Colter Jacobsen at Jack Hanley (SF)

Note: This exhibit is scheduled to close on 6/30/07.

Colter Jacobsen’s solo exhibit at Jack Hanley Gallery is so characteristic that, to his faithful followers, it may seem like dropping by his apartment. Certainly the show embodies many of Jacobsen's familiar traits. One of the most prominent is his fascination with finding, or creating, matched pairs of objects.

When Jacobsen displays found objects together in pairs, I gather that he means to represent an idealized psychological rapport between two people. (He is a long-time fan of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, especially that artist’s pair of synchronized wall clocks.) Often his pairings have a comic edge, as with the thrift store paintings included in the exhibit. In these, he seems to acknowledge an embarrassing Kitschy-koo dimension in the longing for a perfect match.

A more subtle process occurs in Jacobsen’s core practice, which is the duplication of photographs by means of drawings (usually in graphite). I tend to think that an urge to touch whatever is in the photo plays a role in his choice of method—but feel free to dismiss this as errant psychologizing.

In his earlier drawings, there was the “original” (actually often a copy) and his drawn copy. Eventually this vein of work became more complicated, and more intriguing, when Jacobsen started to draw copies of his copies— without looking at either the photo or his first drawing. In addition to the doubleness between the photo and its first drawing, Jacobsen added a doubleness between the first drawing and his drawing from memory. In doing so, he has extended his exploration of identity (and if you like, authorship) into almost metaphysical territory. Even without metaphysics, the dual drawings are fascinating to see for the remarkable exactness of the copies, and also for their subtle differences. One drawing (in color, shown below) appears to be a mirror-image memory drawing.

As a reader of poetry, Jacobsen has an interest in language, and words have appeared in some of his work for a long time. The most extended project in the current show is the series of twenty drawings with text—a collaboration with the poet Bill Berkson. In 1980, Berkson selected brief texts from a juvenile mystery novel and typed each text on a sheet of paper, in the lower half. He gave the collection a title page, “Bill,” and put the project away in a manila folder. Recently he came upon the folder and thought that images might be added above the texts. Mac McGinnes suggested Jacobsen as the artist for this, and the project went forward. The resulting images don't have obvious connections to the texts. For me, it was interesting to be reminded that the addition of text to an image creates a new gestalt regardless of the actual words or even the language in which they are written. A little forcefield seems to spring up between word and image.

There are many artworks in this show—too many, I think. And the staging of the show seems to heighten the elusiveness that is already abundant in Jacobsen's work. I found it impossible to parse and feel everything in one take, especially without help. I kept wishing the artist was walking me through it, dropping hints.

The beautiful drawing at the top is based on a photo by the artist's friend, Donal Mosher. The photo is in the show too. Other examples of the drawings are illustrated below. The two bottom images are sets of thrift store paintings.






Note (6/28/07): I have revised the paragraph dealing with the use of text in Jacobsen's work. Thanks to Mac McGinnes for nudging me to clarify the prominent place taken by the drawings-with-text in this exhibit and to acknowledge Jacobsen's collaborator in these works.

Drawings by Martín Ramírez—San Jose Museum of Art

Note: This exhibtion is scheduled to close on 9/9/07.

The second remarkable exhibit of drawings at the San Jose Museum of Art is devoted to the work of Martín Ramírez (1895-1963), a native of Mexico who spent nearly half of his life in state mental hospitals in California.

In 1925, Ramírez came to the United States to seek work, leaving his wife and children with his brother on a tiny rancho that Ramírez had purchased on credit. In the next few years, his life was changed drastically by events beyond his control. His homeland was caught up in the Cristero Rebellion (1926-29), which endangered his family. With the arrival of the Great Depression, his prospects in the United States dimmed. However, he decided not to return to Mexico.

Ramírez’s situation deteriorated, and in 1931 he was committed involuntarily to the Stockton State Hospital. There he was classified as an incurable schizophrenic. Given his distressed economic and family circumstances, the true nature of his mental condition remains uncertain. In 1948, he was moved to DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, near Sacramento, where he lived the remainder of his life.

Drawing became Ramírez’s preoccupation during his incarceration. He used whatever materials were at hand. Many drawings in the exhibit were done with crayon, pencil, and colored pencil. Despite the crowded conditions in which he lived, Ramírez liked to work on a sizable scale, often using paper that he pieced together.

The drawings explore an obsessive set of motifs that re-appear in variations. The motifs include trains, cars, tunnels, church facades, Madonnas, and horseback riders (with pistols) from ranchero culture. The compositions are eccentrically assured and, to my eye, reflect the influence of Art Deco design. Much of the work conveys an almost animistic sense of energy. The Madonnas are quieter, but have a captivating aura of fantasy.

By about 1950, Ramírez’s work had drawn the interest of Tarmo Pasto, a psychologist with an art background who had moved to Sacramento. Pasto communicated his interest to members of the Sacramento art community, and Ramírez’s first solo exhibit occurred in that city during 1951. There was another solo show at the Mills College Art Museum (Oakland) in 1954.

When the first version of the current exhibit appeared at New York’s American Folk Art Museum earlier this year, there were astonished raves from critics at the New York Times and the New Yorker. Now the Bay Area has a chance to see what the fuss was about.

A beautiful (though expensive) catalog is available. It includes a biographical essay by Víctor M. Espinosa and Kristin E. Espinosa, which I have relied on for the above notes. On Thursday, June 21st, at 7:00 p.m., Espinosa will deliver a talk on Ramírez at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose. At the Plaza, Espinosa has organized a supporting exhibit (which I have not seen) about the life of Ramírez.

I am including a few images from the museum website and one (the first) from the NPR website.

Drawings by Il Lee—San Jose Museum of Art

Note: This exhibition is scheduled to close on 7/8/07.

The San Jose Museum of Art is presenting surveys of drawings by two immigrants to the United States whose lives couldn’t have been more different, but whose work shares an obsessive quality that is integral to their remarkable achievements. Art enthusiasts, even those who live far from San Jose, will be rewarded for making the trek to downtown San Jose.

In his Brooklyn studio, Korean artist Il Lee creates abstractions on paper (and more recently on canvas) by drawing with cheap, disposable ballpoint pens. A couple of years ago, Lee switched from black to blue pens (because the manufacturer discontinued his favorite black pen), but now uses either color. He has explored a range of sizes—small, large, and very large.

Lee was born in Seoul, Korea in 1952 and relocated to Manhattan in 1977. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in New York and began the long, difficult process of finding himself as an artist. His use of ballpoint pens has developed gradually over a 25-year period. Interest in his work has flourished in the past decade.

The drawings are an idiosyncratic blend of Minimalism and gesture. The recording of gesture is energetic but does not seem especially expressionistic. Rather, the work emphasizes the formal qualities of gesture. The enormous amount of work required for these drawings is not immediately apparent, and then it hits you. There are large solid areas of color that have been made by endless overlapping movements of the pen. But the gift is not in the labor but in the amazingly vibrant results.

The exhibit was organized by SJMA senior curator JoAnne Northrup. There is an excellent catalog—at a very reasonable price.

I did not make prior arrangements with the museum to take photos, so I am unable to show individual images of my favorite drawings. But an installation shot (from the museum website) is shown above.

See the next posting for information about the second exhibition.

Jessica Snow at Rena Bransten (SF)

Note: This exhibit is scheduled to close on 7/7/07.

In previous encounters with Jessica Snow’s work, I saw that she had a good hand and very specific, often unexpected, ideas about color. Yet I thought her work tended to look over-busy, as if she believed that a mass of elements would convey a lot of energy. Despite the crowding, the work came across as reticent because of its reliance on pastel shades.

Snow’s new exhibition at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco is a step up in every way. Using acrylic (and sometimes watercolor) on paper, she organizes a medley of abstract Pop shapes into lively adventures that often look like music in action. Compositions seem tighter, and colors are more varied in tone, often brighter and more saturated. In some works, the forms look as if they could dance right off the page. The energy can turn a bit frantic, and there is a good deal of visual tension, but a happy mood prevails. I would say that Snow is on a roll.

Images from the exhibit are shown above and below.

This is a detail of the work above.

This is a detail of the work above.

Deborah Oropallo at the de Young Museum (SF)

Note: This exhibition is scheduled to close on 9/16/07.

Styles of portraiture from the 15th to 18th Century have been a reference point for many interesting (or at least striking) works by contemporary artists. A few names that quickly come to mind: Cindy Sherman, Janine Antoni, John Currin, Kehinde Wiley, and Karel Funk. Now mid-career San Francisco artist Deborah Oropallo has tapped this vein, and the project, called “Guise,” is her best to date.

Oropallo's first step was to cull images from internet sites that show female models in sexy costumes, including styles that play off the outfits of pirates, soldiers, etc. She then blended some of these images with 17th- and 18th-Century formal portraits in which men of power posed in elaborate costumes. The result is a series of large prints that invite the viewer to ruminate about the mutability of costume and pose as expressions of power and of sexuality.

(There is a related treatment of male self-presentation in Stanley Kubrick’s long, absorbing, and visually stunning film, Barry Lyndon. The 18th-Century male aristocrats wear makeup to their evening parties but may be up early in the morning to fight a duel.)

Selections from Oropallo’s “Guise” series are on view through the summer at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Further information about the prints is available from the publisher, Urban Digital Color, in San Francisco. These are high-quality pigment prints in one of two sizes—40" x 30" or 60" x 40".

Examples of the work are shown above and below (images from the Urban Digital Color website).

Arthur Dove — Final Comment?

I have made a fourth update to my posting dated 3/5/07 about the proper orientation of a painting by Arthur Dove that is on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Casey Jex Smith at Swarm (Oakland)

Note: This exhibit is scheduled to close on 6/17/07.

Casey Jex Smith is a young Bay Area artist who treats his background as a Mormon as a primary source of imagery. He told me that there’s a lifetime of visual material in the thousand images that the Mormon church has officially approved for use in church matters. He's also fascinated by the sci-fi imagery he grew up with, although not much of this has entered his work yet.

Smith’s solo show at Swarm Gallery in Oakland includes drawings, an array of notebook sketches, a wall collage, a peephole sculpture, and an installation that includes sod. Smith has great drawing skills, and his finished drawings are the core of the show.

The show's largest work is “Faith and Faith,” a 2-part drawing 21 feet high, affixed to the wall. (The photo at the top shows a large detail.) This image reminds me of the cover of the Scientology book, Dianetics, although Smith's approach is much less literal.

At the other end of the scale is a 7.5" x 7.5" drawing entitled “Hidden Treasure” (image above).

A 15” x 11” drawing called “Moroni” (image above) shows the artist’s characteristic way of mixing media and creating motifs that float in space. (In the Mormon religion, Moroni was the angel who visited the founder of the church, Joseph Smith, Jr.). Another fine drawing of the same size is “Flaming Spear of the Gentile” (image below).

When the artist heard that his local church wanted to throw out a supply of images, he rescued them and turned portions of the trove into a wall collage. The collage is so full of costumes—and so male-centric—that it feels oppressive to me. The title is “Fervor.” (The photo below shows a portion of the installation.)

For the show's opening reception, the artist asked that Jello be served. And so it came to pass (photo below). Smith told me that Jello is so popular in Utah that it has been declared the state’s official snack food. (I checked—it’s true.)

Berkeley MFA Exhibit 2007

Note: This exhibit is scheduled to close on 6/10/07.

There are seven artists in UC Berkeley’s current MFA exhibition. From this varied group, I will highlight two. In a series of small works on paper, Jenifer Wofford depicts the world of Filipina nurses who (like her mother) left the Philippines to work abroad. These women provide intimate care in a world where they feel alien and invisible.

The images are rendered in a crisp, economical manner using acrylic and gouache. The style is informed by comics, though the panels are not laid out as a specific story. Rather, they invite the viewer to absorb an implied narrative. Examples of this work are shown above and below.





Joe McKay presents a series of urban landscape photos that have been expertly manipulated (via Photoshop) in a particular way. The original photos contained tall street lights. He has removed the light poles and left the tops, the luminaries, floating like UFOs.. Below are three examples of these delightful UFOs (images from the artist’s website).



In addition, McKay presents a looping video, upside down, of the underside of a freeway interchange in Oakland. (Photo below.) This little work is strangely compelling, and an excerpt can be viewed on the artist’s website.

The MFA exhibit is held in the Berkeley Art Museum, where there are a number of other exhibits of interest, starting on the ground floor.

Bay Area Currents 2007 (Oakland)

Note: This exhibition is scheduled to close on 6/29/07.

The non-profit Oakland Art Gallery (OAG) is presenting nine Bay Area artists in the 2007 edition of its “Bay Area Currents” survey. The juror this year was Aimee Chang, curator of contemporary art at the Orange County Museum of Art. There is always some good work in this small annual show, but I think it would be stronger if it reached deeper into the local art community. I can think of numerous artists whose work ought to show up here. Are many artists simply not applying? I don't know.

This year, the highlights of the show are sculpture. A key factor is probably Aimee Chang's experience as co-curator of a widely noted exhibit in 2005 at the UCLA Hammer Museum: “THING: New Sculpture from Los Angeles.” I felt the placement and lighting of the sculptures in the OAG space did not show them to full advantage, but that didn't kill the intrigue.

Two of David O. Johnson's neon sculptures are included. One is a cube of bricks, on a pallet, with a green glow emanating from inside (photo at top). This incorporates four tropes of Minimalism—bricks, a cube, plexiglas, and neon light. The result looks like a Minimalist cube turned ratioactive. Or maybe it represents the over-heated California real estate market! The other work is “Gated Community III,” a neon gate that is askew and might be the entryway to hell. (Photo below.)

Zachary Royer Scholz continues to explore discarded pieces of foam presented as minimalist objects. I would call this Funk Minimalism. One work, installed on the wall, appears to be a pair of split cushions, which have been tarted up slightly with paint and ink. There is also a mismatched pair of tall mystery objects sagging against the wall. (Photos below.)


Xuchi Naungayan is represented by a couple of floor-standing sculptures that did not sustain my interest but also by a wall sculpture, “Polyhedron Drip,” that I thought was terrific. It's made of wax, graphite, and wire. It creates marvelous shadows (see below).

There were several works by Terry Mason, who appears to be a polymath in the materials arena. One smallish work showed a cockfight in metal—or should I say in bling. (Image below from the OAG website.) A much larger work was a device that translates light energy into the ultra-slow movement of a horizontal bar that, for some reason, has a twig extension. I didn't understand the work, but was impressed by its odd configuration and excellent craft. It could serve as a clock. I'll be keeping an eye out for Mason's work.

Christian Maychack at Gregory Lind (SF)

Note: This exhibit is scheduled to close on 6/30/07.

Walking into a really good sculpture show creates the sort of rush that makes art addictive. For me, the new exhibit of work by Christian Maychack, at Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco, was just that kind of experience. You might not guess this from the gloomy title, “A General Record of Things Breaking Down.”

Maychack has a penchant for undermining architecture and other stiff designs in ways that suggest structural failure, burning, melting, crystal growth, and—strangest of all—a takeover by the organic world. His work is often creepy, but in a deadpan way. Sometimes there are hints of sexual organs. There is always a strong formal sense and, increasingly, a refinement in the use of materials.

The work could be seen as an assault on Minimalism by means of Surrealism. Victory is not the goal: neither the rigidities of Minimalism nor the pushy visual tricks of Surrealism manage to triumph.

The work at the top is a kind of Rorschach blot (in 3D), sparked by the many meanings that viewers have ascribed to Maychack’s work. Below are other images from this don’t-miss exhibit.

The shiny part is metallic.

A Sol Lewitt grid sinks into the earth.

Detail of installation.

Jill Sylvia at Eleanor Harwood (SF)

Note: This exhibit is scheduled to close on 6/15/07.

Accounting might seem a dull subject for artwork, but I can think of several artists who have made interesting uses of it. San Francisco artist Jill Sylvia has been making works based on ledger pages, and an excellent array of them is on view at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco. Sylvia demonstrates that there’s still juice in the minimalist grid.

Working by hand, with jaw-dropping precision, the artist removes the rectilinear areas of the ledger paper into which numbers would be (or have been) written. Below is a detail of one of the cut pieces (image from the gallery website). Sylvia displays the emptied grids in several ways, including as sculpture. She saves the bits of paper she cuts away and uses those to create mosaic-like collages that also have a grid format.

At the top and below are further examples of the work. The final image is a wall installation (image from the gallery website).

“Wunderkammer” at Garage Biennial (SF)

San Francisco’s Garage Biennial began its new season on May 26th with a tight, enjoyable show that had to fight against a cold wet night that poured down on the open three-car garage and adjacent patio. The seven-artist exhibit, entitled “Wunderkammer,” was organized by Nadim Sabella and Larry Shao, in conjunction with a new Oakland venue, Johansson Projects. As usual, the Garage Biennial installation was a one-night affair, but the exhibit will be reprised at Johansson Projects, on a date to be announced.

Joshua Pieper offered macabre humor in an installation called “Articles Wanted,” which consisted of a newspaper ad (above) posted next to the articles mentioned in the ad (below).

Another delight was Jason Mortara’s video compilation, “A gentle collapsing of every surface,” in which devices were recursively used upon others of their own type. For example, as shown in the video still below, Mortara has just measured the width of the big measuring tape using the small tape.

A voyeur experience was offered by Ali Pembleton’s ongoing dating project. On her website and even on utility poles, she had posted photos of herself in different guises (athletic, sophisticated, etc.). Men were invited to contact her “to be considered for a date.” On the roof of the garage, above the main action, she sat with men who showed up for appointments (photo below).

VR Law Enforcement

In the Washington Post dated 6/2/07, there is a fascinating article by Alan Sipress about law enforcement in virtual reality worlds. Personally I think VR worlds are going to be huge once the graphics and user interfaces improve (along with system performance, of course). Already, VR participants have experienced a range of two-way bleeds between the real world and VR. Sipress's article documents that real world law enforcement has been pulled into VR. Highly recommended.

The image above is a piece of a map of Second Life, a popular VR world. I made a screen shot of an edge of that world. I wonder if the Flat Earth Society has opened a chapter in Second Life.

Ellen Babcock at the San Francisco Dump

ALERT: Saturday, May 26th, is the second and FINAL day of this show. The exhibit will be open from 1:00 to 5:00 pm. The music performance starts at 3:00 pm sharp.

The Artist in Residence program at the San Francisco Dump hit a peak this weekend with an exhibit of sculpture by artist Ellen Babcock and performances of a musical work by composer Nathaniel Stookey. In accord with the recycling premise of the program, Babcock and Stookey created their works using materials that ended up at the dump.


Stookey created a short three-movement composition for a battery of sound-makers including, pipes, the spokes of a bicycle, oil drums, a car bumper, metal trays, and many other objects. This intricate but zesty piece was well performed by the percussion section of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra, joined by a musician who plays the saw. Even the children in the audience paid rapt attention.

The sculptures in Babcock’s exhibit are the happy result of explorations she began a couple of years ago. What started out as a fairly literal simulation of smallish rock specimens has now evolved into a far more complex game that has an assertive scale. I have not yet decoded the results in much depth, but will report my initial impressions. In addition to her rocks and crystals, Babcock has created simulations, I gather, of artworks from a traditional museum. Many of these objects look destroyed. They seem to have passed through a cataclysm that has given them a new type of expressiveness. Babcock has worked with mundane materials for a long time, but the materials used in this show are a step down. In this abject context, Styrofoam seems like a snooty material. Paradoxically, this plunge has released a surge of creativity. I found the work perversely exhilarating.

See above and below for images of several sculptures in the show.

The SF Dump is a short drive from the center of San Francisco. For directions, consult the SF Dump's Artist in Residence website.

Taraneh Hemami at Intersection (SF)

Note: This exhibition is scheduled to close on 6/30/07.

It was not long after the 9/11 attacks when artist Taraneh Hemami, a native of Iran, came across a U.S. government poster showing headshots of the “most wanted international terrorists.” Or rather, she came across a small, low-resolution image of this poster (see above). The faces were not identifiable although many of the figures appeared to be Middle Eastern. As the artist commented to me, “They could be anybody.”

Hemami has been exploring this material for awhile, and her current exhibition at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco uses it as the kernel for a superb installation. Through a variety of devices, she evokes the climate of ignorance, fear, and depersonalization that now influences how people in the West react to people of Middle Eastern descent. With a sardonic flourish, she calls the show “Most Wanted.”

The exhibit begins in the stairway that leads to the second-floor exhibition space. Visitors encounter a stair carpet imprinted with Middle Eastern names (in English) running down the center in a single column. It looks a bit like a memorial. You can avoid stepping on the names if you widen your gait a bit. Further up, though, you reach a carpet that has two columns of names. Here it’s hard to proceed without treading on the names. At the top, entering the gallery, you see a timeworn wall covered in Farsi script, repeating the names on the stairs. (Images below.)



The blurred headshots are put to several uses. In one, the entire government poster is transformed into a decorative bead curtain, like a cozy adornment in an Iranian home. (Images below.)

Some of the single headshots, reproduced as large copies, are mounted in a lightbox array that has two sides. The outward side is meant to suggest the bars of imprisonment. The inner portion, where floral carpet patterns are added to the images, is meant to recall the photos seen on Iranian gravesites. (Images below.)


On a wall in the rear stairwell, a video projection shows a series of headshots morphing into each other. What's disturbing is that the inability to read these images begins to feel like a defect of mind. (Image below.)

____________________

Hemami's imagery addresses a social and psychological condition, but it's interesting to note that there is also a medical condition, called prosopagnosia, which limits the recognition of faces. There is a brief but informative Wikipedia article on this rare condition.

Tauba Auerbach at Jack Hanley (SF)

Note: This exhibition is scheduled to close on 4/26/07.

In a solid show at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco artist Tauba Auerbach continues to explore the basic tools of literacy: letters of the alphabet, numerals, and words. In several works, she also explores different ways of representing a surface that is 50% white and 50% black. Images from the show (from the gallery website) are shown above and below.

BFA Exhibit at SFAI

I didn't take a systematic look at the 2007 BFA Exhibiton at San Francisco Art Institute, but several artists caught my attention as I walked through the show. See below.

Above, an array of folded paper sculptures by Mia Liu—origami meets Wall Street.

Above, a close-up of one of the shirts.

Above, one of the product tags attached to Liu's shirts.

Above, Sara Thibault's video installation, “New Heights,” installed at a height of 7 feet.
A hand kept slapping the wall in the video.

Above, the wall-slapping action of Thibault's video.

Above, Jack Decker in an extended wrestling match with a side chair.
This section of his “Actions” video is called “The Futility of Making Art.”

Keegan McHargue at Jack Hanley (SF)

How many layers of paint have been slapped on the floor at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco? Last month, that floor was painted bright yellow for San Francisco artist Keegan McHargue’s exhibit of recent work, entitled “The Yellow Spectrum.” The radiance of the floor created an atmospheric soup for the paintings, which were done in a range of colors that suggested ice creams, sherbets, and bleached carnival posters. The effect was exhilarating.

(There is a painting called “La gamme jaune” [The Yellow Spectrum] by the Czech artist Frantisek Kupka, who was having a Fauvist moment when he painted it in 1907, near Paris, one hundred years ago. I wonder if McHargue is a fan of Kupka.)

McHargue continues to create a dreamtime world in which stylized human figures and objects occupy reductive landscapes or architectural structures. Often there is a repetition, or mirroring, of motifs. Often the space has a theatrical setup, giving a ritualistic appearance to the “action.” There is also a certain gravitas and a sense of timelessness, even as the pictorial elements flirt with the absurd. The meaning of the work remains elusive.

The color palette in the recent show was a shift from previous work. It had a frivolous air, but careful observation revealed it to be highly specific and sophisticated.

McHargue developed his style without attending art school, so it’s interesting to consider what his influences might be. Surrealism is an obvious one, although his temperament side-steps the cheesiness—the wow effects—in that tradition. There are reminders of other visual traditions, but none seem to dominate. My own sense is that McHargue has been imprinted not so much by the styles of particular artists, but by the wealth of imagery afloat in our culture. He has a polymorphous-perverse ability to blend visual memes and deploy them in paintings that have strong formal qualities.

Several images from the show are included above and below. They are salvaged from a camera whose color balance was knocked askew by the flood of yellow light.