SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES OPENINGS

FIRST THURSDAY - 01.05.12 - Part I

(with assistance from Larissa Archer)



Advantages to making art in series vs one-by-one. Click Here.

***

Rena Bransten Gallery: Tara Tucker - If Wishes Were Horses...; John Bankston - Smoke and Mirrors.

Comment by AB: Every show for John Bankston is another chapter in his adventure tale of life in the Rainbow Forest. In this kaleidoscopic episode, we've got a healthy dose of man versus machine starring characters tricked out in big beards and bigger hair. In the rear gallery, Tara Tucker's amusing anthropomorphic plant/animal concoctions keep us cognizant of our environment and its inhabitants. Worth a visit.

***

Patricia Sweetow Gallery: David Huffman - Floating World; Ernest Jolly - The Labor Party.

Comment by AB: David Huffman's basketball cosmos gets you cogitating on whether these floating spheres are symbols of success or impediments to achieving it. In the side gallery, Ernest Jolly's conceptual installation reflects on African American history, particularly that having to do with agricultural workers in the South and, later on, laborers in the North.

***

Stephen Wirtz Gallery: Todd Hido - Excerpts from Silver Meadows.

Review by Larissa Archer: A memory-based series by Todd Hido in which the images actually look the way memories appear to the mind's eye-- snowy driveways as seen through an icy windshield, figures on a hill silhouetted against a gray sky, the bold but yellowing colors of aging Polaroids. The serenity of the landscapes contrasts with the images of people, all women-- Monroe-like starlets whimpering in torn stockings and bouffants, and bruised waif-like teenagers (apparently)-- all of whom seem to presage sex-driven disaster. One can't help but think Hido had a fraught but exciting adolescence.

Comment by AB: Dreamy, atmospheric and Pick of First Thursday.

***

Fraenkel Gallery: Hiroshi Sugimoto - Photogenic Drawings.

Comment by AB: In the ultimate of homages, Hiroshi Sugimoto works from William Henry Fox Talbot's actual paper negatives, creating greatly enlarged renditions of the original photographs by exposing the negatives directly onto photosensitive paper. Stop on by.

***

Jack Fischer Gallery: Caleb Duarte & Xun Gallo - A Collaboration.

Comment by AB: Caleb Duarte and Xun Gallo, both from Chiapas, Mexico head up North to lay down a half-art, half-construction combo featuring one of the most precarious contraptions I've had the discomfort to be in the immediate vicinity of-- a concrete slab supported by thin freestanding strips of plywood. The thing looks so unstable, I keep one eye on it the entire time I'm there, which means one less eye available to look at the rest of the art.

***

Altman Siegel Gallery: Jessica Dickinson, Liam Everett, Alex Olson, Josh Smith, Garth Weiser.

Comment by AB: A motley medley of endeavors by "five exceptional young painters" from Brooklyn (Jessica Dickinson), San Francisco (Liam Everett), Los Angeles (Alex Olson), Knoxville, Tennessee (Josh Smith), and New York (Garth Weiser).

***

Toomey Tourell Gallery: Larry Bell & Greg Edwards.

Comment by AB: Slick colorific mixed-media works by Larry Bell contrast with symbol-rich black and white giclee prints by Greg Edwards.

***

Scott Nichols Gallery: Ralph Steiner - A Point of View.

Comment by AB: Vintage contact prints by Ralph Steiner dating from the early 1920s include New York City scenes, modernist still-lifes, and scenes from Upper New York State. They may be small, but they're dense with imagery. Check 'em out.

***

Addendum:

***

Here's a thought.... support the cause.

***

First Thursday - December 1, 2011

First Thursday - November 3, 2011

***