Art

I <3 SF (I Love SF), Driftwood Salon

The show I <3 SF (where “<3” is the the common emoticon for heart that may or may not appear properly in this print) is closing today at Driftwood Salon, but we take a little time today to look back on my visit to the opening of the show. It would have hard to not attend a show that features on the compact but diverse city we call home. It was scheduled to coincide with the 155th anniversary of the founding of the City and County of San Francisco on June 11, 1856, and features several artists’ interpretations of life in the city as a general concept but details and subject matter unique to San Francisco. There are street scenes, architectural details, references to cultural history, and some that are simply “tributes”.

The “centerpiece” of the exhibition was a large painted cardboard origami piece by Joe Spear with the show title “I <3 SF” emblazoned on the side, about where the US emblem might go on a fighter jet.


[Joe Spear’s metal origami in foreground. Rebecca Kerlin in background.]

On the wall behind the origami one can see several pieces by Rebecca Kerlin, whose works featuring the highways and other infrastructure of our region and my own neighborhood in particular have often been featured on this site. The three selections on the wall are from her “Constructions” series, with the large “Underpass Under Construction in Blue” pieces and the smaller “Underpass Under Construction in Orange” depicting the freeway approaching the Bay Bridge over 4th Street.


[Detail of Rebecca Kerlin’s Underpass Under Construction in Orange.]

Driftwood Salon is itself in an interesting location on a side street in SOMA near the Central Freeway, so it seems appropriate that Kerlin’s work has been featured in multiple shows here.

Jun Han Kim’s pieces, including the photorealistic A View of Sunset, SF #4 also take on the literal sights and neighborhoods of the city.


[Jun Han Kim]

Here we see the edge of the quieter and often grayer Sunset District from the Great Highway on the Pacific coast. It is an interesting part of the city that feels quite distant from the downtown. It was placed in the exhibition next to a very contrasting painting by Mei-Ying Dell’Aquila.


[Mei-Ying Dell’Aquila.]

Here we see a more surreal image of the downtown financial district, with a figure who is at once the Statue of Liberty, a cartoon superhero and a fashionably dressed urban denizen crossing the street.

Two very different pieces by Greg PNUT Galinsky reference music and architecture of the city without specific locations.


[Greg PNUT Galinsky]

This first piece suggests jazz and brings to mind the frequent jam sessions around the city – but the image also has a very iconic and industrial quality with its sparse clean lines. The clean black lines are used quite differently in this piece which is painted on glass. The reference to the city here is a bit less clear, though the use of weathered wood in the frame reflects the older architecture in the city and a recent trend in local art.


[Greg PNUT Galinsky]

The direct reference in these pieces by Lady Millard are also a bit more obscure, except for the title “Fog City”.


[Lady Millard.]

But they do pay homage to street art, and to the cartoon-like elements that seem be part of international urban art and culture. Such images could be at home in a gallery in large cities in Asia as there are in San Francisco, and perhaps represent the city’s place in a larger “Pacific urban” cultural landscape.

Indeed, part of what made this exhibition interesting is that the collection of different views on the city reflect my own interests in infrastrcture, urban landscape, music, fashion, etc – but each taken in more specialized ways by the individual artists.

The exhibition will remain on display for today (July 9) at Driftwood Salon (39 Isis Street) with a closing reception this evening.

No Fooling, We Mean It! – McLoughlin Gallery

“No Fooling, We Mean It!” at The McLoughlin Gallery is a show that is simultaneously playful and serious. The cavernous space of the gallery plays host to several large-scale works by sculptors David Middlebrook, Jeff Schomberg and Doug Thielscher. Each of the sculptors has a different focus, Schomberg on metal, Thielscher on stone, and Middlebrook on mixed materials. But all three present very serious well-constructed and polished piece (“no fooling”) with a sense of humor and fun (“fooling”).  Additionally, all three are local artists, working and residing in the extended Bay Area.

The overall presentation has a sparseness, with lots of empty space and exposure of the gallery’s bare concrete walls that make it easy to focus on a single piece at any given moment. Even the larger stone works are not crowded and blend with structure of the space. I was most immediately drawn to Schomberg’s metal work, and in particular his pair of geometric wall pieces, Hinged and Unhinged.

[Jeff Schomberg, Hinged (2009).  Found metal objects in steel frame.  Image courtesy of McLoughlin Gallery.]

[Jeff Schomberg, Uninged (2009).  Found metal objects in found frame assemblage.  Image courtesy of McLoughlin Gallery. Click to enlarge.]

The rectangular frames serve as a boundary between the space of the gallery and the empty space within the pieces. Inside, each object is given room to be seen separately, such as the large circle in Unhinged or the intricate thin metal lines in both pieces that remind of my street maps. Indeed, the combination of geometric elements and metal coincide with my own focus on urban landscape and infrastructure. (See the similar elements in yesterday’s Wordless Wednesday post.) The circular elements seem particularly prominent in contrast to the mostly straight-line shapes of the found-metal components. Still other objects manage to retain their original functional shape and industrial history from before they became art. His mixed-media piece Trumbull takes the industrial theme one step further. An old rusted fuse box has been combined with a video of a fireplace and reassembled into a new piece of machinery. It is futuristic, in that delightful dystopian sort of way, even as it looks back on earlier electrical technology.

[Jeff Schomberg, Trumbull (2011).  Fuse box with video.  Image courtesy of McLoughlin Gallery.  Click image to enlarge.]

These pieces, however, do stand apart within the overall exhibit. If there is one theme that cuts across all of the artists, it is “human-like forms that really aren’t human.” Among Schomberg’s metal sculptures are a series of small human-like figures with heads shaped like pipes or other pieces of hardware – probably the most humorous of his offerings. David Middlebrook’s assemblages have an organic look about them and some such as King of Things seem like they could get up and walk around. Think of Terry Gilliam’s cartoons or some of the creatures from the 1970s animated film Fantastic Planet.

[David Middlebrook, King of Things (2010).  Bronze, aluminum, Indian gibble, cast expoxy.  Image courtesy of McLoughlin Gallery.  Click image to enlarge.]

The bronze box that serves as the base for the large stone egg in Middlebrook’s Carbon was an interesting touch. Doug Thielsher’s stone sculptures are the most directly figurative, but even here the figures are quite distorted, as in the two marble heads of The Ninth Circle that melt into one another. Thielsher’s sculptures were most noticeable for their use of the gallery space. From a distance, they seem like well-placed classical sculpture in a traditional art museum – and indeed they all draw from biblical or mythological themes. Up close, one sees the more surreal and humorous nature. Again, the one that most resonated for me was the most geometric. In Cain #3, the detached hand is almost lost underneath the large white cube and the black dot.  Similarly, the hand seems to disappear into the large black cube of Cain #1.

[Doug Thielscher, Cain #3 (2006).  Carrara and Belgian black marble.  Image courtesy of McLoughlin Gallery. ]

The exhibit opened, appropriately, on April 1, and will remain on display though May 21. For more information about the exhibition and visiting, visit the gallery’s website.

Report from Spring Open Studios, Art Explosion

Open Studios has become a semi-annual experience for me since moving to San Francisco in 2008. Each time, I frenetically go from studio to studio in my guise as a reviewer and collector, seeing large amounts of work and interacting with artists. This time the tables were turned, as I was presenting my own photography work as part of the Spring Open Studios at Art Explosion. So rather than reviewing art, I will be reviewing the experience of presenting art, and interacting with viewers. Art Explosion is composed of two large buildings of artists’ studios in the ambiguous industrial neighborhood between the Mission and Potrero Hill. It was often one of the first stops on my Open Studio tours, and the small open studios were and supportive community were a natural choice for presenting my work.

I had two walls of an open studio space, along with additional space in the main hall and one piece in the entranceway (every artist had a piece here as part of a “sampler” wall). You can see the three walls in the images below (click on the small images to enlarge).



[Click images to view full size]

In all, I had 16 pieces featured. Additionally, I made a few “mini editions” of some of the pieces (4×6 inches) and had two video presentations of works that were not physically part of the show.

Over the three main days of Open Studios (and an additional Saturday the week after), I sat and waited as people walked by and sometimes stopped to view my work, and occasionally ask questions or give feedback. Some walked through without stopping to look, others spent a couple of minutes viewing intently without saying a word, or maybe a quick “very nice work” before wandering off. But a decent number of people did ask questions or more detailed responses. The most common questions I got were about the locations of the photographs, i.e., “Where was this one taken?” All the pieces I presented were from the Bay Area, New York or Shanghai, and discussing the locations or having viewers try to guess which was which became part of the interaction. There were definitely clues in each, in particular the more exotic architecture of the Shanghai high-rises and the distinctive San Francisco “No Parking” signs. Very few people were able to recognize the half-demolished overpass from the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco featured in the largest piece, though this one was among pieces most positively received.

The other pieces that seemed to receive the most intention were Asians.com (Invisible Bike) with the big orange cat, and Dragon (Moganshan Lu) with the dragon mural, half-demolished building and garbage-strewn street. I did an experiment moving these two pieces around after the first day to see if it was the location or the content that attracted people, but they still seemed to get the most attention. I had not predicted that Dragon would get so much attention – or eventually be the first large piece to be sold! It was one of those interesting surprises when exposing the work to public viewing.

I also had an interesting conversation about the location in 5348, one of two pieces in the show featuring a model. I have used that building on multiple occasions, with its mysterious mess of hanging cables.

It turns out that someone who came through and saw the show was familiar with the building and the people who owned it, and informed me that the structure with the cables was in fact for lifting large objects, freight, etc., but had not been in use for a while. A group of viewers said that the big orange cat was part of a scavenger hunt they participated in.

]Some people seemed more drawn to the aesthetics of individual pieces rather than the subject or context – like me, the focused on lines and textures. Among these viewers, 7059 (Blue) got the most attention. A few viewers did try to look for “musical” elements within my work after learning that music was my primary art form – they noticed repeated patterns and motives in the lines.

Overall, it was a good experience. I was able to show my photographs in physical form to a large number of people and received quite a bit of positive feedback. Among those who came to see the show were a few of the artists I have reviewed here on CatSynth in the past, which was very gratifying; and many friends came by over the four days I was showing. Selling a large piece and a handful of miniatures, of course, nice as well. Interestingly, I also managed to sell some music CDs. Some things I may do differently in future shows is have a larger variety of miniatures on hand – e.g., at least one of every piece I think can be reasonably represented in a small size (some just don’t look good small). I may also experiment with different types of framing and mounting – this was probably the hardest part of preparing for the show.

One unfortunate aspect of presenting my own work is that it left me very little time to explore and see what others were doing. I did take a few breaks to see friends as well as discover new work, though not at the level of detail I would have done in previous shows.

You can see images from Open Studios at this flickr set, or visit my page at Art Explosion.

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.

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.

Paul Cowan, Cameron Soren, Amy Yao, Jancar Jones Gallery

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by Jancar Jones Gallery to see the current exhibition featuring works by Paul Cowan, Cameron Soren and Amy Yao. One the things I like about visiting is the gallery itself, a small but inviting room tucked away on a rather idiosyncratic block of Mission Street in SOMA. Despite being such a small space, the exhibitions are always sparse and calming. (You can see previous reviews of exhibits at Jancar Jones via this link.)

[Installation View: Paul Cowan, Cameron Soren, Amy Yao. Image courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery.]

Perhaps the pieces that most caught my interest were Paul Cowan’s two paintings featuring musical notes, both with the label Untitled, 2010. Each features a single quarter note on five-line staff without a clef. Assuming an implicit treble clef (which is admittedly a big assumption), the notes would be A and G, respectively. The “A” is on a very sparse canvas with red lines, similar to something I might have had to draw out myself during early years of studying music. The “G”, by contrast is filled in with vibrant color fields, though once again red is the most prominent color.

[Paul Cowan: Untitled, 2010, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches; and Untitled, 2010, oil on canvas, 18×14 inches.  Images courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery.]

The other piece that caught my attention was Amy Yao’s Dealing Don’t Cry, which featured three small bits of newspaper fastened to a horizontal wooden dowel. The bits of text on two of the paper bits feature the text “Dealing” and “Don’t Cry” – I am always interested in the use of text, especially when the context is missing. My understanding in this work is the title is derived from the material, rather than text being found to fit the title.

[Amy Yao, Dealing Don’t Cry, 2010, wood dowel, newspaper.  Image courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery.]

Rounding out the exhibition was Cameron Soren’s untitled video installation depicting the gallery on the opening on January 7, 6-9PM.

This is the final weekend for the exhibition – it closes on February 12 – so stop by if you happen to be nearby.

Henri Cartier-Bresson at SFMOMA

Today we review the major retrospective of photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson at the San Francisco Museum of Modern of Art (SFMOMA). It will be closing in two weeks on January 30.

The exhibition focuses primarily on the period between 1932 and 1973, a rather dramatic sweep of the middle of the 20th century. It was interesting to see the world change in his images, from scenes that were already nostalgic in the 1930s to the beginnings of a familiar world in the 1960s and 1970s. Overall, the exhibition can be seen in two ways, as an artistic study of a master photographer or as a historical document of a photojournalist. The arrangement of the exhibition, into several chronological and geographical periods, followed by sections on beauty, portraiture and confrontation with the modern world, emphasize these two aspects of his work.

In some ways, the latter speaks more strongly to me, even though it is not the aspect most emphasized by the curators or most reviews. For example, among his many images depicting scenes from France is this one stark image with a spiral staircase and a blur of bicyclist in the background. One can focus on the shapes and textures and the motion.

[Henri Cartier-Bresson, Hyères, France, 1932; gelatin silver print; 7 11/16 x 11 7/16 in. (19.6 x 29.1 cm); Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York; ©2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris.]

In another depicting an alleyway Paris, the human element is left out altogether in favor of vegetation and architectural elements. I found myself quite captivated by an image of a highway in New York City in 1947, that I am pretty sure was the Henry Hudson Parkway. He presents several abstracted images of the human body as object of beauty, which seem to have more in common with architectural images and quite separate from his portraiture or more documentary photos.

But it is the latter that makes up the majority of the exhibition, with several segments featuring his early travels as a photographer and then his experiences as a photojournalist. He often made multiple trips to the same places and captured the changes. For example, he had been Shanghai in 1948 during the war the led to establishment of the Peoples Republic of China, and took this photograph of a surging crowd.

[Henri Cartier-Bresson, Shanghai, China, 1948, printed 1971; gelatin silver print; 13 x 19 1/2 in. (33 x 49.5 cm); Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of Robert B. Menschel; © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris.]

He later returned to China in 1958 on assignment to document scenes from the Great Leap Forward. His photographs from this series depict worker rituals and banners with Communist slogans. My favorite was translated as “Work like the devil to change the face of China in most of the regions.” I like that the Chinese leaders took the time to be realistic by suggesting only most of the regions.

One series where the documentary crossed over into art photography for me was his 1960s depiction of employees at Banker’s Trust in New York. The photographs are very crisp and high contrast, they radiate a sense of modernism. One can also get a sense of wry humor in the faces of some of the workers. Perhaps I am just channeling Mad Men through the images. It’s also an interesting contrast to some of his other photographs from the United States, which through his lens seems a foreign country just as China would be. This scene outside a polling place in Indiana certainly seems very remote:

[Henri Cartier-Bresson, Greenfield, Indiana, 1960; gelatin silver print; 10 7/16 x 15 3/8 in. (26.5 x 39.1cm); Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer ; ©2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris.]

Another photograph depicting the Daughters of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, is downright creepy.

There is a tension between old and new that seems to be run through his work. He seems most fond of scenes of traditional life at a slower pace, whether in his native France or elsewhere. But he doesn’t shy away from modern scenes and modern notions of beauty, as described and the final section of the exhibition does focus on the changing landscape of Europe and Asia, with industrial and urban scenes that contrast sharply with the slower-pace traditional settings in some of his more well-known images. In addition to images from factories, there was a photograph of a billboard in Tokyo, for example, that were taken decades before my visit but seem at once familiar representations of the modern world.

One that seems to transcend the different aspects of his work and career is the image of a woman peering out a door in Calle Cuahametoczin, Mexico City. Indeed, this photograph is the title image for the exhibition.

Cartier-Bresson’s long career and fame also gave him access to make more formal portraits of noted figures from the middle of the 20th Century.

[Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Paris, 1945; gelatin silver print; 13 9/16 x 9 1/8 in. (34.4 x 23.2 cm); Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the photographer; © 2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos.]

The portrait of Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie (Irène Joliot-Curie is the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie) is very serious and composed. On one hand, one sees the expressions of a great dynasty of scientists, but at the same time, their difficult story during World War II – Cartier-Bresson had his own dark experience as a prisoner during the war. Each of his portraits were unique – the 1965 photograph Jean-Marie Le Clezio with his wife has the modern streamlined look of the time that I particularly like from French films of the era. The warm and joyous portrait of artist Saul Steinberg with his cat was probably my favorite in this series.

The exhibition will remain at SFMOMA through January 30. It will then travel to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (February 16, to May 15, 2011).