CANESSA - AMPERSAND - QUEENS NAILS - VARNISH

SPARE ROOM PROJECT - HOT STUDIO - SILVERMAN

10.23.09

Canessa Gallery: Termeh Yeghiazarian - Anonymous North Beach Artist.

Comment by AB: Termeh Yeghiazarian effectively renders rear and side view portraits of North Beach artists who she knows.

***

Ampersand International Arts: Lori Gordon - Snippets.

Comment by AB: Lori Gordon takes "snippets" (phrases) out of context from conversations or dialogues she has heard over the years, prints 'em up, gives them to people, asks those people to display and photograph them in their new contexts, and then asks that they send the results back to her. This show is surveys those results. Apparently I JUST miss a rousing rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Waters (Simon and Garfunkel), organized by Jen Delos Reyes and sung impromptu by everyone in attendance at the opening at that moment.

***

The Spare Room Project: Collaborative Works by Maggie Preston and Jason Kalogiros.

Comment by AB: Photographers Maggie Preston and Jason Kalogiros travel to Greece and thereabouts, and here present their impressions in images that range from abstract to decontextualized, atypical to amusing.

***

Queens Nails Projects: Jacqueline Gordon - Our Best Machines are Made of Sunshine.

Comment by AB: A futuristic soundscape by Jacqueline Gordon drones away reverberating you to varying degrees as you transit about the gallery. Nicely done and worth a perusal, visually as well as auditorially.

***

Hot Studio: Hot Open Studio.

Artists: Renee Anderson, Peter Jacques, Holger Struppek, Ramekon O'Arwisters, Carlo Abruzzese, Christopher Craig, Benji Hunt.

Comment by AB: Part of ArtSpan San Francisco Open Studios, weekend three. Options include haunting digitally enhanced hand painted vintage yearbook portraits by Christopher Craig, art glass by Renee Anderson and intriguing editorial assemblages by Ramekon O'Arwisters.

***

Varnish Fine Art: Dark Nouveau Rock Art Poster Show.

Artists: Urlo, Poia, Lu, Alan Forbes, Dave Hunter, Chuck Sperry, Ron Donovan.

Comment by AB: Excellent exhibition of rock art posters from the Italian collective MALLEUS and San Francisco's own Firehouse Kustom. What's brilliant in all instances here is that the artists homage pretty much every era of the discipline from Art Nouveau to the Psychedelic Sixties, unequivocally venerating their elders every step of the way. But the magic of the matter is that they adapt these antecedents to make them their own, ultimately to advance the proverbial envelope. There's derivative and there's visionary. One is mired in the past; the other manifests the future. Welcome to the future.

***

Silverman Gallery: Christina McPhee - Tesserae of Venus.

Comment by AB: Christina McPhee's travels to "remote parts of California where biological systems clash with technological landscapes" (some of the more ravaged landscapes in the state), documents the circumstance and then whips the results into complex photomontage abstraction. A selection of her mixed media works on paper is also on display. Stop on by and have a look.

***