HACKETT MILL - MERIDIAN - LUGGAGE STORE

SF CAMERAWORK - SFMOMA - JELLYFISH

MUSEUM OF PERFORMANCE & DESIGN

(with assistance from Larissa Archer and RWM)

07.13.12



Making art on commission - when it's best to say no. Click Here.

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Hackett Mill Gallery: David Beck and Robert Schwartz.

Comment by AB: This double bill is heaven for connoisseurs of artists who have mastered their craft. Intricate small-format paintings by Robert Schwartz will keep you guessing as to their narratives, while extraordinarily precise miniature carvings, sculptures and automatons by David Beck are certain to amaze. Definitely worth a visit.

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Meridian Gallery: The Painted Word. Co-Curated by Peter Selz and Sue Kubly.

Author/writer/poet/artists: William Saroyan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Jack Hirschman, Jess, Robert Duncan, Michael McClure, Jack Micheline, Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen, Christopher Felver, John Keating, William S. Burroughs, David Meltzer.

Review by RWM: The artistic muse expressed here by the literarti. The results are usually abstractions that sometime tell a story rather than just provoke a mood.

Comment by AB: Last day of this extensive exhibit of art by a cast of eminent authors, writers and poets. Sure glad I get a chance to see it. Art by people who aren't known as artists can often range anywhere from uneven to inferior, but displayed altogether like this allows viewers to better comprehend the context and to appreciate the idiom in more impactful ways.

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Luggage Store Gallery: People of Earth - Neil LeDoux.

Comment by AB: 2011-12 Tournesol Award winner Neil LeDoux tells me that his paintings represent manifestions of imaginary realities. Considered from that perspective, the sanguine appearance of the works gives the impression of looking into the innards of living breathing beings. Check it out.

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SF Camerawork: Transient States. Curated by Lisa Sutcliffe.

Photographers: Amanda Boe, Sparky Campanella, Sophie Tianxin Chen, Sarah Christianson, Terri Garland, Scott Hopkins, Hiroyo Kaneko, Melissa Kaseman, Linda Levinson, Paccarik Orue, Ethan Rafal, Cynthia Rettig, Tealia Ellis Ritter, Matthew Shain, Donna J. Wan, Terri Warpinski.

Comment by AB: Momentary interludes between monumental events appears to be the modus for this SF Camerawork members group show.

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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Cindy Sherman.

Review and images by Larissa Archer: The crowd at SFMOMA is appropriately large for such a buzzy artist. For much of the night there's a line to get into the exhibition halls (though, interestingly, not nearly as long of a line as there was the night of the opening for The Steins Collect last year, when it snaked down the staircase), but many people seem just as happy to stay away from the halls and enjoy the various musical and performance acts, the $7 sloppy bratwursts (served menacingly without napkins), or just mingle under Exploded Views in the Atrium.

In the halls themselves, people cozy up to Sherman's most accessible and loveliest work, her Untitled film Series, but the other rooms housing Sherman's more controversial later projects inspire more mixed reactions. The tone in the Centerfolds room is somber; there seems to be an immediate recognition of Sherman's accuracy in positing her lost, sad, fearful girls with their desperate eyes as some figurative mirror image of the beckoning models pampered and painted for our objectification.

People try not to retch in the "grotesque" room and scurry past the clowns as quickly as they can. The History Portraits provide some respite, the glamour shots both confusion and fascination, the portraits of aging society ladies a final punch in the gut before we are disgorged back into the museum to resume mingling and to try to forget the more brutal images stamped into our psyches by some of the large, garishly colored images. The catalogue is helpful but no substitute for the real thing; go see them in person.

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Jellyfish Gallery: Light, Space, Perception - Craig Dorety.

Comment by AB: Actual moonscapes digitally rendered into solid wood surfaces and then burnished, buffed and sometimes grouped into art are named for the geographical features and regions they represent. Unexpected concept gratifyingly materialized. Good work; go see.

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Museum of Performance & Design: Body In-Sight - Action-Drawings From The Dance Studio; Toy Theatres - Worlds in Miniature.

Comment by AB: Genuine bona fide action art. Students from a Stanford dance class under the direction of ballerina Muriel Maffre, their feet coated in liquid pencil, perform routine training exercises on top of oversized sheets of paper while working out at the barre. Along the main hallway is a captivating exhibit of antique and contemporary toy theater art. Sidle on by.

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