You have just a couple more days to make it to Meridian Gallery for their most excellent group show In Extremis: Prints Monumental, Intimate, and Encompassing, so fold it into your Friday lunch break if you work anywhere near Union Square. All three floors of the gallery are filled with a huge variety of prints: linocuts, screenprints, woodblocks, lithographs, and much much more. The geographical focus of the show is rooted firmly in Northern California, so of course there is plenty of political messaging (and very well-designed political messaging at that) from the likes of the San Francisco Print Collective and the Sit/Lie Posse. I was also impressed with Joanne Dunne's small, achingly beautiful aquatints (one pictured here) and how she uses the blurriness resulting from her particular printing process to great effect, capturing the rhythms of life in the Bay Area. I also loved Anthony Ryan's pyramid of psychedelic screenprints, their colors and patterns swirling together into a mind-blowing whole, while the Great Tortilla Conspiracy create their own optical illusion out of an array of printed tortillas. And yes that is Jesus himself winking at you from their wall. At the closing party tomorrow night you can take home one of those tortillas for a mere $5, or just watch as Imin Yeh creates prints on the spot, providing his Authentication and Protection Services for all of your Urban God needs. I guarantee it will be a good time.
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