow in your personality. You have to come to grips with that guy. He's not so bad,really. Sometimes he helps." Walter Kuhlman.

Walt Kuhlman (1918-1992) was a one of the Bay Area artists who studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Instiitute) during the postwar years when luminaries like Dieberkorn. Park, Still and Rothko taught there. A painter, printmaker and teacher, Kuhlman is primarily known for his abstractions of the late 1940s and the 1950s, but in the 1960s he returned to figuration, creating romantic, poetic symbols in his late oils and monotypes; curator Alan Selsor invoked the broad term "Figurative Expressionism" during his presentation on Kuhlman (whose work, despite his comparative lack of renown, is in the British Museum, the Smithsonian, the Menil Collection, the Metropolitan, the Phillips Collection, and, locally, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Oakland Museum, and the Crocker Art Museum). Kuhlman moved to Sausalito in 1947 and lived and worked there for the rest of his life, except for a teaching stint in Albuquerque; his studio at the Industrial Center Building has been renovated and is open to the public by appointment and during Open Studio. A book on Kuhlman with an essay by Selsor is available.

Early untitled Walt Kuhlman lithograph from 1948, one of the first Abstract Expressionist prints published in the United States.

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Guerrero Gallery : Materialism - Aaron Noble and Greg Lamarche.

Review by Clare Coppel: Materialism deconstructed and reconstructed in vintage paper colleges by Greg Lamarche blends perfectly with reconfigured comic book art by Aaron Noble. It's all about taking objects and ideas apart and reconfiguring them into new yet familiar composites.

Comment by AB: Good art all the way around; go see.

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Eleanor Harwood Gallery : Colleen Sanders - Stilling.

Review by Clare Coppel: Stilling features works by Colleen Sanders-- mysterious implied figures sourced from forms, hair, plants, and cloth.

Comment by AB: Colleen Sanders reinterprets timeless iconic religious images, but minus the figures. See how many you can guess correctly.

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Root Division : Introductions 2010.

Artists: Mark Benson, Iris Charabi-Berggren, Chris Fraser, Dana Hemenway, Pete Hickok, Hyun Sun Jo, Carling McManus, Mimi Moncier, Surabhi Saraf, Julie Sutherland, Glenn Tramantano, Daniel Yovino.

Comment by AB: Root Division's Introductions shows succeed in flushing out promising new talent with an admirable degree of consistency. Saunter on by.

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Michael Rosenthal Gallery : Meghan Gordon - Tribute to an Underappreciated Trap Door.

Comment by AB: Meghan Gordon homages artist Edwin Dickinson by reconstructing his studio in painted paper sculptures.

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Gray Area Foundation for the Arts : Milieux Sonores - Sound and Imaginary Space.

Artists: Daniel Bisig/Martin Neukom/Jan Schacher, Jason Kahn, Yves Netzhammer/Bernd Schurer, Felix Profos and Jeroen Strijbos/Rob van Rijswijk. Curated by Marcus Maeder.

Comment by AB: "An exhibition of the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology of the Zurich University of the Arts, Gray Foundation for the Arts and swissnex San Francisco." I like Gray Area Foundation. The highest of high tech art.

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The Shooting Gallery : We're Not As Colorful As We Think We Are - Joshua Petker.

Review by RWM: Alluring, but somewhat troubled women searching for something somewhere. Beauty is not necessarily captured here, but perhaps more the annoyance of seeking yet not finding. These sirens of nature are off kilter and unfamiliar in this nonintegrated world, even though the rainbow is mightily bright. And then there's the man with a fishing pole that has no hook...

Review by Clare Coppel: Colorful dreamlike landscapes. Beautiful (and classy) girls float though delicious creamy white negative space. Joy.

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White Walls Gallery : Tomorrow Is Never Promised new works - Erik Otto.

Review by Clare Coppel: Wood, neon, and dripping paintings of faces, suns, and patterns combine to create their own reality within the gallery.

Review by RWM: Erik Otto sends out his unique symbology, vitality, and personality in this large space. His style is memorable with unusual portraiture and dream houses. The exploding forces are also on display. Nice to see his work again.

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Addendum:

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