BOLINAS MUSEUM - BAER RIDGWAY

ARTZONE 461 - BACK TO THE PICTURE

(with assistance from DeWitt Cheng and RWM)

06.19.10

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Bolinas Museum: Barry McGee & Clare Rojas - An Installation.

Comment by AB: Big exhibition in a small room. That's the only way to describe this one-- dense with energy and excellence from both artists, current and past work as well... and memorabilia too. No era left untouched. And so up close and intimate that several Barry McGee painted surfboards leaning against a rear wall get knocked over at least three or four times in the short while I'm there. Museums can often be so impersonal and antiseptic, the art looking almost like specimens preserved in formaldehyde-- but not here. Warm, friendly, delightful and inviting. The best part? Superb art exquisitely organized, nuanced and presented. Safari time!

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Baer Ridgway Exhibitions: Nao Bustamante; Lindsey White; Bless This Mess - David Kasprzak.

Comment by AB: Photography and video works by Lindsey White in the gallery upstairs twist up reality just enough to make it entertaining. Downstairs, Nao Bustamante lies angularly in state, her unsettling demeanor displayed on a large screen strategically positioned in order to hide her from the audience. Meanwhile, excised photographic bits and pieces of her visage are displayed along the left wall of the space. Not sure if or how it all comes together.

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ArtZone 461 Gallery: Nicholas Coley - Painting Around the Bay; Susan Danis - Celebrating the Universe.

Review by DeWitt Cheng: Nicholas Coley, trained in France, makes dynamic landscape paintings that combine Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Bay Area figuration, so his "Painting Around the Bay" seems almost an extension of the Orsay Impressionism show currently at the de Young. (If the queues there are daunting, reculez ici pour mieux sauter). Coley works on location, depicting picturesque scenes of nature as well as less conventionally attractive views of la vie moderne. Says Coley, "I look for compositions with energy and try to emphasize the immediacy and rush of painting beside major thoroughfares and even in parking lots."

Susan Danis's assemblage works in "Celebrating the World" manage to take an astonishing miscellany of salvaged and scavenged pieces-- "toys, pickled snakes, used shoe laces; hot pink feather boas, dentures, parakeet bells, garters, fresh water pearls, hair, innards, freeze-dried moles and tentacles"-- and give them compelling esthetic form, imbued with her contagious and exuberantly weird sense of humor-- a nice mind-meld of the usually antithetical Pop and Beat sensibilities.

Review by RWM: In the main gallery, Nicholas Coley paints the city and the trees with color and vitality. His stylistic representations verge toward the abstract, but instead make these subjects come alive. Though contrasting colors are used, the images are still a joy to behold. Susan Danis astounds with elaborate assemblages and sculptures fashioned from wild and colorful components. Playful, her pieces suggest humorous messages. If you come expecting to immerse yourself in the peculiarity of her vision, you will not be disappointed.

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Back to the Picture Gallery: Ahora en la Misión - Back to the Picture Celebrates 25 Years of Art.

Artists: Otto Aguilar, Ellen Bergeron, Ali Blum, Christine Cariati, Carlos Cartagena, Nancy Cato, Sylvia Chaidez, Jennie Allida Dickenson, Daisy Eneix, James Elder, Juan R. Fuentes, Mariana Garibay, Carmen Lomas Garza, Sevilla Granger, Liz Hager, Ester Hernandez, Anubhav Jain, Yolanda M. Lopez, Paul Madonna, Julio Cesar Martinez, Andrew McPherson, Emmanuel Montoya, Sirron Norris, Romeo Gilberto Osorio, Russell Pachman, Michael Rios, Calixto Robles, Patricia Rodriguez, Michael Roman, Larry Spenler, Brian Stannard, Hilary Williams, Rene Yañez, Rio Yañez.

Review by RWM: Nice collection of the involving art that one has seen at Back to the Picture gallery for a quarter of a century now. Lively commemorative show and art party with vitality, verve and spunk.

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