Engineer's Daughter

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CTRL+SHFT

Through February 19 - Soft Serve at CTRL+SHFT.  I am beyond thrilled that there is a new all-female art collective that has taken up residence in a converted warehouse in Oakland, and their opening show featuring artwork from the members is a fantastic introduction to the women's diverse talents.  Welcome them to the neighborhood by donating to their Kickstarter too.

 

Christoph Roßner

Through February 20 - Feedback of Desire at Romer Young.  This thoughtfully-curated exhibition features recent paintings from Ted Gahl, Shara Hughes and Christoph Rosner, all of whom work with representation to a degree but with a healthy dose of abstraction mixed in as well.  Hughes's vibrant semi-landscapes were a personal favorite, but it's well worth the jaunt out to Dogpatch to see the whole show.

 

Whitney Claflin

Through February 20 - An Increasingly Desperate Man at Alter Space.  Having just admired Quintessa Matranga's dual show with Rafael Delacruz at Et al. last week, I was pleased to check out this curatorial project of hers very soon after.  Matranga asked an impressive group of artists to create work that grapples with the theme of desperation, and the wide-ranging results are by turns witty and poignant.

 

Marilee Talkington and Joe Estlack

Through February 28 - Little Erik at Aurora.  Mark Jackson's contemporary update of Henrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf is not always easy to watch, dealing as it does with some of the messier aspects of grief and human relationships.  But Marilee Talkington is riveting at the center of the play as an uber-successful tech executive whose ambivalence about her role as a mother conflicts sharply with her husband's desire to do nothing but father their son.  Ibsen did love to write complicated women. 

 

Kenny Toll and Jessica Waldman

Through March 6 - Ondine at Cutting Ball.  Written by Katharine Sherman, this is a much more stripped-down version of the classic mermaid myth than the immersive experience We Players offered near the Sutro Baths last year, but I found it to be just as if not more affecting.  Here in Cutting Ball's non-linear and intensely physical production, water sprite Ondine's innocence and inexperience with the male species lead inevitably to a curse that forever alters both her life and that of her lover Hildebrand.  

matokie mix 02.14.16

mix

koi no katamichi kippu

 

The great Masahiro Shinoda's 1960 feature debut One Way Ticket to Love (which he also wrote) is a stylish little number, infused with jazz and pop music that effectively transports the viewer back to mid-century urban Japan.  One of the characters is a struggling jazz saxophonist, another is a hugely successful singer who his managers like to refer to as the Japanese Elvis.  The young woman they both become involved with takes a gig as a nude dancer to make ends meet after finding out her lover is married, and the film (while not graphic) is very frank in how it treats sex.  Though One Way Ticket never quite ascends to the heights of Shinoda's later-'60s work like Double Suicide or Pale Flower, the vision that would make him such an important figure in the Japanese New Wave is already firmly present here.  And the soundtrack really is a ton of fun.

agenda 02.10.16

The Divine Feminine
Ted Gahl, Shara Hughes, and Christoph Rosner at Romer Young
An Increasingly Desperate Man at Alter Space
Soft Serve at CTRL+SHFT Collective
Hella Vegan Eats
Jag är Ingrid
Little Erik at Aurora
Nick's

guy

REDCAT, Los Angeles.  July 15, 2005.

go see this

Rafael Delacruz and Quintessa Matranga

Through February 13 - Quintessa Matranga and Rafael Delacruz: 100% Stupid at Et al. The only overt collaboration in this show is the piece pictured above featuring those fetching camels, but the artists share a candor in their paintings and photographs that is a breath of fresh air in an overly self-conscious art world.  The gallery is also hosting a V Day Death Note screening Sunday evening organized by Elliott Cost and featuring Matranga and Delacruz as well as a host of other contributors, and then I very eagerly anticipate the Et al. Etc. space opening in the Minnesota Street Project later this spring.

 

Ehren Tool

Through February 13 - Ehren Tool: Meditation on the Impacts of War at 2291 3rd St. Speaking of Minnesota Street Project, while the complex's new set of galleries is getting ready for primetime this Dogpatch outpost has been hosting a series of excellent exhibitions.  This latest one featuring work by Marine veteran Tool is extremely moving, especially if you spend any amount of time handling the cups he makes that explicitly deal with the impact of military conflict on our society.  An integral part of his practice is to distribute the cups (I have one myself), and and he will be doing so at the show's closing on Saturday.

 

Hershey Felder

Through February 14 - Hershey Felder as Irving Berlin at TheatreWorks.  When I saw Mr. Felder do his Leonard Bernstein show at Berkeley Rep some time back I was thrilled when he mentioned at the end that he was in the process of developing a new play about Irving Berlin, and this delightful meditation on the so-prolific composer is the result.  Even those supposedly unfamiliar with Berlin will probably recognize a good portion of the tunes, and if nothing else it is sheer pleasure to hear Felder play piano and sing.  I personally could have done without the sing-along portions of the performance, but if you can't get enough of such things Felder is doing a special presentation on Monday of selections from the Great American Songbook with full audience participation encouraged/required.

 

Mercedes Dorame

Through February 14 - Interwoven: Indigenous Contemporary at the Thacher Gallery.  I've been to the lovely Manresa Gallery situated in St. Ignatius Church on the USF campus many times before, but little did I know there is also the Thacher Gallery tucked into the back of the nearby Gleeson Library.  This group exhibition at the Thacher was put together by the university's Curatorial Practicum students and is a wonderfully stereotype-busting survey of recent indigenous art.  With more than a dozen artists represented the threads connecting their diverse works include a respect for ritual and heritage (and often a sly sense of humor), but otherwise the show is a strong reminder that there is no one kind of "native" art.

 

Margo Hall

Through February 14 - Gem of the Ocean at Marin Theatre Company.  If you've ever seen any of the other plays in August Wilson's epic ten-play century cycle exploring the African American experience over the past hundred years this is where the story begins, in 1904 Pittsburgh in the home of matriarch Aunt Esther (the always-amazing Margo Hall).  Director Daniel Alexander Jones utilizes a beautiful "theatrical jazz" technique that leaves the stage fairly spare but turns certain scenes into pure poetry as the actors convey emotion and action through gesture and suggestion (and heaps of talent).  I was completely riveted throughout, and oh August Wilson writes such amazing words.

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