SFMOMA ARTISTS GALLERY - BRAUNSTEIN/QUAY - HOSFELT

TOGONON - JACK FISCHER - FREY NORRIS

ELI RIDGWAY - CHANDLER - CATHARINE CLARK

09.10.11 Part I

(with assistance from DeWitt Cheng and RWM)



How predatory commercial galleries sell art. Click Here.

***

SFMOMA Artists Gallery: Heather Wilcoxon, Kirk Crippens.

Comment by AB: Kirk Crippens documents decline, malaise and alienation in "the greatest nation on earth" in his photographs of abandoned retail store buildings, forlorn landscapes, out-of-business car dealerships, empty parking lots, and other formerly vibrant concerns. Heather Wilcoxon paints like Basquiat might have painted if he had done a stint mellow laid-back California. You gotta admit-- no better way to take the edge off of existence than to hang your hat here.

***

Braunstein/Quay Gallery: Robilee Frederick - Falling/Rising.

Comment by AB: The works in this show abstractly emblematize sixteen of Robilee Frederick's dearest friends. Among the ingredients in these "representations for the circle of life" are gunpowder, incense, candles, ash and burns.

***

Hosefelt Gallery: DEFEO.

Comment by AB: Experience these dark mesmerizing expressionist abstractions by San Francisco artist Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) whose most famous painting, The Rose (which took eight years to paint and weighs over 3000 pounds), is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum. Her mysterious context-less photographs will fascinate as well. DeFeo was a genuine iconoclast's iconoclast. Worth a visit.

***

Togonon Gallery: Shifting Layers of Consistency - Fan Lee Warren.

Review by DeWitt Cheng: Fan Lee Warren is back at Togonon Gallery with a new show of social-realist drawings and paintings that examine black life, history and culture-- but that also reflect current ideas about pictorial structure and image layering.

Review by RWM: Interesting narratives, off-the-beaten-track tales captured with style.

***

Jack Fischer Gallery: Michele Pred - Confiscated.

Review by DeWitt Cheng: Michele Pred is showing conceptual assemblages made from items confiscated by airport security since 9/11. The forms that her pieces take-- the American flag, the Red Cross of international health relief-- comment on the danger from terrorism that survives Osama bin Laden. Possibly, now that the country is in a retrospective analytical mood, they also reflect on the mistakes that we made over the past decade in neglecting the larger social and economic problems confronting us, in favor of a capitalist crusade to make Iraq into New Texas.

***

Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern: Keegan McHargue - Natural.

Review by RWM: Strange nature, without landscape, as muse. Interesting to revel in these inspirations nonetheless.

Comment by AB: Somebody's sure having a good time here, frolicking through the land of paint. Join on in; looks like fun.

***

Eli Ridgway Gallery (formerly Baer Ridgway Exhibitions): Brion Nuda Rosch - New Works; Lindsey White - Trip; Kent Roberts - Bernoulli.

Review by RWM: Interesting blends of blocked abstraction and outdoor photographs. The art seems to be either about the inability to accurately capture representational images, or the choice not to. The contrasts in these artworks are bold regardless.

Comment by AB: Stop on by to see the latest chapter in the conceptualist odyssey of self-taught phenom, Brion Nuda Rosch.

***

Chandler Fine Art: Percy Cannon - Las Nubes.

Review by RWM: Beautiful colors mix and match, ebb and flow. High gloss collages please and soothe.

***

Catharine Clark Gallery: Julie Heffernan - Boy, O Boy II; Ed Osborn - Kingdom (in the media room).

Review by RWM: Amazing detail and imagination. Nice to see the love and the fun. Easy to get lost here in the wonder and creation.

Comment by AB: Julie Heffernan tells me her magnificent fantastic allegories reference the current spate of turmoil that's infecting the planet. Ever the optimist, she believes deep down that the ending will be a happy one. You can hardly afford to look at it any other way, she adds, or else life can get pretty dismal pretty fast. Highly recommended.

***