Engineer's Daughter

ai weiwei

Thanks to the Beijing Olympics many Americans are very familiar with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's work, though they might not know his name off the top of their heads, as he worked with architects Herzog & de Meuron on the design of the "Bird's Nest" stadium.  Weiwei distanced himself from the final result, however, due to his anti-Olympic sentiments, and this same activist spirit informs his work that is currently on display at Haines Gallery.  He addresses the history of his birth country in his famous Colored Vases, which I first saw in 2008's epic Half-Life of a Dream exhibition at SFMOMA, by dipping Han Dynasty pots in lurid paint so that their original texture is completely obscured unless you peer inside them.  He also wryly subverts that most Chinese of all materials, porcelain, as in Kui Hua Zi (pictured here) which consists of a quarter-ton of porcelain sunflower seeds, some of them hand-painted by the artist specifically for SF, or in his wonderful Owl Houses that take the form of blue-and-white painted Chinese vases with a hole in the side for the birdies.  Those houses are actually going to be installed in the Presidio this weekend for the brand-new For-Site Presidio Habitats show, which I can't wait to explore.  The most striking work at Haines is a huge snake sculpture that slithers along one wall, its scales constructed out of more than 300 children's backpacks.  It refers to the vast number of students killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the guerrilla investigation WeiWei has been conducting to gather and record all of their names.  That project earned him a life-threatening beating by the Chinese police as well as continued attempts to get him to stop.  I love Weiwei's commitment to truth-telling and the subtlety of his work, and I am only sad that I'm unlikely to see the piece he's unveiling in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall this fall in person.  It's certain to be totally awesome.

cockaigne

The King is dead; long live the King: Alice Moseley's From a Shotgun House in Tupelo to a Mansion on the Hill, USA, after August 1977.  Click the image to make it larger and to observe Elvis playing guitar with the angels in the upper right corner.

turbo thizz petnation

After the show at the Regency Ballroom Friday night I buzzed right over to Valencia to catch some oontz oontz oontz at the Elbo Room in the form of Daly City's own David Wang, aka Mochipet.  Though I've walked past it about a zillion times I'd never actually been inside the Elbo Room, and I spent a good amount of time warily watching the club kids who could have stepped right out of my late-'90s raver days mingle with the Marina douchebags slumming it in the Mission.  But once Mochipet hit the stage in his purple dinosaur costume and started laying down some seriously awesome glitched-out IDM (with a little DJ help from a guy dressed as a dragon and live MCing from a man in a spacesuit) it was all good.  Just goes to prove the city that elevated turntablism to an art form is still churning out amazing beats.

you! me! dancing!

Friday night I made my way to the gorgeous Regency Ballroom for the first time ever to see my favorite Welsh noise poppers Los Campesinos!  I always say it when I write about them that the exclamation point is their punctuation, not mine, though really it could be my emphasis too as much as I always enjoy jumping up and down to them.  I was actually lukewarm on their last record Romance Is Boring, preferring instead the undeniable appeal of 2008's Hold on Now, Youngster..., but live Los Campesinos! are always completely winsome no matter what they're singing.  And I adored it that Gareth was rocking a Former Ghosts tee on this particular occasion.

please love me

Thursday night I did the post-work drive out to the Headlands Center to see the world premiere of Please Love Me, a collaboration between choreographer Alex Ketley and composer/digital media artist Les Stuck along with major help from dancers Kara Davis, Andrea Basile, Christian Burns, Malinda Lavelle, and Joy Prendergast.  The piece was extraordinary, a series of linked vignettes that explored the difficulties of human relationships while incorporating video and spoken word as well as dance and sound.  In one section Prendergast moved across the floor with measured, deliberate movements while Basile circled around her wielding a camera, and every time Basile snapped a picture projected video of Prendergast briefly illuminated the wall behind them as if her interior turmoil was being revealed in that instant.  It was a beautiful metaphor for seeing and being seen, and the theme of how we present ourselves (often to attract a partner) was a strong motif throughout.  The dancers also acted out scenes of conflict and highlighted the push/pull of attraction versus the insecurities it can arouse.  At the end Burns and Basile came together and danced an almost-traditional pas de deux that was so moving in its resolution that it had me gasping for breath.  Ketley and Stuck have designed Please Love Me to travel to a variety of unusual performance spaces, and rumor has it the company will next be at Monaghan's bar in the Marina during the SF International Arts Festival.  I really want to be there to see what happens when the dancers start interacting with the people just there to get their booze on.  That will be a study in interconnectedness right there.

lewis takes action

To watch Owen Pallett live is to be transported.  I remember going to see him at Bottom of the Hill several years ago when he was still playing as Final Fantasy and having my jaw drop to the floor as he single-handedly created immersive multi-layered chamber pop with little more than a violin, his voice, and a looping machine.  I had a similar experience listening to him at the Independent Wednesday night, and (as his fantastic recent album Heartland already indicated) if anything he's only gotten more assured.  This time he did have a cohort onstage for some songs to add drums and such, but he was still doing most of the work himself.  And I did swoon.

excess of greed

It's hard to talk about the Awesomes without using their name as a descriptor for what they do, but every time I see them I just love those two women more.  For their act at 21 Grand Tuesday night M and K coated themselves in glitter, spat pearls at the audience, and screamed a lot.  Pure catharsis.  Actually all of the bands were fantastic, with local group Tusk (who shares members with No Babies) delivering a tight trumpet-enhanced set to kick off their US tour, Space Time bringing some good ol' sloppy garage rock, and Marilyn from Fleabag starting everything off with some unamplified tunes on her acoustic guitar.  All that and I was still home by midnight.

yar

The word "yar" is a nautical adjective used to describe a vessel that is easy to steer, particularly a sailboat, and it is guaranteed to make you feel cheerful if you say it out loud with gusto.  It is also the name of Thomas Campbell's current show of recent work at Gregory Lind Gallery.  Even though he now lives and works in Bonny Doon Campbell will always be associated with the Mission School in my head, and he is also one of the Beautiful Losers artists.  His work is equal parts surf and street with a strong folksy streak I always find instantly appealing, and in this show I was drawn right to the pieces that incorporate thread and sewing such as the patchwork flower pictured here.  Campbell has also done an edition of handpainted silkscreens for the show that are seriously awesome, though I almost prefer the simplicity of the gray-tone original that I spied hanging in the gallery's storage area.  His canvases are often three-dimensional as they sprout their own word balloons of painted wood, and text in his looping cursive is prominently featured, whether it's being spoken by his gnarled little man-creatures or standing on its own.  The language he employs at times seems like a private code and reminds me of the surfer and skater slang I grew up with in So Cal.  I'm not precisely sure I know what the title of the piece Yar Biscuits for Everyone refers to, but I know I want some.

paintings 1961-1973

When it comes to the American abstract expressionists of the '60s I would choose Helen Frankenthaler over a whole roomful of her contemporary male artists.  Last time I was in London I braved the suspicious looks of a snooty Mayfair gallery attendant just so I could commune with her luminous color field paintings in an exhibit there, and now we Bay Area denizens are fortunate enough to have a gorgeous show of her work from the '60s and '70s currently on display at John Berggruen Gallery.  Featuring many rarely-seen pieces from Frankenthaler's own collection as well as from private holdings, the show emphasizes her skill with paint and canvas and confirms her as adept with harder-edged abstractions as she is with billowing clouds of color.  I was stopped cold by 1968's amazing Coalition, pictured here, and that was even before I read that art historian Barbara Rose has described it as "among the finest paintings produced anywhere in the late sixties."  Another standout piece is 1964's Interior Landscape which glows with bright yellow as well as with more meditative blues and greens.  I was surprised to find out that particular piece is actually in the SFMOMA collection because I cannot recall ever once having seen it in the museum.  Maybe there would be space for it if they took down just one Clyfford Still.

scarper

Hoochie Coochie Man: the young Muddy Waters with his first record, made for blues collector Alan Lomax, Mississippi, USA, early 1940s.  If you'd like to see snapshots documenting the sound expeditions Lomax undertook from about 1934 to 1950 I've got your link to the amazing Lomax Collection at the Library of Congress right here.