ANTHONY MEIER - ZONAL - REAVES - THE DUMP - ALTMAN SIEGEL - MUSEUM OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA - SILVERMAN - PARK LIFE - 01.23.09 (with assistance from Dormain Geyer and DeWitt Cheng)

Anthony Meier Fine Arts: Sarah Cain - As if Only as Atmosphere.

Comment by AB: Sarah Cain accouters her spirited meta-abstractions with atypicalities like sheet music, beads, string, tinfoil, ribbon, fake flowers, and the like. I'm partial to the tight little triptych in the entryway and apparently someone else is too 'cuz it's sold. Price range on available works is $3-$15K.

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Zonal: Dale Eastman - Making Something Out of Nothing.

Regular gallery artists: Barbara Kleinhans, Lola, Phoebe Seligman, Leslie Morgan, Nicole Baugass.

Review by Dormain Geyer: Drawing from her background in journalism, Dale Eastman creates delicate wall hangings and installations that explore the thoughts, ideas and moods beyond words, using visual references to writing on paper with fabric and thread. In one elegant installation, Eastman has sewn a short story one word at a time and coiled the composition into a glass jar. Amongst the artists who regularly on display is Barbara Kleinhans, whose abstract landscapes fit well with the mood of Zonal's farmhouse antiques. Consistent with Zonal's theme, Nicole Baugass' mixed media pieces mix Pop Art with nostalgic retro, while Leslie Morgan's aquatic themed prints and paintings are varied in technique and style. Meanwhile, the brightness and gloss of Lola's resin and acrylic pieces are in contrast to the rustic ambiance of much of the store, but the combination gives a distinctively modern feel. Finally, local artist, Phoebe Seligman, has several figurative works on display downstairs.

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Reaves Gallery: David Imlay - New Works.

Review by Dormain Geyer: Although I previewed David Imlay's work at Reaves Gallery a couple weeks ago, I'm pleased to see that several new pieces have been added to the show. Imlay's paintings center around scenes in public spaces, both crowded sidewalks and empty driveways. There's a reconnection with the familiar in his paintings, as if the volume has been turned down and the audience is able to see the city around them for the first time. While the quietness of a Porsche 956 rusting in a driveway could otherwise be a melancholy subject, the warmth that Imlay brings evokes something closer to nostalgia.

About a third of the gallery features works from other artists, such as Blair Bradshaw, Matthew Frederick and Derek Nunn.

Review by DeWitt Cheng: Group show of gallery artists along the left side of the Reaves, with the preponderance of wall space going to Matthew Frederick's expressionist (but untormented!) landscapes, and David Imlay's solo show on the right, featuring occasionally nostalgic American-scene realism. Packed house. What good is staying alone in your room?

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Art at the Dump: Christine Lee - Linear Elements; David King - Atoms, Satellites and Other Orbs; Gilliat Thornally, Lauren Scott, Monica Regan at the Environmental Learning Center.

Comment by AB: Christine Lee designs and constructs functional and aesthetically gratifying indoor-outdoor bench seating arrangements and a wall display with two basic ingredients-- concrete slabs and 2x4's. The materials look brand new and I'm thinkin' this isn't recyclying at all-- but I'm wrong. Construction companies apparently take unused surplus materials like this to the dump and off it. Live and learn. David King, meanwhile, presents an entertaining medley of spherical and circular sculptures fashioned from materials like electrical cable, a basketball, pencils, hinges, screws, and the like.

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Altman Siegel Gallery: A Wild Night and a New Road - Inaugural Exhibition.

Artists: Shannon Ebner, Wade Guyton, Matt Keegan, Josh Smith, Kelley Walker, Christopher Williams, Christopher Wool.

Comment by AB: A packed house lauds the zesty debut event at Altman Siegel Gallery. The artistic mix looks a little like one-of-these and one-of-those, but a rather challenging and palaverous ballyhoo purports to unify the dealie bob. Sadly, my machete needs sharpening so in lieu of attempting to hack a bramble of inscrutable explanatory, I'm gonna take Altman Siegel's word for it and assume that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts. Pip pip!

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Museum of the African Diaspora: Decoding Identity - I Do It For My People.

Artists: Lorraine Bonner, Ed and Linda Calhoun, Christopher Carter, Lalla Essaydi, John Yoyogi Fortes, Chaz Guest, David Huffman, Clint Imboden, Stephanie Anne Johnson, Annette Lawrence, Kelly Marshall, Wardell Milan, Ramekon O'Arwisters, Adrienne Pao, Jefferson Pinder, Dario Posada, Danny Ramirez, Manuel Rios, Blue Wade, and David Yun.

Review by DeWitt Cheng: This contemporary art invitational show about racial and cultural identity in an increasingly blended midtone world has its reception three days after the Obama Inauguration. I'm glad I'm here even if I couldn't get to Washington-- the euphoria is palpable! (Are we still trying to levitate buildings?) "Decoding Identity - I Do It For My People" features work by twenty Bay Area and national artists. (Now let's see if we can all save our skins.)

Linda and Ed Calhoun's piece is about the encoding of racial prejudice with anti-miscegenation laws, which ended only in 1967. (Reagan Babies erroneously claiming MLK was a Republican should check and see who was presidentin' at the time, a year before Nixon's Southern Strategy ushered in the supposedly permanent GOP Majority.) A color is assigned to each painted tile, but various bits of text are there in all their white-fright glory. Adrienne Pao's photos explore tourism and colonialism. Partly Hawaiian, she photographs herself posed in these conceptual tableaux. Lalla Eesaydi, a Moroccan/Saudi/Liberal/Muslim artist exhibits photographs that are subversive within the Muslim context, in which calligraphy is a traditionally male preserve-- as shooting cage-raised birds is in Texas, say. Chaz Guest, appropriately and resplendently attired, shows art made from zoris, Japanese sandals made of wood and cotton.

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Silverman Gallery: Neil LeDoux - The Fountain of Giant Teardrops.

Comment by AB: Neil LeDoux tells me his paintings are based on a vision he had as a young boy. While wandering deep in the Louisiana woods one day, he saw a fountain within a fountain. He hightailed it back to where his friends were playing, took 'em straight back to see it, but nothing was there. With this hallucinatory incident as his guiding pyre, he concocts hauntingly engaging compositional configurations of seemingly disparate elements including the fountains he once saw, Duchamp's urinal, Tibetan wall reliefs, and even a little Jan van Eyck. The good news? They work. Check 'em out. Priced $400-$3500.

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Park Life: The Drawing Show.

Artists: Casey Watson, Bryson Gill, Isaac Lin, Jay Nelson, Chi Birmingham, Rachel Kaye, Peter Scherrer, Mr. Kyle Mock.

Comment by AB: According to the deposition, the Drawing Club originated in 2004 and was comprised of a group of friends who were all students at the California College of the Arts. The Club disbanded in 2005 but the recollections remain, this show being evidence of that and consisting of current works by former Club members. Nice stuff.

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