CCA WATTIS INSTITUTE - RAYKO PHOTO

09.9-10.14

(with assistance from RWM)



Good writing makes good art better. Click Here.

***

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts: Markus Schinwald Exhibition.

Review by RWM: One will find here the strange and unexpected. Definitely large art, but what is it? Up to the visitor to interpret. Fun party with many curious people around looking at the larger-than-life and the closely explored.

Comment by AB: Vienna artist Markus Schinwald takes over the entire exhibition space and creates not only the art, but also the structures on which to display it. His sculptures are made up of wooden chair arms and legs, or maybe also table legs, altered and combined in ways to create graceful abstracted acrobats, dancers or simply representations of human legs in various positions. These are either positioned around brass poles or padded white partitions, or contained in what look like folded white sheets or tablecloths hung along a wall. Displayed along the padded white partitions are antique head & shoulders portrait paintings (or maybe new ones painted to look old), somber and largely nondescript except for delicate metal-like "braces" that have been added onto or around the faces. According to the preamble, "consistent throughout (Schinwald's) work is an interest in the prosthetic as an object, a technology, and a mental space." So there you have it. Not your typical San Francisco art show. Well done and worth seeing.

***

RayKo Photo Center: Kirk Crippens - The Point.

Comment by AB: Kirk Crippens photographs longstanding and distinguished citizens of the Bayview-Hunters Point community, and gives us a glimpse into the way life's been for decades. But gentrification is underway here as well as everywhere else in San Francisco, and we can only hope the neighborhood's traditions and lifestyles survive the upheaval.

***