CCA MFA Exhibit (SF)

Note: This exhibit is scheduled to close on 5/19/07.

The 2007 MFA exhibition at California College for the Arts (CCA) has just opened in San Francisco for a short run. The display areas, located on the ground floor of CCA's main building in San Francisco, are dispiriting for showing art. The studios are too cramped, and the wide central corridor, known as the nave, is so big that art feels lost in it. In addition, there are pervasive problems of bad lighting and visual clutter. Even so, this year's exhibit is well worth a visit. Congratulations are in order for the artists and for the organizer of the show, critic and curator Glen Helfand.

The following photos capture some of the work that interested me. I have added brief notes.

Photo at top: One of four targets shot by the artist, Anne Devine.
These were part of an installation featuring images of endangered tigers.
Is there a little boom in art that includes bullet holes? (Seems so.)

Near the front of the nave, on the left as you walk in, are a pair of video monitors documenting a curatorial project. The right-hand monitor shows clips from films made for world fairs, loaned by San Francisco's Prelinger Archives. I watched a series of odes to kitchen appliances that were almost like sci-fi. Svelt women in rich suburbs seemed to be going mad one after another (image above). Don't miss!

Above, two of Celia Manley's small works “drawn as Holden Caulfield”
(The Catcher in the Rye, 1951).

Above, an installation by Lindsey White, in a room that
also includes brief absurdist videos and other work.

Above, two small paintings by Harry Muniz that look photo-real
at a distance but smudgy close up (size 9" x 12").

Above, mirror with a starburst (lighted from behind), by Christine Wong Yap.

Above, one of a number of “Curious Objects” by Carrie Minikel.
This one is "For Olfactory Focus."

Above, a gameboard construction by Nyeema Morgan (tabletop size).

Above, a video still from a three-channel video (on three flat screens) in which bizarre
activities are carried out in reverse motion. The artist is Reggie Stump.

Above, two very small paintings on panel by Jack Miller.

Above, one example of Jennifer O'Keeffe's photographic work.

Above, two sculptures by Christopher Loomis,
one towering and the other small, installed side by side.

Above, video stills from an unnerving video installation by Iris Charabi-Berggren,

called "The world as it is." I need to watch more of this, but I gather that a key theme
is the false faces that people learn to show the world.

Above, two stills from Ryan Alexiev's unhinged video about the cereal wars.
In the top photo, W. K. Kellogg himself appears in a bubble to rouse
the hero to action—one of several motifs adapted from The Wizard of Oz.
The villain, Franken Berry, is depicted in the bottom photo.

Above, David Gurman's apparatus for (1) tracking seismic events and
bomb-related ground motion at Yucca Flat in Nevada and (2) transforming
any significant ground motion into the tolling of a large church bell.

Lacey Jane Roberts's knitted fence, once of several interesting projects
using knitted material that Roberts has done since arriving at CCA.

More pink! Marsha Jean Shaw invokes the 1950s in an installation
entitled “Pink Bits.” The chairs have clear plastic covers.