If you're wondering why the hell Triple Base was replaced by a travel agency step into the kiosk space and book a flight to Baghdad. Yes, Baghdad. The exuberant female voice-over describes what you will see there: cradle of civilization, etc, etc. As you stand in what looks like a cross between ATM booth and quick-stop self service booth.
A closer look invites you to the kiosk's booking screen amid printed brochures and backlit lucite signage glowing with the airplane logo of Abidin Travel in magenta, white and deep blue. The website alows you to book flights, ground transportation and cars. Four color travel brochures are available for the taking as well as a variety of color promotional posters of sights in and around the city. Each are emblazoned with the tagline "Welcome to Baghdad" with additional fineprint at the bottom of the abidintravels website as well as the artist Adel Abidin - http://www.adelabidin.com. An image of someone playing the bongos wearing a gray "ARMY" t-shirt, a sniper's nest in a guard tower, or a man with a bandaged jaw are included here.
On the wall around a corner a video these images were lifted from plays showing gunshots to the head, cars in flames and various elements of military or insurgent carnage. The intell or skinny on this whole venture is that Triple Base with CCA made this happen. Like most new media setups, it invites a level of interactivity with residual rewards for taking the printed materials or clicking through the presentation also online http://abidintravels.com/.
What makes it extra special is the context of having it as a store front in the San Francisco Mission district instead of part of an art show where you are liable to expect this sort of mayhem. The level of public interaction this space has with the street cloaks as well as magnifies the irridescence of the work. The mundane action of walking into a store front instantly becomes a surreally creative act on part of the viewer. The pile of posters stacked against one wall emulates Felix Gonzales-Torres work of black and white posters in that they are of everyday images of war and they are available for the taking. The fact that everyday images of war have repenetrated the vox populi adds a new direction to this method of presentation. Here the act of taking away more thoroughly integrates the banal with surreal resulting in it marking you just a bit as you leave. This is engaging, interesting, disturbing and in the words of George Tenet "A SLAM DUNK".
Ratio 3 and Triple Base were pretty crowded on opening night last month and as with other venues continue to demonstrate how vital the Mission is to San Francisco’s art scene. Yeah there are a few hits and misses in other places but even the expected misses like Lincart can have a good show or two – this month isn't too bad. There are a couple times I get exasperated walking into that space but when that happens again here are some antidotes.
Ratio 3 is a real breath of fresh air down in the Upper Mission. Last months show was a traditional group exhibition with a mix of very enthralling works ranging from 2-d to sculpture but it has gotten more exciting. This months show with Takeshi Murata is literally a visual ooze of video delay, color and appropriation that is presented as cinema. Two abstract programs are presented separately in the large and small room with a title reminiscent of album titles by Japanese bands like Masonna, Merzbow, or Hanatarashi. Much like those musical constructions Escape Spirit VideoSlime is basically an abstract piece. The first vid you see walking in includes footage of primates. These slowly moving figurative and portrait studies melt like purple, pink and green butter before your very eyes. The effect itself looks something like a cross between slow key framing and digital delay . If you’ve watched a digital video you might see less severe version of key framing artifacts appear. For example you might see a section of a movie where pixels from two frames overlap like layers of peeling paint. In the second room the primate images are switched with images or Sylvester Stallone in Rambo or Predator (I don’t recall which) that begin to crumble into a video blue and electric red strobing spot that seemingly threatens to burn a nice toasty hole into your retinas.
The music of Richard Beatty accompanies these churning miasmata of image and color very well creating a fully integrated piece. After some well spent time with it on the bench provided you can walk away with a nice cold ethereal buzz. Go for a visit open your eyes and pour it in.
Walking into the last show at Triple Bass the room was filled with more people than installation. Returning during the day when nobody is around reveals the installation elements more clearly. Part of the drywall was removed and plaster mounds and impressions were added to the other sides. Other sections of wall were painted with a soul sucking shade of charcoal black, decorated with flowers or broken pieces of drywall shaped into the form of mountains or sconces holding more charcoal. Random clatterings syncopate with a couple flashing lights from an ipod lying on the floor. Above the head in one corner float mini plastic gummy clouds which jutted from the wall a few inches.
Called a Dialogue between Sound and Space this installation by Drew Bennett is intended to confront the traditionally anti-social nature of visual art.
Sounds interesting right? Maybe it might have been but this is the closest to 2-d an installation could ever be. Sitting on a stool provided in the middle of this nearly empty room the wall dressings only appear slightly decorative lacking the enveloping presence stated in the release. Don't believe my assessment look at the picture on the website. Half the people in the room look board, even with a band in front of them.
Stronger visually was the view of people passing the empty doorway on 24th street going about their business in the Mission. There is potential here but not this month.
Ratio 3 is nestled away on Stevenson Alley between Valencia, and 14th street
Triple Bass is located at 3041 24th Street near Treat Street.
It's hard to avoid reading when looking at Richard Nagler's photography especially at his show at George Krevsky Gallery this month. Less didactic and more integrated into the image than say Krueger's photo statements Nagler waits for his images to take on their final structure in real time. A word on the side of a building whether it be stencil or graffiti can serve as the seed for a picture. The ambiguity of commercial signage is also used as part of an image created by waiting. Where Bresson's photos might be considered a more kinetic version of image-hunting waiting on a street corner for the someone’s presence to interact with the visual concrete of a word can understandably require the patience of a Montana fly fisherman. Begun in 1977 Nagler’s linkage of text tags to figures range into the present day. They capture people and parts of Oakland who are no longer there as well as places in Miami. A black and white from 1981 shows a shadow of man in a hat floating under a sign reading "Downtown". This combination creates an alienating but noir-ishly haunting composition. From this year a man stands at the opening of a chain-link fence adorned on top with razor wire to the right of "VICTORY" emblazoned on the back of a one-story white building. Is this “Mission Accomplished on the home front? While an interaction with text and figure may seem like an incidental setup each photo captures more than simple verite. The character of the figure functions as the centerpiece of a narrative which includes a call-and-response dialogue with the text. For example a woman walking past a store front in a bright red coat has her head framed by a circle with the word "special" painted in it. Like winning the lottery this woman for a split-second has become a red-clad angel only because she just happened to be walking by and be of the right height. In photography, waiting yields meticulous result and Nagler continues to illustrates how many possibilities are generated in a simple arrangement. This is a quiet show with a great return. George Krevsky Gallery is located on the 2nd Floor of 77 Geary Street - downtown San Francisco.
While I was standing at the SFMOMA book shop a week back I heard a woman talking to her friend how draining a trip to the oakland galleries can be. Saying she goes over there with some hope of seeing but never achieving that goal. Consequently this anonymous person told her friend she never goes over there anymore. I've heard this from others but hey you never know what you'll find if you look right?
Not to be confounded by naysayers in the world as well as the voices in my head I rode over to the Telegraph and Grand area to see what was shaking. Having learned my lesson at the last Murmur I avoided everything on Grand Street armed with my new rule - sorry Mercury 20. Never go to see art in bars or gift shops. Despite those challenges one show stood out on this non-murmur Friday trip.
At the Johansson Projects two different approaches to sculpture by Nathan Lynch and Michael Meyers as well as drawings by Amanda Hughen fill the space. Nathan Lynch a ceramacists teaching at Mills attempts to subvert expressions of social and psychological power by creating a trophy room of abtracted waterfowl. The artist's bullshit aside he successfully recreates the lameness of duck decoys, trophy rooms and taxidermed prey. If you've ever been to one of those naturalist art shows featuring pictures of people fly fishing, sculptures of bears and wooden fowl the feeling can be demoralizing. The intention isn't completely realized until you see the big moose head in the back.
Meyers' sculptures reach in a similar conceptual direction but towards the aim of creating abstracted readymade forms. With plaster, wood and chords they look alot like the ends toothpaste tubes out of which solid yet sensual looking blobs of hardened plaster (molded in a balloons) ooze forth.
Drawings by Amanda Hughen round out this grouping. These pair with Meyers' constructions as either organic or fantastically technological but in more of a pointless abstract finished way. Flurries of honeycombs, dots and rays form a kaliedescope of plankton or diatomic forms that are both intricate and colorful. The sheer assault of line work while ambiguous results finally like the sculpture in very active decorative form.
Other highlights of my trip to Oakland?... none.
Accept... Ego Park which sported a locked door and an inanely patronizing artist statement by Miriam Wolodarski and
Jeff Stratford which out of my own personal frustration yielded these words of commentary...
(Mind you This is an unedited spew about a show statement so it is a rant - I feel it's justified since the gallery wasn't open when it should be though. ...And if you're going to run a gallery, keep it open for fuck sake so people can come in from out of town and have look when they expect it will be open... sheeesh! - ok here goes...)
The show I didn't see is about the "adaptability and grace of birds." What the hell does that mean really?
Its moments like these where it makes sense that any venue looking to show art vets artists' work by asking for a statement. Not sure why this one passed jury. It suggests in some half-assed Whitman flourish that
birds are more honorable creatures than primates. "BIRDS!! Where did they come from, in a blink of the universal eye?" Asking these obtuse questions doesn't help your art monologue. Especially when someone has come out to see the work and the gallery door is locked. More to the point though this is obtuse reasoning.
Why??? Well because if an artist statement exists as a form of discourse isn't it unnecessary for it to ask naive questions without any indication that some other discourse (science) has attempted to answer it? Frankly it's patronizing and stupid. What is more graceful about birds than humans? They're basically the runty feathered remains of the great Dinosaur race which carry mites and harbor a similar reserve of ferocious aggressiveness as humans just smaller. The rest of the statement spews a holistic jumble of ideas that wants to go everywhere but can't even get the birds idea off the ground. Guess it would have shed more light if I got to see the show. You think?
I am curious to see how a show "wonders about photorealism, addition"... (sic???) ", ambition, the irreversibility of time, the disappearing Artic, the beginning of the creation of God, memory of existential adventure, looking as a moral act, absolute aesthetocracy, spontaneous structural evolution, and women" Without seeing this show I can imagine there will be a bunch of different shit on the walls and floor leaving me to sort out the flim flam being thrown my way.
As I finished scanning this bogus handbill a very stressed guy walked by complaining into the empty lot and my ears that he was an outcast in the place he grew up and that the people taking away his home and community should leave. I gladly obliged and headed back to San Francisco.
To be fair I did return the following week to have a look at the show. It included a couple references to the conflicts in the middle east. An image painted on the wall depicted a woman crying over here husband's lifeless head. On the baseboard paper hearts were dropped. Facing that was another Abu Ghraib reference whose depiction included pencil scrawlings of the memetically expanding icon that spilled out from the wall in repetition. Sort of like a dot matrix printer spewing the same image - commentary on the continuous render of the image? In the window dollhouse-small folders sit in tiny boxes with writing on them. Other highlights include almost featureless grayish paintings measuring about an inch by 3/4 inch. These go for $200 and might appeal as a decorative element. Other similar paintings adorn the walls of slightly larger size. Further back are more colorful and denser drawings including figurative and abstract references. Not a whole lot of birds are referred to imagistically nor is there any relationship made between the pedestrian war imagery and the intricate book illustrations in the back. ???
The only conclusions I can draw here is that Oakland art galleries like the part of town it is in is still a work in progress.
Johansson Projects is on 2300 Telegraph Road in Oakland California
Ego Park is a couple doors down on 23rd street
Language in this time as in others undergoes change. Evolving definitions and spliced meanings in turn change the shape of reality for those immersed in it. Linguistic and traditional baggage intermixes in the cultural mind to create morphed meanings that render a new perspective. Using sculptural metaphors Mike Arcega generates puns, historical allegory, and commentary based on this form of memetic mutation.
While FAMSF has chosen not to acquire new work it does make the honorable effort to exhibit locally based contemporary artists like Arcega in comparison to its collection - this when of course it isn't exhibiting clothes. There is a lot to be desired about the design content at the deYoung and despite the fact the oceanic collection is primarily a morbid set of 19th century souvenir junk from the old-money-basement the conscious curatorial decision with the Arcega show is to facillitate a visual interaction with the still worthwhile cultural elements suggested in their bric-a-brac.
With Homing Pidgin Mike Acega, an American of Filipino decent has constructed visual dialogues to the oceanic designs: a grouping of spears, blades and clubs from the deYoung's collection. Creating his own axe or club handle shapes he's nested intricate miniature forms of ship decks and buildings. Battleships, nightclubs, cranes and cargo-hold containers sit delicately balanced atop these uprighted hybrid forms. The result shows the tools of an old oceanic empire that spanned thousands of miles supporting the perched dwellings and shipping of our new global hegemony.
To further emphasize a relationship with the larger collection Arcega's sculptures are displayed in cases facing another display with several nasty looking blades on sticks. Regardless of whether they were made after the collapse of the Polynesian Empire they still hold that cultural artifact. Broad blades boldly demo the technology of the times and confronts these intricately introspective models of modern habitation and navigation.
Complimenting this bit of creative tension is a ~12-foot high spork carved out of wood in the corner along with a map of the South Pacific assembled from slices of desiccated spam hanging in a vitrine on the wall. The spork being a hybrid between a fork and a spoon is often used for camping and travel to consolidate use. Spam also evoking travel (or gastrointestinal distress) is best consumed when you have a choice between opening a can or a norway rat in the hold of your ship. The spork expanded to the size of an older weapon of conquest and a MRE-meat diced into a map of a dead empire absurdly tweaks the historical relationship but also suggests a bridge between perspectives.
Another interaction with the collection and historical-take makes fair-use use of stained-glass windows. Using the context of the Spanish colonial past, Arcega intertwines images from Catholic and Oceanic traditions by applying tinted cut vinyl to the windows of the Museum's main pavilion. Stencil shapes of mask forms or other brightly colored patterns interact with the natural light to festive effect. The permanence of the stained-glass motif though is intermittently disrupted by the impermanence of the vinyl decal.
Mike Arcega continuously demonstrates his abilities to combine metaphors with the past and present that are both dynamic and heterogenous.
The deYoung Museum is located in Golden Gate Park near 8th and Fulton streets.
In search of artistic dialog in SF? Then visit Cortland Avenue. James Orlando's work at 301 Bocana and a recent talk at Bernal Bubbles by Susanne Cockrell & Ted Purves served up meaty questions and interesting dialog. Not the talking kind with Orlando's artwork though but the kind that comes from thoughts and desires for creative objects or ideas. Orlando makes pieces that identify directly at times with work made by other artists or references a personal theme or feeling. Emulating pieces that are unattainable because of price and hanging them with paintings of dream scenes create a tone of pure romantic love - the old school kind. Anyone who has bought art within their budget but also wished they had something out of reach will understand the earnestness of this show. Most of it is arrayed with paintings and sculptural art objects that verge on romantic readymades.
Sculptural pieces mimic Kathryn Spence's monumental mud bears and fabric birds, "street artist" Barry McGee and in one case a tracing of a Picasso gravure. References to them are parts of a game of surrealist free association, like a local band covering another local band's song, or just plain adoration. While Orlando might be riffing on the ideas of art he himself appreciates it is done with the restaged oddness of Joseph Cornell. The emulation and appreciation is sweet sort of. As Cornell's art was received by movie stars of his era with awkward aprehension so to here. Orlando's earnest presentation creates tension thanks to an imperceptibly thin sheen of creepy.
You pick this up reading the placards as well as ideas for work that is described but not presented. These do not appear in the show and are suggested in concept like Ed Kienholz concept art: Deliberately suggesting its inappropriateness in paragraph form on the wall the viewer is invited to consider a piece involving folding a dead friend's clothes (not shown out of respect for the dead but discussed) and a stretched canvas turned to the wall with text on the back board suggesting a hidden masterpiece acquired for the artist's collection - the price kills the idea though ($450) ... or does it? Thinking about it some more, you don't really know if the price is for the work or how much you have to pay to take a chance and see if you are getting a well known work of art. Keinholz used to sell drawings with the price of the work on it. The initially the lowest price works with the price prominently displayed were the most valuable. Juxtapoz-type artist Ron English acquired a Keith Harring dog print once and after painting a Tyranasaurus Rex dinosaur in the middle of it using his own color-shape overlap style reduced the value of the work by half.
Orlando reasserts that a collector's participation in the artistic process is as significant as the artists activities which he expresses are ignored in practice. Marcel Duchamp's ideas about what makes an object art are well documented and discussed but in the context of Orlando's world he expresses that some artists are too invested in the commodity of art experience - He doesn't illustrate this polemically but discusses it interpersonally.
For example one piece on the floor includes picture frames, some empty, some with images that are filed in a milk crate wrapped with bungee cords ornamented with spray paint cans and empty pocket-size liquor bottles. The placard with this work reveals that some of these items might have been gifts to artists presented awkwardly but to express appreciation of their work. (possibly McGee (???) since the picture frames are similar to those he amalgamated into a mural at SFMOMA a while back.
In the other room paintings suggest a more autobiographical inward look alluding to a mother's diamond ring and teddy bear figures. With a little time and investigation this show becomes a winner.
Preceding a special night reception at 301 Bocana another in a series of artist lectures was held at Bernal Bubbles laundromat Saturday October 6th. The talk focused on the public art of Susanne Cockrell and Ted Purves who collaborated creating "The Temescal Amity Works" after having a child. Cockrell works as a professor in the First Year Program at CCA and Purves at JFK in Oakland.
The two gave a half hour talk and slide show on community gardens and distribution of fruit between residents' back yards using a cart constructed by arts handyman Andrew Bigler and art students. The actions of the piece seem to smack of a non-profit funding racket. While Cockrell & Purves assert they are interested in creating community distribution cooperatives that are intended to encourage others in the community to continue after they leave the scene can they let it go? The website says they have closed the storefront but like the mob it seems it could pull them back in.
Towards the end of the talk an audience member asked in so many words what part of what they were doing was the pure art. The answer was not particularly clear but public art is a tricky business. Recently someone related a story to me about how one of the hearts of San Francisco was defaced in SF Union Square. Personally I can't stand the Hearts of SF but speaking more broadly from that bit of disclosure if you create public art you sort of need to walk away from it so people can complete the art process. Culture influences the creation of art fairly easier than an artist can do the reverse - you take that chance against all odds.
The menacing questions persist: Can using community gardens and barter relationships as art media bear ironic fruit? Does this action demonstrate that progressive political economies are not worthwhile incubators for great or good art? To create even more successful works of this type in the future in other places it might be worth it see how this one crashes and burns or grows and thrives. Without more information another action risks being formulaic copy.
So while this is an opportunity to take some time off one thing is for sure. The hiatus will take longer than the time it takes to make Persimmon Pudding.
Bernal Bubbles is located at 397 Cortland Avenue in Bernal Heights
301 Bocana Gallery is located at the corner of Cortland and Bocana
The Temescal Amity works are documented online here http://www.amityworks.org/
Themes from popular science are mined with varying success as metaphorical devices. Understanding of the world through science in popular culture is usually done at a museum. Misako Inaoka's sculptural tableaus of animatronic birdlike figures allude to natural history, permutations in physical morphology and abstract physical examination. The show at Steven Wirtz Gallery looks like an abstracted display of an ornithological beastiary. Specimens are arranged in the suggestion of a classification. Familiar elements abound but order is confounded by a mix of egg shapes and a goulash of very different forms like pigs. This absurd Linnean taxonomy bring to mind naturalist dioramas or Darwin's Galapagoes island study of bird beak adaptations. The setup includes vegetative forms in wooden and glass display cases enhancing this impression. Branches painted in primer white extend mutely from the walls overhead while light sensitive bird figures, chirp when visited up close. Anything animorphic that is not green or a display case is painted white. The chirping and deadness of the white mingle to suggest a charmingly taxidermed zombie freak show. Self conscousness of observation in Inaoka's work seems to be a consistent theme. At Mill's it was peepholes and work at the current Queens Nails show in the mission it's a porthole in the ceiling - apparently planned before the Wirtz show. Inside the porthole at the top of a ladder reveals a mossy landscape. Less obvious gauches near the ladder portray morphed avian forms in colors that seem to meld and melt into some ambiguous elasticity. The exhibit at Wirtz seems to achieve this aim with the least amount of artifice and much more wonder. Laurie Reed's works on paper also featured at Wirtz fill the main gallery with a quietly energetic and formal tone. Large paper is scored with damp water that is very slightly tinted. Color here is barely present but is not what gives dimension to the linear composition. The wet markings have buckled the paper at the site of the painters action raising it off the flat plane of the paper creating terrestrial viens. These impose a structure which competes with the notion that these marks are just simple lines. Even under brief consideration the impression making on the surface can be clearly imagined as they buckle the flat plane. The difference in the current work of this CCA graduate with past pieces is subtle but progressive. Here Reed chooses an arena which distinguishes her work from others. Divorcing herself from the organic looking shapes she's indulged in before she chooses to completely span the page. Focusing on the generation of simple lines she manages to achieve an architectural form both grand and simple in beauty. Wirtz Gallery is located on the 3rd Floor at 49 Geary Street in San Francisco.
http://www.wirtzgallery.com
A visit to the Diego Rivera student Gallery and the SF Arts Institute offers an unexpected level of brilliant enjoyment. It is a three student show that deals with art object, pop-culture and mass media and a couple other things that I can't fully articulate right now but rather than wait for my brain to fully order what I've seen here it is...
As you walk off the courtyard into the high-ceilinged gallery nothing in particular greets you until you walk into the center of the room. Not sure if this is the intention but as soon as you are in the show’s rough charms take hold.
“FUCKIT” is spelled out in huge five-foot high letters just below the Diego Rivera mural finished in attractively colored green paint and glitter. In front is a bucket of money or rather a wastebasket. Created by Ryan Verzaal this 3-d expletive exhibits alongside two videos a large poster of a woman screaming at what looks like a 60’s rock concert and two long clear plastic bags perpetually inflated by fans. The inflated bags which hover steadily are painted with colorful horizontal lines. While it isn’t clarified the two bags seem to represent skyscrapers. One video shows three people jumping up and down on a bed in slow motion. One man dressed in a suit and holding a bouquet of flower bounces in the foreground of two women wearing short skirts and looking pretty trashy. Yikes. The second video plays like a Univision melodrama including English subtitles. The dialogue is between two men sitting at what looks like a lunch table at an institutional looking building. Interspersed within this gay-ish melodrama is jarring and relatively low-quality footage of what looks like spliced TV commercials and (is it?) a Selena concert.
The artist’s statement does not plainly describe the intentions of the work but the two words that jumped out at me were game-show and offal. Whether this is a cohesive commentary on reality shows or a youthful view of the monetary excesses there is not clear but the visuals do create an aura of melodramatic inscrutability.
If you ever wanted to see what falling ass-backwards into a brilliant idea is like check out Rives Granades photo prints hung in a crude grid along the east wall of the gallery. On the face of it these look like a montage of snapshots from a trailer park. Included with the images though is an essential explanation of the work which tells of the artists’ parents’ house being burglarized. The resulting images being shown on the wall were retrieved from their digital camera after property was located and recovered. What makes this work interesting in concept is more obvious than some of the visual elements. A lot of the pictures include scenes of people goofing off for a camera: a girlfriend, a boyfriend and a mom with some lesser characters. Mixed within this John Water’s hyper-reality are photos of porn centerfolds not only revelatory of retreated male gaze but of a warping picture plane. These images oscillate between the picture of a naked centerfold model and that of a magazine sitting on a table or a bed like some readymade object. The curvature of the magazine pages in relation to the flat picture plane warp the image of the centerfold models distending heads, limbs or bodies out of proportion. Work like this is exciting because it has the potential to create something interesting out of accidental and painful events.
Erik Wilson rounds off this show with an installation-video composed of a walk through box adorned on the inside with fabric and stuffed animal arms. It’s the "real-life" Otaku sculpture that calls a scene from Roman Polanski’s film Repulsion to mind. As one walks through the short hallway the little furry arms in the way trigger seemingly random sounds. On one end of the short passage there is a video playing, on the other a pile of $20 worth of broccoli. The video features a collage animation using elements of the stuffed animals and the hero of the show – broccoli – which appears after a fishtailed rabbit thingy is devoured by a mountain range with eyes after flying matter of factly toward it. If this exhibit doesn’t reveal a curated theme each work on its own merits bring something to the table actively incubating.
The Diego Rivera Gallery is located at the San Francisco Arts Institute to the left of the courtyard as you walk in the front door on 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco 94133 (between Jones and Leavenworth)
Circles are to squares as Noland and John's are to Joseph Albers. The ambiguity of abstraction leaves alot of wiggle room. Enough room that Ugo Rondinone's updates to Noland and Johns circles genuinely seemed fresh several years back. At Hosfelt Gallery this month Nicole Phungrasamee Fein's linear meditations create trails that generates squares or cubes which refresh abstraction of the square field. Building line after line on paper or with threads the layering is orthogonal. In 2-d painting for instance layer upon layer of paint builds a rich image (when done to that effect) the resulting overlap building a rich image. The work being shown at Hosfelt gallery suggests at least what this process would look from the "side". Each line in the image seems to represent a layer of activity arranged side-by-side. This generation of lines next to one another and repeated in one direction create the square forms in the framed work. Now I don't know if this is the intention of the artist but the impression is reinforced by the 6inch or so cubes stacked in a three-d frame. The initial presence of the work is banal. A bunch or multicolor pillows stacked neatly in a sculptural square frame almost looks like something you'd find in a department store. The pastel colors of the drawings are muted on yellowed paper. Amid this banality the projections of lines into perpendicular directions almost make "Flatland" come alive. Taking this metaphysically the back and forth of form and linear singularity can take on a palpable rational presence. If you appreciate this level of zen in certain work than this is definitely worth your tasting. The banality and zen of line and form are also addressed in this exhibit albeit more stochastically in work by Nelleke Beltjens. These large format works on paper record very tight and fluid groupings of line "ticks" from a pen whose arrangement appear to be regulated by a straight edge. Overall the result are these amorphis galaxy of tick markes which create shaded arrangements that look appealing from near or far. The first thing people seem to say about watercolor painting is that control is everything. Whether in the formalistic examination presented at Hosfelt or at Braunstein/Quay Gallery just across the way. An artists success with the tricks of this media detemines how good they are more than most other media - at least the mistakes seem less forgiving. The skills of a watercolorist extend beyond that of a calligrapher and a draughtsperson. Washington DC based artist Patricia Tobacco-Forrester renders vegetation with such a rich density of lyric that an entire 6 by 8 foot work even when framed dominates a room with it's melodically measured voice. At times completing most of her work on trips to Mexico and other places Tobacco-Forester is an itinerant master of her craft who demonstrates how much beauty knowledge and experience can achieve. Well worth a visit. Hosfelt and Braunstein/Quay Gallery are both located at 430 Clementina Alley off 5th Street near Folsom in SOMA
