General comment by AB: All I can say is... Barack Obama. Hard to believe that someone who's dedicated to furthering the greater good, caretaking the environment, bettering the lives of all people everywhere, improving international relations, and placing the welfare of others above concern for himself and his partisans could ever be elected President of the United States of America. I mean after the cataclysmic mercenary nightmare tailspin of the past eight years, I had just about given up. But damn if we didn't come through in the end and prove to the world that as far as all-inclusivity goes, America still stands tall as one place on the planet where anyone can achieve anything regardless of what they come into this game with. And what Barack Obama comes with sounds conceivably like a whole slew of positive possibilities. Sure, we've got a long way to go, but with him at the helm, our potential for progress will be clearly ahead of the curve.

And let's not forget the role that art played in Obama's victory-- the art of Shepard Fairey to be precise, arguably one of the great propaganda artists of our time, and gaining ground fast on James Montgomery Flagg who immortalized that metapatriotic American icon, Uncle Sam . Fairey's powerful uplifting portrayals materialized "Hope" for millions upon millions of people around the world and connected in a major way with young, disheartened, discouraged, disenfranchised, and alienated voters everywhere. Yes, those noble images helped give countless Americans the courage and determination to cast their ballots and prevail against the despicably devisive tactics of the opposition, and in so doing, proved once again that the impact of art can never be underestimated.

So here we are. Tough times. Monster challenges. But regardless of how difficult our travails may become, at least one consequence of unswerving human optimism will forever prevail. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? That's right. This...

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Hackett-Freedman Gallery : Roland Petersen - A Natural Order, Works From the 1960s.

Review by BTN: Hackett-Freedman Gallery brings together a series of early works by Roland Petersen from the 1960s, many of which are being shown for the first time. The works are representative of a tenet of Bay Area figurative painting, with which Petersen and his contemporaries such as David Park are associated. His bright canvases demonstrate his masterly command of working with the figure in an abstracted landscape of color contrasts and varying textures. What perhaps distinguishes his style in these pieces is the way in which the figure vibrates in a dynamic relationship with the background, working to carve out its own space.?

Comment by AB: Roland Petersen's intense impasto landscape paintings from the 1960s are so rich and thick, you practically wanna lick 'em off the canvas like frosting. To tell the truth, I'm surprised gravity hasn't gotten the better of some of the thicker ones-- a testament to Petersen's technical proficiency. He can paint delicate too, as evidenced by several vintage watercolors.

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John Berggruen Gallery : William T. Wiley - Fear Rules.

Comment by AB: William Wiley stays on point like few artists can-- for decades-- continually chipping away at injustice, intolerance, oppression, fear mongering, socio-political inequities, and pretty much anything else that's long overdue for a cosmic chiropractic adjustment. But he's not one of those drone-on downers either, the kinds who pummel your psyche with gloom and doom until you're ready to jump off a ferkin' bridge. The means to the memo with Wiley is ever upbeat, entertaining, astute, engaging, humorous, multifaceted, and most of all, hopeful.

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Gallery Paule Anglim : Lynn Hershman Leeson - Found Objects; Chip Lord, Curtis Schreier, Bruce Tomb - ANT FARM Media Van v.08, Related Works. ?

Comment by AB: A life-sized sex doll gets lucky as veteran conceptualist Lynn Hershman Leeson conscripts it for art rather than you-know-what. Among other implementations, Hershman Leeson poses the doll behind a veil as Manet's Olympia and plays a slide show over it, portrays it in various predicaments in a series of photographs, and in general, uses it to explore aspects of idealized carnal desire. In the antechamber are drawings and a slide show involving a digital update and revampification of Media Van, originally built by Ant Farm at Headlands Center for the Arts in 1971. Both shows take place in conjunction with "The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now," currently at SFMOMA.

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Robert Koch Gallery : Michael Wolf - The Transparent City.

Comment by AB: Michael Wolf selects center city Chicago as the setting to convey his take on the highrise lifestyle and those who live it. His photographs are large enough to literally suck you into the enormity of it all. But Wolf's true talents are in composition, lighting, atmospherics, the way he rachets up the density and intensity, and how he seasons his scenarios with tasty little morsels of human interest. Descriptives like romantic and magical come to mind-- 'cuz I've been to Chicago a number of times and I sure don't remember ever seeing anything that looked like Wolf makes it look. Go see.

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Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery : Timothy McDowell - New Encaustic Paintings.

Review by Dennis C. Scherzer: Tim McDowell is a collector of nature images-- landscapes, geology, flowers, sea creatures, drawings from old biology texts. He lays out masterful line drawings of these nature shapes on maple plank backgrounds. The wooden base is covered in beeswax infused with natural pigments. The colors he uses are those that were created prior to 1880.

When the colored beeswax is scraped thin, it acquires a look reminiscent of aged tapestries. Which old tapestries? McDowell derives inspiration from Europe, China, Japan, and Persia among others. Layers added, then scraped prominent and ghostly line drawings (somewhat reminiscent of Da Vinci's sketches) immediately adjacent to raised relief opaque flowers expressed in rich, almost edible color.

McDowell explains to me that the use of natural materials-- wood, beeswax, and natural pigments gives a "direct ontological connection" to the natural scenes and objects depicted in his work. He builds a background, sometimes over line drawings, or opaque objects, and the scrapes the overlayment down creating a sense of "entropy" which induces the aged look of his creations. This deliberate waxen palimpsest inset with replicas of classic images of natural objects-- often reflecting the style of old scientific illustrations-- creates the flavor of Tim McDowell's work.

Finally, McDowell disperses the natural objects across the expanse of his creations. They never coalesce into a complete replica of say, a classic Chinese tapestry or a complete 19th-century botany text illustration. The vision is modern, the colors pleasant, the items interesting and well made. It is easy to appreciate this wonderful art.

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Brian Gross Fine Art : Ed Moses - Owlbo; Peter Alexander - To Dive For.

Review by Dennis C. Scherzer: Ed Moses brings us a collection of works that demonstrate his skill with broad brush, liquid paint, and texture created from the interplay of the pigment and the canvas. The brush pulls the paint, the canvas resists. Diffusion is limited, opacity controlled, and shapes, effusions, appear incongruently contrasting the stream and flow of the brush.

My first, most immediate impression of these works is a similarity to Morris Louis. I am a big fan of Morris Louis because I am intrigued as to how he managed to create such flow in shapes on canvas. As I view Louis and Moses side-by-side, it is clear that Ed Moses relies upon the brush to distribute the paint on his canvases, whereas Louis appears to have "poured" his paint.

So... Why all the fascination with thin paint? I can only offer that it is indeed an amazing craft, the ability to move very liquid paint upon a surface that is absorbing it in variegated, yet somewhat predictable quantifications. Factor in that the density of the pigment effects the diffusion of the paint, makes it thin enough to migrate, uses gravity to move it-- and a brush, or not.

Mastering paint migration is not enough to evoke my admiration. I salute the craftsman, yet where is the artist?

Moses' "E+ybab" (good title) answers that question. "E+ybab" sounds like one side of a mathematical equation, say, a constant (E) plus some kind of a blip. The painting is similar in that it portrays a vertical brush-striated blue background with a series of blotted gray areas interrupting it. The gray effusions create a trend in the striations that is perpendicular to the background trend. This is expressed in this work, and in others by variations in opacity rather than a deliberate linear trend caused by the brush.

Genius!

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Also showing at Brian Gross is Peter Alexander, and I find him sharing his work with several amazed onlookers. He encourages them to touch the work, feel its smoothness. This tactile liberation causes me to immediately like the artistic spirit of the man.

This freedom is the brainchild of control. Alexander explains to me that, over his 40 year career as an artist, the psychological space that his art provides in his personal life liberates him from having to rely upon a typical means of making a living. It allows him to step out from being "controlled" by commitments to an employer into a place where he can control the direction of his life.

"Artists don't like listening to anybody else," he explained. His art has become a haven that he can enter at will, most importantly at his pleasure. The "doing" of creating his art, is a pleasurable organization of the impressions, notions, and artistic stimulus that's coming in manifested by the tactile expression created by the craft work of creating the art.

Each of Alexander's works is blue. He grew up near the ocean. "Water is always an issue," he says.

The physical craft of creating Alexander's work is somewhat akin to custom auto painting. He starts with smooth rolled sheet aluminum panels that are painted white. Upon this surface, Alexander then applies liquid phthalo blue oil paint, thinned with turpentine, often squeezed on with a sponge. This method creates the diffusions and concentrations of colors and shapes which evoke the liquid image of the work. Multiple clear coats are applied and mechanically buffed-- just like a custom high gloss automobile finish.

The surface sheen resembles the clear reflective surface of water. Beneath that swim intriguing shapes and light. The invitation to explore is delightful.

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Fraenkel Gallery : Richard Avedon - Performance.

Commenty by AB: What makes Richard Avedon great is that he has that unique ability to portray the vulnerable side of stardom, of celebrity, without compromising the integrity of his subjects, but rather deepening our understanding of them, and reminding us that we're all essentially the same, but depending on the circumstances, also remarkably different. Excellent and definitely worth a visit.

Plus the images are 100% vintage-- no later printings like you find at so many galleries everywhere-- the bane of the business. It's like we'll print up a fresh batch whenever we feel like it and charge vintage prices for 'em-- nobody'll know the difference. Well, not exactly nobody. For any serious photograph collector, it's either an original printing or nothing. The moral of the story? Simply ask the seller, "Is this a vintage original print or a contemporary printing of a vintage image? The latter should be priced far less than the former.

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Toomey Tourell Fine Art : Robert Donald.

Commenty by AB: Energized action-rich abstracts by Robert Donald, though firmly rooted in the traditions of the founding fathers (and mothers), retrofits the idiom with contemporary measures of intensity.

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Scott Nichols Gallery : Horace Bristol - Capturing Life, Celebrating a Century.

Comment by AB: Horace Bristol's photography documents 1930s and 1940s America, from migrant farmworkers to Precisionist industry-scapes to World War II devastation. His work was extensively published in Life Magazine in the 1930s. He gave it all up to practice architecture, destroying most of his negatives and stashing his prints away in the fifties, to be fortunately rediscoverd and revived by his son in the eighties. Worth a visit.

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Stephen Wirtz Gallery : Todd Hido - A Road Divided.

Comment by AB: Todd Hido photographs lonely rural landscapes through his car window, often during periods of rain or sleet, with beautifully bereft results-- mildly impressionistic, deeply atmospheric, and plenty of room to ruminate. If you're having a tough day, big city hysteria's got you down, or you just plain need a break, walk into one of these Hido moments and leave it all behind. Pick of First Thursday.

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Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art : Danielle Giudici Wallis and Diem Chau.

Review by BTN: The Mark Wolfe gallery brings together the works of Danielle Giudici Wallis and Diem Chau, who both have styles that call forth the crafted quality of their works and who both use materials that emphasize the tactile nature of their surfaces. Wallis' works play with the ideas of private and public through domestic objects such as umbrellas, dressers, and chairs that are covered or constructed with rugged materials such as roof shingles and brick, materials commonly reserved for external construction. (An example is "Portable Shelter"). The fabrication of these items with construction "ingredients" complements the delicate pieces presented by Diem Chau. Chau goes in the opposite direction by draping porcelain cups that frame silk transparent sheets and their detailed embroidery of "drawn" hands, feet, and figures. The fragility and endearing nature of the works is also reflected in Chau's crayons and No. 2 pencils, potentially domestic items of childhood innocence carefully carved into mini-figurine "netsuke."

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Patricia Sweetow Gallery : David Huffman - Dig it! & Jefferson Pinder - Afro Cosmonaut/Alien (White Noise).

Comment by AB: David Huffman's futuristic allegorical fantasyscapes depict blackface astronauts (Traumanauts) negotiating their way through a series of challenging and complex adventures. Jefferson Pinder exhibits a sequence of photographic self-portraits where he progressively paints himself Butoh-esque white. He also shows videos.

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Marx & Zavattero : William Swanson - The Impact Curve.

Review by BTN: William Swanson's works are explorations in post-apocalyptic landscapes and cityscapes, horizons that also defy gravity and spread amorphically like collages as in "Collapse Cycle." Despite the imaginings of a future of run-down machinery and garbage often suspended in weightless silhouettes, Swanson's pieces are bright, colorful, and even cheerful. They adhere to a strong sense of both architectural and graphic design and convey a beauty from the images of humanless wastelands. If he does not do so already, I hope that Swanson would not take offense at the suggestion that he create T-shirts in the same style. I can imagine a following.

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Dolby Chadwick Gallery : Robert Kingston.

Comment by AB: Robert Kingston's abstractions are so refined and unpretentious, they blend effortlessly into their surroundings, enhancing the ambience without having to compete for attention or overwhelm the space.

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Hespe Gallery : Joan Mateu - Inside.

Comment by AB: Barcelona, Spain artist Joan Mateu presents female figures in interiors-- gentle, reflective, preoccupied, contemplative. Nicely painted.

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Modernism Gallery : Sheldon Greenberg - Mood Indigo; Curtis Ripley - Another Life.

Comment by AB: In the main gallery, slicey compositional overlays by Sheldon Greenberg parse pop culture, glamour stars, vintage films, and Hollywood habits. In the rear quadrant, Curtis Ripley offers up reductive unapologetic vertical and horizontal fields of color, loosely flaglike in nature.

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SF Camerawork : Preview Reception for SF Camerawork 2008 Benefit Auction of Photographic Prints.

Photographers: Richard Barnes, Uta Barth, Tibora Bea, Kelli Connell, Bill Dane, Larry Fink, Ann Hamilton, Michael Kenna, Chris Koperski, Dinh Q. L?, Richard Misrach, Melissa Ann Pinney, Job Piston, Mimi Plumb, Tracey Snelling, Alec Soth, Berenice Abbott, Uta Barth, Richard Barnes, Marco Breuer, Ellen Carey, Binh Danh, Judy Dater, Robert Dawson, Robert Doisneau, Kota Ezawa, Larry Fink, Jim Goldberg, Doug Hall, Ann Hamilton, Todd Hido, Pirkle Jones, Michael Kenna, Dinh Q. L?, Michael Light, David Maisel, Richard Misrach, Herb Ritts, Jack Spencer, Catherine Wagner, William Wegman, Edward Weston, more.

Review and images by Julia Haas: A young crowd surveys the salon-style SF Camerawork 2008 Benefit Auction preview tonight. This year's roster is filled with familiar names who have donated a rich mixture of work, from traditional silver gelatin prints to digital collage. One wall is devoted to prints available for immediate sale; the rest are up for bidding (online or in person) until December 6.??

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Frey Norris Gallery : Harvey Dinnerstein - Underground Together.

Comment by AB: Perhaps the premier proponent of Social Realism active in America today, Harvey Dinnerstein sees significance, at times even grandeur, in those ordinary occurrences that typically elapse unnoticed. When you think about it, that's pretty much what life is like-- a progression of overwhelmingly ordinary events. Sure, there's spits and spurts of this and that, but then we're right back to our usual states of somber sober sedateness.

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111 Minna Gallery : Freak of Nature.

Artists: Alison Kendall, Amanda Smith, Alexis Mackenzie, Henry Gunderson, Colleen Sanders, Casey Jex Smith, Christopher Russell, Matthew Hart, Andrew Schoultz, Hilary Pecis, Lisa Ostapinski, Hannah Stouffer, Scott Hewicker, Josh Keyes, Jacob Tillman. Curated by Lisa Ostapinski and Gabe Scott.

Comment by AB: Nicely themed and selected show focuses on how artists respond to current concerns about the environment, where we're headed, what we might do to make things better, and where we're gonna end up if we sit idly by and don't do anything.

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Studio 560 : Group Show.

Artists: Laila Carlsen, Trevor Southey, Karl Jhanke, Samantha Wall, Stephanie Schmitt, others.

Comment by AB: Studio 560, upstairs at 432 Sutter Street and associated with Cohen-Rese Gallery directly below, is not formally open to the public yet, but tonight previews the gallery itself and a sampling of art and artists they'll be showing. It's one of the nicer exhibition spaces in town, by the way-- expansive, open, airy, high ceilings.

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Addendum:

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Hey-- there's always this . And as Confusious says, "He or she who is or does is either as there may or will be, depending."

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First Thursday; October 2, 2008

First Thursday; September 4, 2008

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