ANTHONY MEIER - SUPERVISOR MALIA COHEN AT SF CITY HALL

ADOBE SYSTEMS - JENKINS JOHNSON

09.13.12 Part I



Tips on writing introductory emails. Click Here.

***

Anthony Meier Fine Arts: Tony Feher.

Comment by AB: Tony Feher takes the most ordinary objects imaginable and makes art out of them. Options include short sections of plastic pipe strung together like necklaces and suspended from the ceiling, pieces of scrap plywood that have been stained or painted in single tones, lengths of yellow string hung in concentric half-circles from the ceiling, and cheap colored glass vases, goblets and compote dishes chained together and suspended in strands, rainbow-style in front of a majestic bay window.

I ask what the deal is with the pieces of stained plywood and the gallery attendant tells me that they're "Tony's first attempts at painting" (I like it). What's great about Feher's art, and the "anything goes" niche he's carved out for himself, is that he requires us to reflect on our definitions of what art is. His work may be serious; it may be a put-on. If it's a put-on, should it still be taken seriously? Perhaps. Either way it's art, isn't it? Or is it? Or do personal opinions even matter or make any difference at all? Stop on by and ponder these quandaries for yourself.

***

San Francisco City Hall, Offices of Supervisor Malia Cohen: Stacey Carter.

Comment by AB: Atmospheric depictions of San Francisco and environs, both contemporary and historic, rendered in mixed-media combinations of digital imagery, photography, photocopy and paint.

***

Adobe Systems Incorporated: Hilary Pecis and David Bayus.

Comment by AB: Complex collages by Hilary Pecis materialize a range of action-packed otherworldly realities. Wherever you want to go, Pecis can likely whip up a destination for you. David Bayus, meanwhile, concocts curious colorific digital, photography and paint configurations with odd intestinal overtones.

***

Jenkins Johnson Gallery: Mary Ellen Mark - Indian Circus.

Comment by AB: Fascinating, touching, striking and intimate glimpses into the personalities and circumstances of performers in an Indian circus, photographed and printed as platinum prints by Mary Ellen Mark between 1982 and 1992.

***