***

Balazo Gallery: Faux Pause, An Exhibition of Digital Media, Sculpture, Drawings, and Installations.

Artists: Jaren Bonillo, Charlie Callahan, Joshua Churchill, Gibson Cuyler, Renee Delores, Andrew Hedges, Suzanne Husky, Misako Inaoka, Keiko Kayamoto, Nobuyo Kinoshita, Tony Luib, Kirk Maxson, Nate Osgood, Joslin Pollard, Emily Sevier, Charlene Tan.

Comment: This pleasantly surprising show, running through May 16 (by appointment), consists of two floors of larger scale works, primarily installations. Upstairs features a stand-alone bathtub with a shower curtain around it. Seen from across the room, someone appears to be standing in the tub, behind the curtain, along with a blinking light, and each time the light blinks on, you see the shadow of the person standing motionless in a different position. What's really happening is that a series of images of human shadows are being projected onto the outside of the curtain by a projector on the opposite wall, and the tub is empty. But I'm thinking a real person is in the tub, so I carefully open the curtain to maybe see me some skin, but I get fooled, find the tub empty, and I like it.

Pick of the show goes to Andrew Hedges for a really good cut-and-welded sculpture artistifying the historic transition from animal power (using horses to perform heavy labor) to the industrial revolution (using horses to race at Golden Gate Fields). The piece is very well conceived, composed, and executed. It's $3000, it's worth it, Andrew Hedges tells me it's basically the first piece he's produced since graduating from art school several years ago, and I tell you that he's got a future as a sculptor. More please, Mr. Hedges.