Jeramy DeCristo
Jeramy DeCristo: Document/in the Hold at Siete Potencias Africanas Gallery. Sadly I did not write about this installation in time for you to actually go see it, but DeCristo hopes to show it again in the Bay Area in the coming months (listen to a podcast with him here). In the meantime do imagine the piece as I experienced it: It is night and you are climbing the stairs in a dimly-lit Tenderloin gallery, moving towards the source of a glitchtastic sonic racket. The sounds are emanating from a large crate-shaped object, and you can barely make it out because the only light in the room is coming from a flickering window pane cut into its side and ambient street light. One side of the crate is draped with burlap painted black, and as you lift it the noise suddenly shifts into identifiable breaks and beats and then just as quickly switches back into processed noise (the timing is nothing but wonderful coincidence). A video is playing inside and you can make out a hazy cityscape, a sunset, visual static, and there are also documents scattered on the floor. You think about how incredibly claustrophobic it would be to crouch inside that space for any amount of time.
Clare Rojas
Through May 31 - Clare Rojas: Caerulea at Gallery Paule Anglim. Rojas leaves behind the figuration and folksiness of her earlier work in this excellent show of purely abstract work. There is a lot of pleasure in simply observing how she lays paint down on a canvas, what colors and forms she chooses to explore. Everyone I have talked to about the show also mentions the compelling series of works on one wall that are all slight variations of each other, the same basic lines but with slight changes here and there. I felt like I was seeing her inquisitive artist mind made visible.
Ali Naschke-Messing
Through June 1 - Thresholds of Faith: Four Entries into the Beyond at Manresa Gallery. This is a really beautiful group show, and it doesn't hurt one whit that Manresa is situated inside of St. Ignatius Church, itself an extraordinarily gorgeous edifice. The four alcoves of the gallery were turned over to a single artist to treat almost like a studio space, and each of the quartet of women displays work influenced by her faith tradition: Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Lynn Marie Kirby pays tribute to the many devoted Sisters throughout history in the Catholic church, including her own aunt, while Taraneh Hemami has built the elements of a mehrab right onto the floor and wall of the church. Ali Nascheke-Messing invites visitors to lie down on a mat and contemplate the shower of gold leaves she has hung from the rafters, and in the room next to her Cara Levine has created an ever-shifting tableau consisting of set pieces that reference her grandmother's artworks which were in turn influenced by Jewish mysticism.