Through June 9 - Fictional/Familiar at Swarm Gallery. The first of two shows I'm highly recommending this week before they close, this exhibition features a trio of artists who play with our perception of space and place. Cybele Lyle's photographic landscapes are interrupted by planes of color and other images, and her sculpture in the center of the gallery similarly invites the viewer into her constructed version of reality. Leigh Merrill is more of a trickster and a brilliant one at that, deliberately tweaking her pictures of strip malls and other architecture of banality until the line between true and false is not clear at all. Meanwhile Emma Spertus expands on that topic by creating a veritable staircase into another dimension and stacking it with seemingly common built objects that cleverly comment on perspective in art and in life. Sadly this is Swarm's last show before they close their doors, all the more reason to visit this space that has been a venue for cutting-edge and thoughtful art in Oakland for many years.
Also through June 9 - Present Tense: Graduate Fellows Exhibition at Headlands Center for the Arts. The other must-see this week is this culminating exhibition for the Graduate Fellows after a year of residency at Headlands. It's always genuinely interesting to see how their work has evolved over their time in the Headlands community, and the artists this year clearly thrived. I'm also positive this is not the last time you will be seeing any of them on my blog. Pack a picnic lunch, and go spend a Sunday afternoon (or a weekday afternoon if you can play hooky) with art and nature.
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