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J Mascis Fade Into You (Sub Pop)
I don't always love a cover, but when I do it's Dinosaur Jr.'s frontman doing his rendition of a song that dominated my '90s. This is a fairly reverent interpretation, but that Mascis huskiness gives it a little extra special tenderness. And it's the perfect bookend to the year that was. See you in 2015!
Puente Hills Landfill, Los Angeles. August 1, 2008.
Jennifer + Kevin McCoy
Through January 3 - Jennifer + Kevin McCoy: All Exit at Johansson Projects. After their 2009 residency at Headlands Center for the Arts, the McCoys returned to Headlands this year as part of the Alumni New Works program and used their time there to develop this brilliant exhibition at Johansson Projects. The artists examine the culture of the West Coast and of Silicon Valley in particular through a series of multimedia dioramas and sculptural miniatures, melding the playfulness of elements borrowed from board games with more sinister iconography that references totalitarian propaganda (as in Priests of the Temple, pictured above). The centerpiece of the show is The Constant World, an epic installation that resembles a cluster of illuminated nerve cells hanging from the gallery ceiling. Cameras capture scenes from tiny dioramas within the sculpture and project them live onto a nearby screen, so if a visitor is either very patient or very lucky they can insert themselves into the narrative as a looming presence. The work in the exhibition, as it presents realities both attractive and apocalyptic, encourages cynicism toward the grandiose promises about a better future painted by start-up execs, about which anyone from around these here parts will be well familiar. I thought of how the term "disruption" has been appropriated and of how for a certain ride-sharing company it just seems an excuse to ignore ethics entirely.
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Special postscript: The next show at Johansson Projects is Jennie Ottinger's Letters to the Predator, and it's going to be amazing. Do not miss!
A Magic Whistle Secret Museum of Kind Men Vol. 4 (Casual Acid Tea)
The latest entry in this awesome 7-inch series in which modern musicians interpret pieces from the Secret Museum of Mankind compilations of ethnographic field recordings. Local audio/visual artist Andy Puls, here working under his A Magic Whistle guise, takes on tracks from Tajikstan and Georgia and turns them into beautiful psychedelic wonderment. Any devotee of "ancient and contemporary weirdnesses" should snap this right up, and the other records in the series too.
Southern Exposure, San Francisco. June 3, 2006.
Lindsay Tully
Through December 18 - Lindsay Tully: Game On at The Little Shamrock. The second in a series of exhibitions by Luca Antonucci and David David Kasprzak's brilliant new project Service Industries, this show is tucked into an otherwise unused corner of the historic pub (look for the plexiglass case). I recently saw Tully's installation work in the excellent show at Interface Gallery from her Bonanza collective that drew on that gallery's origins as a horse stable, and here she directly addresses the rituals associated with the sports bar by creating sculptures with clever and elegant athletic references. The Service Industries display stand becomes a sort of subversive trophy case filled with mementoes of artistic prowess.
John Zurier
Through December 21 - John Zurier / MATRIX 255 at the Berkeley Art Museum. This is not only the last week for this exhibition but for the Berkeley Art Museum itself in its current incarnation, as they are bidding adieu to their gorgeous (but seismically unsafe) brutalist building with a huge Farewell Revel this coming Sunday before they move into their new space in 2016. Knowing the closure is coming (and soon) my heart was a little sad while looking at Zurier's paintings this weekend, but as his minimalist canvases and works on paper encourage a quiet and meditative gaze it felt remarkably apropos for my own goodbyes. The exhibition features artworks created during the last year or so, much of them painted while Zurier was in Iceland. It is easy to see the influence of that country's landscape in Zurier's use of color and in his visible brushstrokes, even as no literal forms are readily apparent. It's an absolutely spectacular show, and I especially resonated with a quote from Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness that Zurier cites in the exhibition brochure:
Certainly Nature is in front of us, and behind us; Nature is under and over us, yes, and in us; but most particularly it exists in time, always changing and always passing, never the same; and never in a rectangular frame.