SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES OPENINGS

FIRST THURSDAY - 10.06.11 - Part I

(with assistance from Kathryn Arnold, Neal Strickberger and RWM)



What makes art worth buying? Click Here.

***

Jenkins Johnson Gallery: Lalla Essaydi - Les Femmes du Maroc.

Review by Kathryn Arnold: Finally I get to view Lalla Essaydi's works in person. Breathtaking patterns cover practically every surface with the artist's dizzying technique of using photography and perhaps additional methods to capture tiling patterns from the Moroccan palace Dar al Basha. Most photographs are elegant large-format images of women within architectural spaces. Many are dressed in fabric mirroring tiles while others incorporate aesthetic Arabic calligraphy, both creating meaning reflecting the artist's roots.

Comment by AB: Owner Karen Jenkins-Johnson tells me that the writing in Lalla Essaydi's Orientalist-style photographs is actually written on the models and printed on the fabrics-- no digital trickery here. It's all her poetry as well, which she writes by hand, in henna, directly on the models. Stunning images well done. Check 'em out-- far better when viewed in person.

***

Sandra Lee Gallery: Calm and Tempest - Irena Kononova.

Review by Kathryn Arnold: Large and small imaginary landscapes. I adore the small ones finding them intimate and brilliantly executed. The horizon line is different in every painting, but most often in the upper eighth of the work, creating a resemblance with the French Book of Hours genre, opening the ground beneath to reveal space-creating elements. The attention to small tiny impasto marks also develops the surfaces.

Review by RWM: Landscapes that have gone abstract and surreal with odd colors and vitality. One can sense here the involvement and inspiration with the works becoming interpersonal on the canvas. Wild colors and designs heighten the mood, unpredictable and disconcerting in their impressiveness.

***

Hilliard Architects & Gallery: Oaxacan Dreams - Carol Dembling.

Review by RWM: Get caught up here in icons and symbols as you wend your way through the culture and surreal. Carol Dembling's collages may well puzzle viewers for decades without agreements between anyone being possible. Interpretations may elude some, but it's fun to consider the associations just the same.

***

Hespe Gallery: Melissa Hutton - New Work.

Review by Kathryn Arnold: I never grow tired of the exhibitions at Hespe gallery, and this one is no exception. Apparently having a resin-based finish, these works by Melissa Hutton are primarily landscapes or waterscapes, often featuring lone architectural elements situated against expansive plains. Some compositions are reminiscent of the artistic traditions Hopper and Hockney-- but yet not, the media being new and the people being scarce. Flattened landscapes remind of the Midwest, like Iowa and Kansas, as does the architecture. The subjects of the works entice you in, epitomizing a way of life that does not exist here in the Bay Area.

***

Dolby Chadwick Gallery: Black and White.

Artists: Paul Chojnowski, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, David Gibson, Katina Huston, Jenifer Kent, Vanessa Marsh, Gay Outlaw, Rob Tarbell.

Review by Kathryn Arnold: A range of works in black, whites and grays with an impressive amount of variation. What seem to be pen and ink drawings with crazy (good) detail need magnification or a close up lens to get the complete picture, so to speak. A small black and white landscape also catches my eye. Much more than simply the colors, or lack thereof, in this swimmingly cool exhibition.

***

Gallery Paule Anglim: John Zurier - Paintings and Watercolors.

Review by Kathryn Arnold: Soft subdued treatments of color and surface with feelings of hand-touched elements. Often monochromatic surfaces with occasional interruptions of shape and color create formal divisions within the fields. A sense of barely there-- or barely letting go-- atmospheric moments. Ephemeral. Formed by nature, feeling.

Comment by AB: John Zurier's washes on paper are inspired by recent travels to Iceland and Spain. In fact according to the pronouncement, pretty much all the works are founded in journeys and experiences abroad. The dude's a painter's painter for sure, his cerebral constructs and consequent visuals no cakewalk for the uninitiated. Worth a visit.

***

Addendum:

***

Are you inclined to consider supporting the cause? Covering and posting these shows sure is a huge amount of work. But hey-- I do it 'cuz it needs to be done.

***

First Thursday - September 8, 2011

First Thursday - August 4, 2011

***