Engineer's Daughter

post haste

Elizabeth Ribera

Patrick Wilson

 

Alicia Escott

Through May 27 - Post Haste at MacArthur B Arthur.  One of my secret histories is that I spent years as an avid stamp collector and still have binders and binders full of philatelic wonders stashed away somewhere.  I have also been a faithful pen pal to many individuals and still love to send and receive letters in the mail.  I experience genuine melancholy every time I hear the U.S. Postal Service is struggling to survive.  So I very much appreciate the work Jayna Swartzman has gathered for this group show, each piece commenting in its own way on an institution that until the advent of email was just that, an institution.  Patrick Wilson built his own post box, fitted it with a infra-red camera, and sent it via DHL from San Francisco to Los Angeles.  The photographs in the exhibition were taken by the box completely free of any human intervention, and the loading docks and warehouses it captured are eerie in their beauty.  Alicia Escott's Love Letter video series in which she sends terms of endearment to a Neanderthal, to a Bengal tiger, to a Brontimerus Macintoshi have a devastating intimacy that makes the viewer pure voyeur.  Meanwhile Calcagno Cullen invites you to sit down at an old Smith-Corona typewriter (the exact same one my dad had in his office I might add) and compose a letter to a random person in the New York phone book.  Christopher Wood, I hope you like the words you get from me.

See also:

• MacArthur B Arthur
• Patrick Wilson
• Alicia Escott
• Calcagno Cullen

artpadsf 2012

Matthew Bernard Loggins installation, Creativity Explored

So.  ArtPad.  Definitely the hippest of the fairs, taking place as it did at the Phoenix Hotel in the Tenderloin, and fun to roam around in thanks to each gallery taking over a hotel room and often doing creative things with the space.  Suffice it to say I felt a lot more comfortable here than at artMRKT.  Things I especially liked:

• My first stop, at Steven Wolf: Club Paint, Bessma Khalaf, George Kuchar, more.  Steven has always shown the most interesting work.
• Creativity Explored had some amazing work on display, but the best part of their room was the bathroom (pictured above) that was inspired by artist/author Matthew Bernard Loggins.  I was reassured to observe an entire small area of the wall dedicated to snakes.
• A few Oakland galleries were in attendance, and I spent a good bit of time in Swarm.  I can never get enough of Jessalyn Aaland's sticker pieces, and I was very pleased to see some of Jennifer Brandon's incredibly tactile photographs in person for the first time too.  What Jennifer does with a bit of cushioning, tangled thread, and a few pins is revelatory.
• Also from Oakland: Johansson Projects had new wood sculptures by Misako Inaoka that show the artist still pushing her altered animals into wonderfully twisted forms.  Tons of great work by Jennie Ottinger on display too, which leads me to shamelessly plug the Headlands auction and your chance to win her absolutely perfect Astronaut Family painting.
• Got the chance to explain Gareth Spor's Pictures of the Sky series to a small clutch of enraptured onlookers at Eleanor Harwood.  Loved that.
• Still impressed with what the guys over at the Popular Workshop are doing, particularly after seeing a whole group of their artists in one place (including Luis Urculo and Facundo Arganaraz).

artmrkt san francisco

Chris Ritson

I'll be the first to admit art fairs make me a little itchy, those spectacles of art as pure commodity.  Last year was the first time San Francisco attempted to compete with the glitzy destination affairs in Miami and New York by scheduling three events in one weekend, and I roundly avoided each one.  However curiosity got the better of me this year when those same three fairs returned, and I made a quick pass through artMRKT and ArtPadSF in one afternoon (I couldn't face the Fine Art Fair).  I'll cover highlights from ArtPad in a future post, but here are a few random notes from artMRKT, the more traditional of the pair:

• The blue chip galleries got spots on the main floor of the Concourse Exhibition Center with smaller and more alternative spaces and organizations tucked up on the side walkways.  You can bet I spent most of my short time there in the side walkways.
• Very pleased to see a piece by Chris Fraser prominently displayed at Highlight Gallery's booth.  They'll be doing a solo exhibition with him later this year, and I can't wait.
• Also wonderful to bump into friends from Martina }{ Johnston, especially when said friends pointed me to the Artcards booth where I got handed a free tote printed with the names of some of my favorite local galleries and filled with goodies from the likes of Little Paper Planes, Land and Sea, and Royal Nonesuch Gallery.  Best swag bag ever.
• More friendly faces over at the NIAD booth, where some kids were having a lot of fun with the art on display because they were actually allowed to touch it.
• A personal wish list, if money were no object: a Chris Ritson crystal-encrusted sculpture at Ever Gold, the Youngsuk Suh wildfire photo at Kala, anything by Tauba Auerbach at Park Life.

an evening with holland cotter

San Francisco's first Asian Contemporary Art Week (ACAW-SF) is officially wrapped up now, but I managed to squeeze in another of its many events Tuesday night when I went to go hear art critic Holland Cotter speak at the Asian Art Museum in conjunction with their opening-week celebrations for Phantoms of Asia.  Cotter has long been committed to covering art from other countries, especially from those outside the so-called western world, and his criticism in the New York Times is exactly the sort of engaged and unpretentious writing I strive to accomplish even in my short pieces.  His talk at the Asian inspired me all over again, especially when he spoke of bringing passion and an attitude of generosity to the acts of art-viewing and art-writing.  As for ACAW-SF, even if you missed the fun this week there's still the most excellent Phantoms show to see as well as exhibitions at Frey Norris, Haines, the Art Institute, and Yerba Buena (to name just a few).  We are never lacking in options 'round these here parts.

See also:

• Holland Cotter's An Art Critic in Africa series
• Phantoms of Asia at the Asian Art Museum
• Tomokazu Matsuyama and Jagannath Panda at Frey Norris Contemporary and Modern
• Zhan Wang, Ai Weiwei, Yoshitomo Saito, Tokihiro Sato, Xing Danwen, and Rong Rong at Haines Gallery
• Lin Yilin at SFAI
• John-Mark Ikeda and Wang Qingsong at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

let your freak flag fly

Prior to last Sunday my sewing skills were limited to darning socks (badly) and the occasional needlepoint project involving cross-stitched cats.  But under the patient tutelage of artist Angie Wilson, who is just wrapping up her year as a Graduate Fellow at Headlands, I finally conquered my fear of sewing machines and managed to turn a random heap of fabric into my own personal freak flag in the space of a few hours.  There was a whole group of us in the Headlands Gym that afternoon for Angie's sewing workshop, grooving along to her specially-programmed freak flag playlist and offering each other encouragement as we ironed and snipped and stitched.  Then we all tied our flags to poles, marched up the hill with them, and let them fly proudly in the late afternoon sun.  To see what amazing things Angie does with fabric on a regular basis visit Headlands right now where several of her flags are hanging in the Graduate Fellow show Tell the Truth and Run!  To see my flag you'll have to visit my apartment.

See also:

• Headlands Center for the Arts
• Angie Wilson

on apology

Amalia Pica

Ragnar Kjartansson

Shaun Gladwell

Through May 19 - On Apology at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.  The annual MFA shows are running rampant throughout the Bay Area right now, but the single exhibition I make sure I never miss is the one put together by the Curatorial Practice graduates at CCA.  The theme is a deceptively simple one this year: apology.  But the motivations and expectations of apology are rarely very straightforward, and the curators have assembled an impressive group of work that explores the concept's many nuances.  Amalia Pica addresses the legacy of Argentina's Dirty War in her installation Under the Spotlight, while Ragnar Kjartansson's video Guilt Trip pokes some darkly humorous fun at the Icelandic financial meltdown.  The piece I couldn't look away from even as it broke my heart though was Shaun Gladwell's Apologies 1-6 in which a motorcyclist repeatedly stops along the road in the Australian outback to tenderly cradle kangaroo roadkill.  Who is brave enough to take on responsibility for loss?  Who can say "I'm sorry" and actually mean it?

See also:

• CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

day of dialogue

Heman Chong

Charwei Tsai

The first-ever Asian Contemporary Art Week (or ACAW-SF) is currently in full swing with events happening all over the Bay Area, and the proceedings kicked off yesterday with a "Day of Dialogue" at the Asian Art Museum that tied in with their upcoming show Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Art Awakens the Past.  If you've seen Choi Jeong Hwa's giant crimson Breathing Flower that has suddenly sprung up in front of City Hall you've already gotten a taste of the exhibit which contextualizes the work of artists from all over Asia by juxtaposing it with historical objects.  The symposium yesterday brought together seven of those artists (Charwei Tsai, Jagannath Panda, Jompet Kuswidananto, Adeela Suleman, Adrian Wong, Heman Chong, Takayuki Yamamoto) for a closer look at their respective practices, and I also took the opportunity to seek out the pieces for the show that have already been installed amongst the historical displays in the museum's upstairs galleries.  The work I've seen so far is outstanding, and Phantoms is frankly a giant leap forward for the Asian, true to their renewed commitment to exhibiting contemporary art from Asia.  See the show after it officially opens later this week, and make sure you get to another ACAW-SF event or two too.

See also:

• Asian Contemporary Art Week
• Asian Art Museum

knockdown texture

Nate Boyce

Nate Boyce

Nate Boyce

Through June 16 - Nate Boyce: Knockdown Texture at Altman Siegel Gallery.  I heard Boyce speak at Yerba Buena a couple weeks back in conjunction with their Super 8 video art exhibition, and it made me eager to see this solo show of his.  He had covered a few of his influences and then previewed some of the pieces from Knockdown Texture, describing how for his new videos he had physically carved the amorphous shapes in them out of foam rather than creating them in CGI.  He did then proceed to tweak them digitally, but there's a wonderful interplay in this new work between the motion/visual noise in his videos and the literal flatness of the screens, and then again between the videos and the spindly steel stands they are displayed on.  Elements of those steel constructions appear again in a couple pieces where video stills have been mounted so that they extrude out of the gallery wall, becoming that much more tangible than a print or painting.  Boyce subverts traditional notions about sculpture and video here (as he has done with sound in the past too, though these pieces are silent) and slyly pushes the boundaries of perception in the process.

See also:

• Altman Siegel Gallery
• Nate Boyce
• Super 8

hand vote

Kota Ezawa

Kota Ezawa

Kota Ezawa

From Vancouver Art Gallery:

"Ezawa’s rendering is faithful to the original source image by maintaining the photograph’s basic structure and framing. By eliminating details, the image refers less to a specific group of individuals, and more to a general sign of a collective body united in a common purpose. In light of recent events in which demands for societal reform have become apparent both in Canada and abroad, Ezawa’s portrait of democracy could not be more timely."

See also:

• Vancouver Art Gallery
• Kota Ezawa

tell the truth and run!

Sohyung Choi

Evan DeSpelder

Bean Gilsdorf

Narangkar Glover

Jerome Reyes

Paul Taylor

Angie Wilson

Through June 3 - Tell the Truth and Run! at Headlands Center for the Arts.  This year's culminating exhibition for the Headlands 2011-2012 Graduate Fellows takes its title from journalist George Seldes's famous saying, and the work on display is true to that spirit of clear-eyed veracity.  As a special added bonus artist Angie Wilson, whose gorgeous hand-sewn flags are a highlight of the exhibition, will lead a sewing workshop this Sunday in conjunction with the show.  Participants will construct their own personal freak flag and then hike up to the top of a hill and fly them.  For more on that (and if you'd like to squeeze into the workshop) click here.