Oaktown United: Taking 1 4 the Team
A trip through the Grand Avenue galleries this month may discourage you from visiting this urban burb another time but lets review.
Of the three fronts east of Broadway and Grand only Mercury 20 stands out with several conceptual works by Arthur Huang and Mary V Marsh. The Unread Book Project and Coffee Diary are interesting enough earnest ideas that you'd think would be great. The problem is that the presentation at Mercury 20 is so much like the neighboring Knick Knack shops on the that the point is swallowed up in oblivion. It's too bad because this work would have made a better impression if it was curated with a little more attention. Upstairs a great periodic table of food and drink printed on unvarnished canvas hangs on the wall - very similar to Damien Hirst's OCD periodic table of pharmaceauticals. This piece would have been more interesting if the table with decorative flowerpot crap in the middle of the room were removed - it deserved more a viewing space.
Several other shows appeared on this street but I don't have time to talk about how much they sucked. Rather than write about these I decided to buy a sledhammer and pound on some cement pier to a couple Rollins Band tracks to clear my violent thoughts...Ahhh, much Better now!!!
Moving over to the Telegraph road area Mama Buzz gallery is exhibiting images of (I suppose local) people in front of their homes. The running theme of different people in front of different houses. Mama Buzz cafe at least sets aside an exhibition space for unimpeded viewing. Despite the rustic appearance of the place the effort to maintain the gallery pays off.
Outside the timeless visual elements of figure and architecture, Julie Placencia the photographer is looking to make a contemporary statement about real estate prices. Pictures of residents from Oakland's Chester Street (Lower Bottom) neighborhood share the same composition but modulate enough to draw interest. To the side an audio presentation including sounds and interviews compliments these and a collage above the sitting area. The point being made is that this community faces gentrification and prices for a family home are going up.
For contrast to that experience have a look at Esteban Sabar and the Johansson Projects. These places are much cleaner but too jam packed to even bother looking. You might think that Esteban Sabar is the more tragic of the two since there is so much crap that anything good gets eclipsed but this place is a freaking abortion! - french salon style no less...
Most of the Sabar offerings use Kincaid color palettes similar to what you might see at one of the commercial Galleries west of Powell Street in San Francisco like Lutece. The thing is that Esteban Sabar is just such a poor gallery with a poor stable of offerings and there is no sense in criticizing the brain damaged. So let's just be grateful we have a little slice of Napa on 23rd street and move on...
The real tragedy on 23rd street is the Thread Show at Johansson Projects. Some fantastic artists are presented together as using similar media- string - but like the media the theme wears thin. The problem again is curation, too much of a good thing in one place with little room to breathe. Not only is the good work suffocated by the low ceiling but by the clot of everything else. The craft focus made sense in the 2005 Summer knitting/sewey shows in Chelsea or at the 2002/2004 Whitney Biennials' but this reduction has been boiled to a such a thickness that everything begins to taste bad. A bad smell blankets the sweetness of any conceptual voice. The similarity of the media only serves to deemphasize any tension between fine-art and craft. The tightrope Thread walks is too thin to make it to the other side. Hopefully they darned their nets and will make it up in the next show. Less is more people!
It's too bad since the greatness of work by Kathryn Spence and Devorah Sperber struggle unnecessarily to be heard. I've seen the works being shown by these two in other venues to grand effect and the resulting arrangements here seems diminishing. See this show with a shaker of salt but avoid the back rooms, the last ones will suck your soul into art center purgatory.
The other side of this Oakland tragedy are a couple successes. Egopark features Christopher Loomis' MDF sculptures which are probably the most current and emergent sort of things being shown in the east bay. Hipster constructions using cheap-ass building materials may have the same staying power of sewn art of the past years but it's interesting for now. Not only that but they did provide just enough breathable air for an escape to 21 Grand.
If you're going to start a gallery and don't know how to work in challenging circumstances there is no shame in showing in a white cube. Art should not have to suffer being shown among knick-knacks or intruding architectural elements. For example the Seam-ingly show at 21 Grand pairs a textile installation with photography cut into strips that are woven back together. Two ideas fill this expansive space to great effect. The overall blue of the woven landscape photography of Cynthia Yardley integrates with the everywhere enormous textile feature by Sara Wagner. Yardley's landscape works are looser and more cloudlike than Korean artist Youn Woo Chaa's woven portraits but stand on there own amid the billowing and careening fabric hanging above and around the gallery. Better luck next month but if you are a trooper you'll tramp over to Oaktown to sort the wheat from the chaff this August.
Mercury 20 is located on 25 Grand Avenue a few blocks from
Egopark on 492 23rd Street
Buzz Gallery is around the corner at 2318 Telegraph Road
While 21 Grand sits @ 416 25th Street.
