Open Studios tonight

After much work and excessive anticipatory blog posts and tweets, Spring Open Studios starts tonight! If I can, I will try and live tweet @catsynth wish hashtag #sfopenstudios. It will be interesting to experience an art event from the point of view of a presenter rather than a viewer.

Here is one more picture of installation in progress:

This is a separate wall from those I showed in this previous post. I felt it was a bit unbalanced, so I added one more piece to the upper left, directly above the large picture. One of the many countless details I have dealt with incrementally over the process. The biggest challenge has been taking what was essentially purely digital and changing it into physical objects. It’s one thing to post a photo every Wednesday, it’s another to print, matte, frame and hang it.

One of the things I am interested in seeing tonight is how the experience differs from music, and from the performing arts in general.

Upcoming Photo Show

As casually mentioned on a recent post, I have an photo show coming up next week here in San Francisco. Here is the formal info:

Tuesday, March 22 at 4:00pm – April 22 at 1:00pm
Philz Coffee
4023 18th St
San Francisco, CA

Solo show of photographs by Amar Chaudhary on the wall of Philz Coffee in the Castro. The theme centers on graffiti and urban scenes from the Bay Area, New York and Shanghai.

The photos go up on Tuesday March 22. No formal opening per se, but I do expect to be there in the afternoon and evening if you’d like to drop by!

They will remain up for about the month during regular business hours thereafter (6AM-8:30PM weekdays, 7AM-8:30PM weekends).

It’s going to be relatively small, about 8 pieces.  At least half of them have appeared in small form on this site over the past couple of years.

Object as Multiple: 1960-2000, Stephen Wirtz Gallery

Today we look at a particularly fun exhibition Object as Multiple: 1960-2000 at the Wirtz Gallery here in San Francisco. It presented examples of multiples, pieces other than traditional prints or casts that could theoretically be repeated ad infinitum – though in reality they are limited editions – by many of the well-known artists of the mid 20th century.

[Sol Lewitt. Cube Without a Cube, 1996.  Edition of 42.  All images courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery.]

One of the things that made this exhibition fun was identifying the pieces by these artists without labels, and then seeing if one’s guesses were in fact correct. Some were quite easily recognizable. For example, Donald Judd’s Untitled (1971) was essentially a single box from his minimalist stacked-box pieces that appear in SFMOMA and elsewhere. Similarly, I could easily pick out Sol Lewitt’s Flat Topped Pyramid and Cube without a Cube with their geometric construction, again very minimalist. I may not have been able to pick out Man Ray’s L’ Indicateur without some hints.

[Donald Judd. Untitled, 1970.  Edition of 50.]

[Sol LeWitt. Flat Topped Pyramid, 2005. Edition of 6.]

[Man Ray, L’ Indicateur, 1969.  Edition 1 of 25.]

These relatively small pieces, along with John Cage’s Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel provided a chance to commune with some my modernist heroes from both visual art and music in a relatively intimate setting.

[John Cage. Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel, 1969.  Edition of 125.]

With Cage’s piece in particular, there is an integration of music, text and visuals in a compact object, along with his dry sense of humor. Sol Lewitt’s pieces have that simple comforting geometry (you can see larger examples in , but there is again a bit of humor and play in the title “Cube without a Cube.”  Larry Bell’s Untitled (ca 1970) has a similar geometric quality, but projected onto two-dimensions.

[Larry Bell. Untitled (ca 1970).  Edition of 150.]

Another piece that referenced music was Claes Oldenburg’s Miniature Soft Drum Set. Think of it as a “deflated drum set,” one part surreal, one part rather cute:

[Claes Oldenburg. Miniature Soft Drum Set, 1969. Edition of 200.]

It’s rare that I would describe a drum set as “huggable.” (Though of course there is no hugging of the artwork allowed at the gallery.)  It is also a strong contrast, with its soft edges, to the geometric and minimal works in the exhibition.

A few pieces pushed the idea of the multiple into everyday objects. Jim Hodges’ Everything and Nothing is a series of clocks representing the planets of the solar system. On one level, this is simply a set of themed clocks that one could imagine buying at a store (I like how Jupiter is a digital clock). But it is not truly mass-produced, as there are only 12 sets.

[Jim Hodges. Everything and Nothing, 1999.  Edition of 12.]

Vito Acconci’s Park Up a Building is a puzzle of an architectural photograph. Roy Lichtenstein’s Shirt is, well, a shirt (though I could see it being nice to wear for a music performance.)

The exhibition will remain on display through March 12.


Coincident with this exhibition, the gallery was displaying photography from past exhibitions. I particularly liked Catherine Wagner’s Ode to Yves with its array of deep blue lightbulbs – it was part of a 2007 exhibition entitled A Narrative History of the Lighbulb.

[Catherine Wagner. Ode to Yves, 2006.]

Another piece that got my attention was Alec Soth’s Grand Twin Cinema, Paris, Texas, 2006 from an exhibition entitled The Last Days of W.

[Alec Soth.  Grand Twin Cinema, Paris, Texas, 2006.]

The photograph of a classic downtown street seems rather empty (though the business seem open), a little worn out, perhaps illustrative of the state of the country during the last year of George W Bush’s presidency. But the stark quality is also what makes it attractive as an image.

[All images in this article courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery.]

Stefan Kirkeby, Amy Ellingson and Book Release at Gallery 16

Back in January I attended the opening for an exhibition by Stefen Kirkeby and Amy Ellingson at Gallery 16 here in San Francisco. The work of both artists focused on prints and printmaking in its various forms. The show also served as the release party for the gallery’s 16th anniversary book.

Stefan Kirkeby’s photographs have a very minimal and geometric quality, and celebrate these elements in everyday architecture and infrastructure. The prints on display also featured a variety of techniques. Particularly interesting were the series of gravures along one wall. The gravures are made using copper plates to “etch” the image onto paper. In terms of subject, each of the photographs focused on a single geometric element. Up Lift (Venice, CA 2007) featured concentric round solids, while Boxed (also from Venice, CA) featured in square inset. There were also areal views of fields with rectangular patterns, some mechanical contraptions, and in Sun stones (Japan 2008) a large stone cube on tiles that remind me of the distinctive floor of . Perhaps the most striking was Dead Center (Arizona, 2000) which distills the view (looking up from the center of a power-line tower) into a symmetric and seemingly algorithmic arrangement of straight lines.

[Stefan Kirkeby. Dead Center. Image courtesy of Gallery 16. (Click to enlarge.)]

There was also a much larger scale version of Dead Center entitled Dead Dead Center. In addition to the scale and use of a different printing technique, the image was inverted (i.e., white on black). Both versions work well, and highlight the . The power lines are a rich source for Kirkeby, who also presented a series of closeups of the wires at various angles, with evocative titles. The close-ups and high contrast makes these very abstract and bring to mind some of the minimalist and industrial-inspired paintings of early 20th century. I think part of the attraction of the pieces involving regular shapes and straight lines is that they draw ones attention to elements in the real world that have the simplicity and calm of computer-generated or machine-generated object.

Also on display were prints by Amy Ellingson. We have seen and reviewed examples of Ellingson’s work at earlier exhibitions. The pieces in this exhibition all featured the same flattened oval shape that appeared prominently in her previous work, arranged in regular 3-by-3 grids. They serve as areas of contrasting color and texture between foreground and background, and sometimes as windows of sorts.


[Amy Ellingson, Unitited #5 (2011). Image courtesy of Gallery 16.]

In Inverse Title 11, the oval shapes have a light color and bright texture in contrast to the main black field, almost like cut-out areas. In a series of larger untitled works, the shapes are more like overlays against a translucent color field with soft textures, as in Unititled #5 (shown above).


This exhibition also marked the release of Gallery 16’s 16th anniversary book These Are The People In Your Neighborhood. As part of the event, several of the artists featured in the book were on hand for a group signing.

I did of course have to get a copy, with as many signatures as I could get during my brief time at the event.

[Click images to enlarge.]

The book is a mixture of writing and images documenting the many artists and events over the gallery’s history in San Francisco. It was initially located at 1616, 16th Street (in the Poterero Hill neighborhood) before moving to its current location in SOMA. Leafing through the book one can the emphasis on print and although there is a wide variety of styles, I did see a lot of works that represent my own interest in modernist and minimal art (as exemplified by this exhibition) and urban themes such as infrastructure or graffiti/cartoons.

Kearny Street Workshop and SOMArts: A Sensory Feast

Art in general, and the art reviewed here at CatSynth in particular is very focused on sound and sight. “A Sensory Feast”, an exhibition co-presented by our friends at Kearny Street Workshop and SOMArts Cultural Center, expands into other senses, including touch, smell and taste. Each piece in the show touches in one way or another on the subject of food, sometimes directly with scents and textures, sometimes indirectly through memories, metaphors and cultural contexts.

[Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, MCDXCII, chocolate wrappers, sugar, curry powder, and acquired objects, 2010.  Press image courtesy of Kearny Street Workshop.]

Aroma along with taste and sight featured prominently in Sita Kuratomi Bhuamik’s site-specific installation MCDXCII (1492). The central material of the installation, curry powder, can be very powerful – cooking with it will fill a room with its scent, touching it leaves a lingering yellow stain. Here the artist has blanketed surfaces with both intricate floral patterns on the ground and abstract geometric textures on the wall. In the middle is a bench covered in a combination of gold wrappers and curry. The installation also referenced one of the most powerful and captivating food substances of all: chocolate.

Curry also featured prominently in a sound piece by Brandon Bigelow. Sound is a bit more detached from food than the other senses, but is nonetheless interesting to hear “sound of a curry dinner” decomposed electronically. As a musician, I tend to get more into the structure of the sounds themselves rather than the source – I would not have necessarily placed the sounds in the context of food without the associated description – I mostly thought of it as an escape from the other senses during the opening.

[Yosh Han, installation view with perfume bottles.]

Yosh Han’s fragrance bar was all about scent. Guests were invited to sample and choose on of her scents to carry on a cardboard mustache. It was clear that the scents evoke very strong identifications, some seemed more “right” than others, but there was still room for surprise. My initial assumption is that I would find the strongest resonance with the “Intellectual”, which did evoke cooler colors and flavors (rosemary was one of several components); but upon trying the “Bon Vivant” I immediately knew it was right. The scent had layers of spice and tomato, in other words rather fiery. And while I don’t really associate myself with jeux de vie, it did fit with my being a “pitta” in Ayurvedic terms. Maybe the sense of smell tells us things we otherwise overlook or hide.

Amy M. Ho’s Collection of Food Costumes focused on the tactile sense through fabric. It was quite popular, with people takings turns embodying a pineapple or a slice of pizza (just don’t ever put the two together, as pineapple pizza is an abomination). In addition to the human costumes, she did have at least one intended for cats.

[Amy Ho, Food Costume for a cat.]

I thought this durian for cats was very cute, though I doubt I could convince Luna to wear it.

A cat also featured prominently in Catcakes, one of several works by Kira Greene.

[Kira Greene, Catcakes, 2010.  Image courtesy of the artist.]

The piece is an interesting play on space and dimension. The cat, fish and surrounding elements are very flat and reminiscent of Asian paper cutouts. The plate of three cupcakes, however, is very three dimensional, and realistic enough to evoke the sugary texture and aroma. Nonetheless, I did see the cat first, texturally camouflaged but very prominent with its blue color.

In 2002 Diet as a Periodic Table, Arthur Huang recorded and classified all the food he ate in 2002 into a table with three-letter abbreviations and numerical and spacial classifications reminiscent of the chart we know and love from science classes. There different classifications for diffent foods, such as fruits, vegetables, meats, condiments, etc. I tried to follow the color and number pattens and had fun with some of the symbols: “Pzz” for pizza, “Ccc” for chocolate chip cookies, and “Cos” for a cosmopolitan among many others. The piece fed into my interest (no pun intended) in statistics and information as artistic material.

Rounding out the exhibition were Jean Chen’s Food Coloring Photographs and live tattoo applications during the opening; a rather pornographic video featuring fruit by JD Beltran, Vita and Bryan Hewitt and Emannuelle Namont-Kouznetsov; and a presentation from the National Bitter Melon Council including videos, small cultures a manual “Better Living through Bitter Melon”. I know this vegetable by the name “bitter gourd” as a very strong Indian side-dish to be enjoyed in small doses.

The exhibition will remain open through Thursday, February 24 with an artist talk and closing reception that evening.

Zimoun and Jim Haynes at Swissnex

In mid-January, I had the opportunity to see a performance by Swiss artist and instrument-maker Zimoun and local artist Jim Haynes at Swissnex here in San Francisco.

Swissnex is tucked away on quiet block in a “neutral zone” between the FInancial District, Chinatown and North Beach (an area I enjoy passing through on some of my long walks). The space is very minimal and stark white, with bits of the structural architecture and industrial quality of the building present. Within this space, a large array of music-making machinery was set up. One one side was Zimoun’s very minimal instrumentation, and on the other the chaotic array of gear and elements that would make up Haynes’ performance.

Zimoun’s instrument was incredibly simple, a series of cardboard boxes on top of which were mounted ping-pong balls on motorized arms. The boxes served as resonant chambers for the excitation of the ping-ping balls.


[Click to enlarge.]

The performance unfolded as simply as the instrument itself. First, one of the five units began to vibrate, producing a low rumbling sound. Gradually the other ball+motor+box elements entered the mix, producing an odd harmony of machine noises. Out of this combination, I heard a higher-pitched metallic sound. I am not sure if this came directly from the machinery of the instrument, or was an acoustic artifact from the interaction of the different sounds. That is one of the interesting things about having such a minimal concept behind a piece, it allows one to focus on the output and explore minute details that would often be lost in a more complex performance. The piece continued as continuous sound, without much in the way of change or development, for about twenty minutes. The combination of the sound and visual environment allowed for a few minutes of peaceful detachment and I was able to experience it purely as signal and image processing without social context.

Jim Haynes’ performance was a sharp contrast to Zimoun, both aurally and visually. His table was covered with a diverse array of audio devices and lab equipment.

[Click to enlarge.]

At first, I took the metal column and rings to be a custom-made theremin of sorts before realizing that it was the rings and tower familiar from countless science classes.

After an initial burst of loud noise and feedback (which reassuringly let us all know that “yes, this thing is on”), the sound unfolded as an exploration of traditional elements, notably fire, air and earth. He opened with fire, specifically from the flame of a lit candle. He latter added sand, which poured from a bottle he placed on the metallic rings so that the sand could gradually fall out onto a contact microphone. While Zimoun’s performance invited detachment, Haynes’ required close attention. Many of the sounds that emerged seem closely related to the elemental sources: from the fire a series of crackling sounds and wind sounds from the excited air, and from the sand a sea of granular noises that could at times seem like liquid. But there were other sounds as well, the sound of ambient radio static, something akin to vinyl noise, a high-pitched shaking sound, and metallic rattling. Whether these were directly from the fire and sand or from the BOSS Dr. Sample and associated effects boxes is unclear.

This performance was in many ways a preview for Zimoun’s exhibition at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) which opened a few days later. That exhibition is still ongoing and will close on on February 22nd. Follow the link for more details.