SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES OPENINGS

FIRST THURSDAY - 06.02.11 Part II

(with assistance from Clare Coppel and RWM)



How the pros spot the best art. Click Here.

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Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art: Sight Unseen - Dan Attoe, Kirsten Deirup, Shawn Kuruneru, and Frank Magnotta.

Comment by AB: Group show, gallery artists, works on paper.

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SF Camerawork: Michael Garlington - Photohouse; Matt Bryans - Breaking the Land.

Review by Clare Coppel: For all that computer technology has changed photography, you rarely see the medium presented in a manner other than strictly flat on a wall. Michael Garlington here takes his traditional black and white prints, frames and then coats them in a resin-like material, and builds them into a small house! Well more like a cabin... Entering the Photohouse, you find more prints, some large and hand painted, but many more inside of glass jars that line the walls, creating the experience of being in some sort of mini museum or lab or part of Garlington's brain.

Review by RWM: Amazing structure of the past with the effervescent smell of old paint by Michael Garlington. The assembled pictures and installations by Matt Bryans transport viewers to foreign places. His images allow us to get lost in time and space, and wild lands. The grainy works evoke the past and solitude.

Comment by AB: Michael Garlington's Photohouse hemorrhages mojo. Whether inside or out of this shrine-like domicile, you're trapped somewhere between self-consciousness and marvel, besieged and scrutinized by a convergence of relentless stares (even when the eyes are closed). Pick of First Thursday.

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111 Minna Gallery: Fight or Flight - Steve Johnson.

Comment by AB: Steve Johnson's oversized overpowering drawings perhaps portend cataclysmic events to come. The small drawings & cut wood on panels are more benign, some even amusing. So you're free to wager on either end of the life-cycle fate continuum. Johnson is currently an Assistant Professor of Drawing at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

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Fivepoints Arthouse: US. Curated by Ian Colon and WE space (Tina Dillman and Naaman Rosen).

Comment by AB: In this chaotic participatory experience, attendees are assigned titles (roles), given ersatz money, and sent off to either make art or whatever. Art made during the course of the evening will be auctioned off for bogus bucks at the end of the show as part of the happening. So there.

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Ever Gold Gallery: Resistance to the Indignities of Modern Life - Aaron Terry.

Comment by AB: Costumed creatures pervade the city... and maybe the country on the weekends. One thing I learn from Aaron Terry is that you can rent a raccoon really cheap, like around $7 for an entire day. I'm not sure where to go with that, but you never know when the knowledge might come in handy.

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Spoke Art Gallery: Quentin vs. Coen.

Artists: Over 100 of 'em.

Comment by AB: That's Quentin Tarantino versus the Coen Brothers. Editions on one side, originals on the other. The rest is up to you.

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E6 Gallery: Josh Graham - River of Time.

Comment by AB: Post-apocalyptic potpourri. New York artist Josh Graham trundles his romantic but calamitous digitally devised tales way out West to remind us all that the end is near. Graham tells me that some of the works were originally commissioned for album covers.

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Addendum:

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Do you think San Francisco art openings coverage might possibly warrant just a smidgeon of this. Do you think? It's year number 9 here... and all of it for you...

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First Thursday - May 5, 2011

First Thursday - April 7, 2011

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