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FIRST FRIDAY; 01.07.05 General comment: If you like your art issue-heavy and/or on the edge of the ionosphere, then you've come to the right runaround. We've got art in a flat, uppercut urban art, vandal misdemeanor art, two panting dollops of sexuality art, and moving van load art. Ready... Set... Go! *** Ratio 3 Gallery: Michael Velliquette; The Still Lives of Saints. Comment: I've tried to see this gallery once or twice, but given up. Parking sucks, and I thought it was a storefront, but it's not. It's the front room of a second floor flat (approximately 10 by 12 feet) at 903 Guererro St. Or at least that was the layout tonight. So, it was desperate determination pitted against only a few minutes to spare as I frantically scoured the block for car space, got lucky, and determination won out. I climbed the stairs, prepared for the worst (as is often the case with these apartment shows), but was bountifully compensated with a fanciful multi-color installation, complete with eerie cosmic whale-school mood music. The artist was indisposed (tobacco time, I was told), but then he appeared, and since he was one of only several people there, I momentarily borrowed him in order to humanize his oeuvre. Apologies for any curtness on my part, and good show. Artist - art. Hand on the floor art. *** Luggage Store Gallery: Neck Face + The Date Farmers (Carlos Ramirez and Armondo Lerma). Comment: Urban product crams the walls. The Date Farmers skillfully recycle everything from scrap wood to weather-beaten signs to old tin cans, reconstituting them with gritty collaborations-- superb examples of how our environmentally friendly artists actively reject throwaway culture (and in like manner, regularly reverse urban decay by decorating it with free outdoor art). Date Farmer art is themed on Latino culture, street life, and religion, some a little Twisty, perhaps, but nothing wrong with homage. My 15-year old son and his friends bus to the show. They tell me that Neck Face is highly revered among graffiti artists and those who love them. I tell you that his minimal simplicity and skratch-skool images are sharply disconcerting. His metalworks, especially the backlit blue junk car hood, explore the limits of dimensional art. I ask someone if Neck Face is in the crowd; maybe I can get a fractional, disguised, and/or unidentifiable head shot. But I'm told that he's marked up so much other people's property that he's wanted on twelve planets. I've since been corrected-- not about the twelve planets part, but that Neck Face was at the show, as was his mother-- not to get his picture tooked, though. How absurd is it that an artist of Neck Face's stature can't risk his neck by having his face photographed at his own opening? Lawmakers, it's time to come to some sort of compromise here. One modest incongruity: The art's price points strike me as a tad prohibitive considering the discretionary constraints of the fan base majority. Intro. Neck Face. Date Farmers. Pick - Neck Face. Date Farmers. Reverse glass painter Empte Eyes. Neck Face. Date Farmers. Pick - Neck Face. Date Farmers. Neck Face. Ambiance. *** Southern Exposure: Exposure 1. Artists: Conrad Bakker, Chadwick Rantanen, Daniel Seiple, Claudia Tennyson, Kate Pocrass. Comment: Daniel Seiple gives the jargon-junkies a sip of their own syrup in his clever proposal to reconfigure the process of moving personal belongings cross-country, and call it "art." In so doing, he finances transport of a truck full of pflug from New York to San Francisco, and gets a month of free storage thrown in-- approximately 3000 cubic feet of prime exhibition space in the main gallery. No comment as yet from local sculptors. Flimflam art. *** Femina Potens: I Do; Recent Work by Elizabeth Stephens. Comment: Spouses Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle embark on a seven-year exploration of love as art, starting tonight. Each year begins with a wedding; tonight's is the Red Wedding. This is socio-sexo-political art at it's best, both the show and the couple's Love Art Laboratory website, and after taking a good look around, all I can see is a whole lot of love and not a quark of hate. Oh, I almost forgot... and a whole lot of courage. I don't suppose Freedom of Speech is worth a damn unless you take advantage of it, especially if you do so to show love is alive in all kinds of ways. Art. Art. Art - artist (right). Professor pornstar panty panoply art (lost wax?). Art. Annie Sprinkle (left) - art. Cuddle art. *** BUILD, 483 Guerrero Street (at 17th St.), 415.863.3041: The Little Death; New Work by David Gremard Romero. Comment: Pastel portraits of the faces of young men engaged in ejaculatory ecstasy. When I first saw the portraits, I couldn't figure out why some of the faces were so contorted, but my ingnorance was soon vanquished, and with my newfound enlightened embarrassment, I revisited the visages, and sheepishly reworked my countenance in varietal instants of mimicry in order to assess the accuracy of the portrayals. Conclusion: Competently captured climactics. Priced 300 bucks a pop. Art. Art. Art. Artist. Art. Line-up. *** OnSix Gallery at Club Six: Sacred Geometry, A Group Art Show. Artists: Moses Saarni, Keith Evans, Monica Canilao, Paul Schiek, Kristen Ferrell, Freddy Corbin, Tim Lehi, John John Jesse, David V. D'Andrea, Danielle Graham, Sham, Mary Scott, Erin Brookey, Jason Mcafee, "MID" Rob Middleton, Carl Auge, Jeremy Forson, Ricky Peters, Ben Vierling, Madeline von Foerster. Comment: First off, Club Six is one of the duckier social establishments in town featuring a high-ceilinged main room, excellent for showing art and swilling hootch. A dark cavernous industrial tune-blaster basement is recommended for eardrum abuse, and an even darker gun-barrel of a side hall is perfect for glimpsing surreptitious lifestylers (or if you already are one, being you). Artist/director Sham has assembled a curiously distinctive cadre of talent, practitioners of sinew-edged free-range out-there hardtack ranging from thoughtful to coarse to gruesome, much of it reasonable in quality as well as in price. In the "get 'em while you can" category are four Jeremy Forson pen-ink-wash drawings priced at fifty bucks each. Meticulously detailed, the composition of an armless torso with lopped arms framed on the wall behind is certainly noteworthy, but I suppose it would have to resonate on some level. The show's worth a protracted peek and a half, and the gallery's worth a notch on your to-do belt. Art. Ouch art (fifty bucks). Artist/director Sham. Pick (Monica Canilao). Art. Art. Art. Art (Sham). Art. Art. Art. |
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