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CATHARINE CLARK - PEANUT - LINCART - JACK HANLEY - LIZLAND

MICHAEL ROSENTHAL - SOAP - FEMINA POTENS - RITE SPOT

(with assistance from DeWitt Cheng)

11.07-8.09

Catharine Clark Gallery: Walter Robinson - [sic]; Adam Chapman - Diagram of Isolated Moments Forming a Memory.

Comment by AB: Walter Robinson's cagey wordplay incisively editorializes on matters involving politics, religion, capitalism, big oil, the media, the psychology of advertising, war and more. Several wall and floor sculptures address the issues more directly. The dude just keeps gettin' better. In the video parlour, Adam Chapman parses a pick of his portrait drawings into component parts, and then creates a computer program to randomly reconstruct and deconstuct those parts from chaos to completeness and back again. Well done on both counts and certainly worth a perusal.

Art by Walter Robinson.

Walter Robinson art.

Artist Walter Robinson and his art.

Art by Walter Robinson.

Art by Walter Robinson.

Art by Walter Robinson closer.

Art by Walter Robinson closer.

Art by Walter Robinson.

Art by Walter Robinson.

Art by Walter Robinson.

Art by Walter Robinson.

Video art by Adam Chapman.

Artist Adam Chapman and his video art.

Adam Chapman attends to all details in his art (like it).

While I'm shooting low-- Adam Chapman's brogues c/o Hugo Boss.

***

The Peanut Gallery: What About Me? New Faces of Contemporary Self Portraiture.

Artists: Richard Castaneda, Dean Dempsey, Susan Wu.

Comment by AB: Three distinctly diverse takes on the self-portrait combine into a pretty respectable show-- Richard Bluecloud Castaneda's reflections on his Native American heritage, Dean Dempsey's quietly anxious backlit photos featuring multiples of himself, and Susan Wu's delicate line of pencil-drawn demeanors.

Lightbox photography by Dean Dempsey.

Dean Dempsey backlit photograph.

Photography by Richard Bluecloud Castaneda.

Art by Susan Wu.

Susan Wu art.

Self-portrait art by Susan Wu.

***

Lincart Gallery: Sean Cheetham and Penelope Krebs.

Comment by AB: Forthright portrait and figure paintings by Sean Cheetham; delicate ornithological portraits by Penelope Krebs. It's that simple, no more complicated and very good. Check it out. Two talents. For those of you playing the home version, the highlight of the hoopla is a performance by the Conspiracy of Venus Women's Choir.

Art by Sean Cheetham.

Paintings by Sean Cheetham.

Sean Cheetham art.

Art by Penelope Krebs.

Penelope Krebs ornithological art closer (nicely done).

Tunes by Consipracy of Venus Women's Choir.

Consipracy of Venus Women's Choir.

***

Michael Rosenthal Gallery: Mary Conrad - Lapidary Terrarium.

Comment by AB: I look, I read, I try, and I just plain don't get it. Here, you give it a shot... "In this show, Conrad explores the concept of Lapidary Terrarium as the specialized and expertly crafted social and environmental spaces in which we enclose ourselves. Acting as an anthropologist, Conrad meditates on our banal and strange world to examine our shared consciousness of language, signs, currency, and packaging." The good news? If you like road cones, there's something for you here.

As an aside, you know what one of my fine art litmus tests is? I ask myself how much I'd be willing to pay if I saw it leaning against the wall at a Salvation Army store-- no context, no lighting, no explanation, no nothing. Just me and the art.

Road cone art by Mary Conrad.

Road cone art by Mary Conrad.

Neon installation art by Mary Conrad.

Cords in above image closer.
Contrast them with this at Catharine Clark. Erk.

Long view - Mary Conrad installation and art.

***

Jack Hanley Gallery: Bjorn Copeland - How It Works.

Comment by AB: New York artist Bjorn Copeland's art is the best argument yet for never throwing anything away ever again, as he proceeds to resuscitate and repurpose some of the most mundane crap on the planet. An illuminatingly amusing disquisition on the idea that today's trash may well be tomorrow's masterworks. My favorites? Copeland's transmogrified posters. Like it!

Rehabilitated poster art by Bjorn Copeland (like it).

Refurbished poster art by Bjorn Copeland (like it again).

Art by Bjorn Copeland.

Art closer by Bjorn Copeland.

Bjorn Copeland (sign on the left used to read "Keep off the Grass").

Sculpture by Bjorn Copeland (nicely done).

Kinetic contraption art by Bjorn Copeland.

***

Soap Gallery: Daniel Hipolito - Freaking Out.

Comment by AB: Intense catastrophic car crash murals by Austin, Texas artist Daniel Hipolito are torqued up by a sound performance for which, unfortunately, I'm present and accounted for after the fact.

Wall art by Daniel Hipolito.

Artist Daniel Hipolito and his mural art.

Mural art by Daniel Hipolito.

***

Embarcadero Cinema I and Rite Spot: [Untitled] Art World film satire and Q&A; Pierre Merkl - Situations, Segues, Encounters and Circumstances.

Review and images by DeWitt Cheng: Attended a showing of the new art world film satire, [Untitled], at Embarcadero One. This witty, hilarious look at the contemporary art scene (those crazy New Yorkers!), a big hit with the SF audience, is also quite sympathetic to artists as well, as director Jonathan Parker (who also made Bartleby, a contemporary version of Melville's story set in a suburbia very like San Rafael) was part of the alt/art-music scene himself years ago. Good Q&A after film with director Parker and producer Catherine DeNapoli, the writers. The definitive comedy of the art world that we've all been waiting for (despite its curious omission of art writers).

After the film, off to the Rite Spot in the Mission, where Mr. Lucky (painter Pierre Merkl III, a friend of Parker and who appeared in Bartleby, BTW) was singing—and showing his artwork, portraits of imagined people loosely drawing on Merkl's day job as private detective.  The paintings from Situations, Segues, Encounters and Circumstances series depict, through slight comic exaggeration, how people really are, just as the film does; they're an antidote to the "photo-based, stylist-based, fashion- and advertising-based pictures" that haunt the mass media. Old-Masterish craftsmanship combined with social satire.

Mr. Lucky and his eye-catching '61 Chrysler New Yorker (yo fins!).

Pierre Merkl painting - Bad Con Man.

Painting by Pierre Merkl - Accused of Embezzlement.

Pierre Merkl art - You'll Never Believe What She Said.

The Collection - painting by Pierre Merkl (Mr. Lucky).

Phonies? - art by Pierre Merkl.

Creature of Habit - art by Pierre Merkl.

Rite Spot still life - art by Pierre Merkl.

***

Femina Potens Gallery: Ritual.

Artists: Jeeti Singh, Shelley Monahan, Daisy Eneix.

Comment by AB: Adventures in sensuality, sexuality, fetish, gender, identity, and the conventions, politics and protocol that go with 'em.

Art.

Art.

Art.

***

Lizland: Liz Mamorsky.

Review and images by DeWitt Cheng: Lizland is Liz Mamorsky's SoMa studio, so this event is a combination of reception, open studio, and artist's talk. Mamorsky's Op paintings from the 1960s are on view, as well as her surrealist paintings and humorous figurative assemblages.

Must be the place - Lizland, the studio of Liz Mamorsky.

Liz Mamorsky.

Painting wall downstairs, temporarily co-opted for sculptures (Liz Mamorsky art).

Liz Mamorsky and robot family in upstairs display area.

Liz Mamorsky art.

Librations by husband Mel Knox, Uvaggio vintner.

Q&A with curator Doniece Sandoval.

Liz Mamorsky drawings.

***