Anything goes...
I went to some San Francisco art shows before Christmas and never posted them. Hopefully you might be curious about some great local art anyways, especially if you're like me and want to go see a bunch of shows and but never make it to most of them. At least we can always live vicariously through the internet. Looking back, this round of art offerings seemed especially diverse, pointing to the general truth about art in today's scene: anything goes, and it's all good...or kind of good...most of the time. I personally find it so refreshing that I could be making so many different kinds of paintings, and no one would bat an eye. We have come to accept anything from glitter art to gestural abstraction on a fairly level playing field, and I love it.
Joel Dean and Jason Benson, "La Folie", and Bryson Gill, "The Optimist Gene", Triple Base Gallery Dec. 2- Jan. 1
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| Well, like I said, anything is art these days. These pieces nailed onto other pieces and sculptural paintings as paintings/as sculpture(?) by the collaborative team of Joel and Jason in the Triple Base back room seemed almost too smart to care about what they were made of. |
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| I like that they are different, yet I feel I've seen them before. And like I said above, it's as if there wasn't any love put into them. |
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| Socks as painting. |
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| Not really into the marks made. |
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| Bryson Gill's solo show in the front room, full of rich oil paintings and sunlight, seemed the remedy to the anti-paintings in in the back. It was obvious that Bryson painstakingly crafted each painting lovingly, as he considered the composition and color of these paintings that were part still life and part abstraction. |
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| That red just glows. |
Oct. 29- Dec. 17
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| Paul Mullins' large scale paintings of collaged dude imagery were nice to see in person- some art just doesn't photograph the same. His combination of light pastel colors and KISS and dogs and tattoos was well-executed but not completely my cup of tea. They left me wanting something more, though I'm not sure I can put my finger on it. I just wondered through the exhibition, why these particular images? What is he trying to say? |
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| A close-up of the tiny painted un-collage parts. |
Darren Waterston, "Forest Eater", and Leslie Shows, "Split Array" Haines Gallery Nov. 3- Dec. 24
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| Well, I don't know what it is, but I kind of like this Waterston sculpture. Maybe because it's black and matte. I would probably like anything with black and matte. |
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| I kind of like these Waterston paintings but he had a tough crowd because....Leslie Shows' show in the next room was so AMAZING! |
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| Leslie Shows has been culling her experimental techniques in water media and collage for years and made an unexpected but impressive shift to paint on aluminum. It surely left the audience wondering, how the hell did she do that? (Notice the yellow sculptures on the floor- those are molds of objects created with sulfur. I didn't think they went well with the rest of the show). |
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| What was most impressive to me besides their obvious beauty and my obvious obsession with beauty, was their seeming photorealism in their depictions of glaciers and rocks. |
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| A close-up of many many combined mediums to create exquisite and mysterious techniques. |
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| I was a fan before, and I'm still a fan. |
Dec. 17- Jan. 7
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| Guerrero Gallery hosted a group show full of a random assortment of known and unknown talent, but most notably featured a new sculpture by Libby Black. Her piece, a paper sculpture of a Goyard violin on top of a milk crate with coins inside, brought a sharper political edge to her normally playful pieces. |
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| A quilt by Ben Venom, made out of metal band T shirts. Venom was recently featured in the last Bay Area Now show at the YBCA. I have yet to decide whether I am sold on these quilts as much more than a cute craft. |
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| A piece by Richard Colman, which I didn't realize until now is grip tape on something called 'bonite'. I kind of like it more for this, but it makes it something much more high/low than a boy making a glitter painting. I don't know what that means, really, but it's interesting. |
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| Paul Wackers makes nice paintings. |
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| Dude art of alien sex. Typical. (By David Jien) |
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| A gold flag by Andrew Schoultz, who recently had a very good December in Miami at the fairs with similar gold prints. Even Diddy, or whatever he's called now, wanted one. |
Nice job, San Francisco.
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