The guys over at Ever Gold emailed over this preview of their show opening tonight and only running 2 days to conclude their Gentlemen's Club which ran throughout the month of March.
painting tress
Joshua Short and Otto Von Busch are teaming up to form BLACKGOLD. Bring your rags and junk for two nights of transformation, literally. The performance duo is preparing a group reaction-painting session that joins the Dark Satanic Northern European Arts with the American Junk Culture. Otto will be leading a spiritual restoration by blackening your old rags. Josh will be operating his Gold Standard machine, transforming your junk into gold.
Otto Von Busch
Performances, Rituals, Alchemy…bring your items to turn into gold or junk..this is an interactive audience driven performance.
Megan Whitmarsh is a very unique artist from Highland Park, CA who uses thread to create complex tableaux of characters in epic scenes of both fantasy and social anxiety. Drawing inspiration from 1980’s American pop culture and her intricate imagination, Megan’s canvas’ show a sympathy toward the misunderstood monster and a celebration of the magic of creation. Also an accomplished soft sculptor, Megan has created a mountain of stuffed replicas of trash she finds in her neighborhood. In this feature we get to know Megan and travel along as she paints a massive 55' x 60' installation at the prestigious IVAM Museum in Valencia, Spain.
SF based Henry Lewis invited a few friends over to his studio last weekend before he shipped his paintings down to Los Angeles for his solo show “The Absence of Light” @Corey Helford Gallery opening this Saturday, March 19th.
Here's a taste of his recent work and say howdy to a few of the fine folks who stopped by.
Thompson lives and works in San Francisco. A graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz where he was a 2007 Irwin Scholar, his work has been exhibited locally at Garage Sale Projects, Mollusk, Needles and Pens, and in Brooklyn NY.
Jerroen Blok emailed over some photos he took around harbors in his native Holland... We posted some photos recently from his show at GO Gallery in Amsterdamn featuring his paintings and installations.
"In the second iteration of West, Wester, Westest, I've once again chosen a selection of emerging and mid-career artists that A) don't regularly exhibit in SF, if at all. and B) create work that "throws a wrench" so to speak, into what FFDG regularly shows. As a long time fan of Fecal Face, I'm honored to have such an immense platform to expose these artist to the world on. In terms of style and/or concept, these artists produce works that are very forward thinking and often experimental, throughout various mediums. The works exhibited, will run the gamut of content, from grossly disturbing to humorous, to bold and beautiful abstraction and then back again. Please join us @ FFDG's new location in the Lower-Haight (248 Fillmore @Haight) on March 11th for the opening reception of West, Wester, Westest Part 2, I will be in attendance." -Ryan Travis Christian
Chicago based Ryan Travis Christian, a long contributor to this website, opens two shows in San Francisco this weekend. The first, his curated show West, Wester, Westest Part 2 (photos from part 1) at FFDG opening Friday in our new space on Fillmore! The other is a solo show Sad Sacks at Guerrero Gallery and that show opens on Saturday. Ryan's new work is bonkers. Hope to see you at both.
Also opening on Saturday at Guerrero is a collab show w/ artists Jason Michael Leggiere and Chris Duncan entitled Sound and Shapean audience participatory and optically challenging sound sculpture based on basic triangular shapes. ~complete details
There are A LOT of great shows opening up this weekend and here's another. London based EINE opens up Greatest this Saturday at White Walls. He's been around San Francisco painting roll-ups like the one below filling the entire alphabet. Can you find them all around town?
Also in the Tenderloin (next door actually), The Shooting Gallery celebrates their 8th anniversary w/ works from Japanese artist Yumiko Kayukawa
San Francisco, CA-White Walls gallery is pleased to present, 'GREATEST' a solo
exhibition by London-based artist, Ben Flynn a.k.a. EINE. The opening reception
for 'GREATEST' will be held on Saturday, March 12, 2011 from 7-11 PM. The exhibition
will be on view from March 12, to April 2, 2011 and is free and open to the public.
'GREATEST' is an art exhibition by the artist, Ben EINE, that will utilize both gallery
and public space as a two-tiered platform for the artist’s visual expression. EINE'S work
is a large-scale study of the shape and structure of the 26 letters found in the modern
English alphabet in varied typefaces, color configurations and word arrangements. In
the public spaces of San Francisco, EINE will be painting each letter of the alphabet
on various walls around the city. A further ten canvases of his work using spray paint,
acrylic, and glitter will be on display at White Walls gallery.
Yumiko Kayukawa Saturday at The Shooting Gallery --> 7-11pm
Portugal based artist Paulo Arraiano aka YUP - Pampero Public Art Project ~ Comissioned by Sandro Resende in collaboration with Lisbon Patrimony Department.
Painting, constructing, cleaning, plumbing, lighting, beer drinking, late night having is about done as we start our first work day at our new space at 248 Fillmore St @Haight. We're to the left of the El Mac mural, below the Jeremy Fish windows, and right of the amazing Estela's Fresh Sandwiches.
Vancouver based Russell Leng, who we mini interviewed this past summer, emailed over some recent works. He's showing at San Francisco's new gallery, Hungry Man Gallery this upcoming summer.
Charles Martin, who we mini interviewed last week, emailed over these two new works. They're great. Check out more of his work and read our interview w/ him. Charles studies currently at Cooper Union in NYC.
West, Wester, Westest Part 2
Group show curated by Ryan Travis Christian Opening Friday, March 11, 2011 (6-9pm)
@FFDG, 248 Fillmore St @Haight
"In the second iteration of West, Wester, Westest, I've once again chosen a selection of emerging and mid-career artists that A) don't regularly exhibit in SF, if at all. and B) create work that "throws a wrench" so to speak, into what FFDG regularly shows. As a long time fan of Fecal Face, I'm honored to have such an immense platform to expose these artist to the world on. In terms of style and/or concept, these artists produce works that are very forward thinking and often experimental, throughout various mediums. The works exhibited, will run the gamut of content, from grossly disturbing to humorous, to bold and beautiful abstraction and then back again. Please join us @ FFDG's new location in the Lower-Haight (248 Fillmore @Haight) on March 11th for the opening reception of West, Wester, Westest Part 2, I will be in attendance." -Ryan Travis Christian
Got an email from Jeff who's working on a project of installing 20 lil' doors about San Francisco in "impossible locations" created by artists from around the country. --> I know I'd love to stumble across this door after a late night and ponder its existence.
Guess we should be on the look out for weee people who are very protective of what's ever behind their doors.
I just installed the first of about 20 doors created by artists from around the country and sent to me for installation around San Francisco. This first one was the first that I designed and made. Below is the proposition that was sent out as a call for the work.
"The idea is to install small doors, unexplained portals, throughout the city. To start, in San Francisco. These doors would be scaled down to a size that is cognitively possible but whimsically improbable. Maybe 15-25 inches or so. Pet door sized. I don’t imagine them to be operable, but the more detailed in appearance the better.
Artist Maggie Haas was born and raised in New Hampshire. She moved to San Francisco to attend graduate school at CCA, where she got her MFA in 2010. Maggie recently let me poke around her studio in the Mission, where we chatted about west coast utopian ideals, hardware stores, and quilting. -Interview by Suzanne Stroebe
SS: You play with old and new -- your sculpture and installation pieces are uber contemporary, referencing the likes of Cordy Ryman and Brion Nuda Rosch. Then you jump to a modernized version of fresco (with spackle) and guache and ink paintings, practices that are centuries old. Who are some of your artistic influences?
MH: I'm a huge fan of Northern Renaissance interiors... that moment when painters (and paint) got really good and a little secularized, an artists turned their eyes to world around them. And then, reaching forward in time and backward in sentiment, I've been returning to the work of the Pre-Rapahelites over and over, since I was a child. Their sense of color and omnivorous observation of the natural word led to some really hallucinatory looking work sometimes, and they also marked a period when craft, idiosyncratic handmade functional objects, was being considered and celebrated. I spend a lot of time looking at interior design and home-improvement books and blogs, sometimes gleefully but often with a lot of eye-rolling, too. And Minimalism is something I think about quite a lot, both as an ideal, and as something to be fought with and complicated.
SS: How did you come to sculpture? Color and paint are an important aspect of even your large sculptures and installation work; do you have a background in painting?
MH: There was a clear moment when I was an undergraduate when I realized how much the preparatory drawings for sculptures mattered to my work, the diagrams and blueprints, as it were. More recently blueprints and plans have come to be a real part of the content of my work, too, not just a drawing style.
My work is concerned with the way we build things, especially the way amateur builders build, and so I spend a lot of time thinking about the color palettes of lumber yards (all those 2x4s stained red or blue at the end!) and hardware stores (safety colors, neon colors, the nice periwinkle of the chalk used to snap level lines, grays, purples and greens of different grades of drywall). It's exciting to approach those tools and materials with an eye to pleasure as well as practicality.
More then once I have found myself running around New York City with this crazy kid calling himself Gaia. It is usually by the time documenting has taken the jump seat to the nights off handed antics. Never the less-> when Andrew hit me up with a solid photo batch of his latest street adventure down in his own neck of the woods I was more then eager to send them off to pasture.
This Big Cock is located on Howard St. in Baltimore. The image is a rooster messenger cradling the head of St. John as depicted by Guido Reni. My question to you Sir Gaia, "How can you depict such and image, knowing the Blackest Sabbath is coming for you?" Yeah, it is one of those had to be there moments. Regardless, have a look as Gaia is an incredible illustrator that just happens to play in the streets. -Manuel Bello
Kokoro Studio (682 Geary St here in San Francisco) emailed a few images from thier current show with Chilean artist Ignacio Murua. The show Bomba 4 continues through Feb 24th.
Kokoro Studio has been open a little over a year showing local and international artists. Hours: Tue-Sat 1pm-7pm
Ignacio Murua lives and works in Santiago de Chile and Brooklyn, NY...
He is inspired the Chilean yellow press newspapers that publish images of ideal female bodies as the "women of the week." What the popular culture esteems as perfection, Murua translates as uncomfortable and grotesque. By its denial of the familiar, flawed (normal) body, such perfection is encountered as a deformity. Murua uses a unique process of "painting without using paint" to contrast the disturbingly artificial perfection with smeared and dripping strokes. He works quickly to manipulate the wet pigment of a freshly printed photograph, causing the very substance of the image to be distorted, obscured, erased, or washed away. Remaining is a blurred silhouette, the suggestion of a posture that replaces individual identity. In a global society preoccupied with age and beauty, the work of Ignacio Murua disregards time, wiping out both perfection and its potential for decay.
Travis Millard mailed a few of these radical tshirts which we'll be giving away for this week's Free Fridayz. Be sure to get your "Movin' On Up" themed drawings by Friday for a chance at winning one of this interwebs shirts.
Speaking of Travis, check this wall mural he did in 2004 at Hollywood's The National Mule.
Installation by Travis Millard at The National Mule in September 2004. Pulled this out of the unfinished vault that unfortunately has laid dormant and virtually unseen for 7 years. This show became the 1st of 5 installations during 2004-2005 shot with Sony VX-2000's and Canon SLR's. Other episodes will include collaborations with Kiel Johnson, Florencio Zavala, and Mel Kadel.
A new HBO documentary looks at the work of street artist JR, whose giant portraits force people in troubled areas to confront the humanity that's all around them... On the day JR found out he'd won the $100,000 TED Prize, the French pasteup artist found himself in China being questioned by police for doing his thing on the streets of Shanghai. ~continue reading
Street artist JR HBO documentary premiered yesterday, May 20th
Art lovers, collectors and gallerists will gather on Thursday for Hong Kong's inaugural edition of Art Basel, sealing the city's status as an international art hub and Asia's leading art destination... Hong Kong has surged to third place in the global art auction market behind New York and London and Western galleries are falling over each other to open franchises in the former British colony. ~continue reading
Our buddy Ferris Plock opens a small show of drawings at Benny Gold on 3169 16th St this Friday, May 24th (7-10pm) featuring 31 drawings priced at 75-140 bucks.
Ferris also released the video Fingered! he produced with animator Jim Dirschberger. View it
Wowzas, there's a lot of art happenings this weekend, and while you're making the rounds, be sure to stop at SFAI's MFA show Currency opening Friday, May 17th at the beautiful old SF Mint Building (88 5th Street).
SFAI's 2013 MFA graduates—working in painting, photography, printmaking, film, sculpture, installation, digital media, performance, and across media—will present work that embraces the Institute's signature spirit of experimentation and conceptual risk-taking.
Opening reception: Friday, May 17, 7–9 pm & running through Sunday 11-6pm daily. -- complete details
London based Pedro Matos opens the solo show Building Castles Made of Sand this Friday in Los Angeles at the Martha Otero Gallery featuring a new series of oil paintings on canvas and azulejo panels - a traditional Portuguese medium of hand-painted, tin-glazed, ceramic tile work.
San Francisco -- CCA opens their 2013 MFA Thesis Exhibition this Thursday, May 16th at their SF campus. Every year another graduating class produces steller work. One of the best SF art events worth getting to, but be sure to get there early as there's always a long line. ~details
FFDG opened up the group show featuring original works by the artists of the world famous Skull & Sword tattoo last Friday here in San Francisco. Thanks to the huge crowd who turned out to support these four incredibly talented artists. Here is a taste of the show, and be sure to swing in to view in person. The show runs through June 8th.
Gary Baseman's retrospective "The Door is Always Open" at the Skirball in LA opened recently to massive crowds in a huge celebratory opening party. The exhibition is so complex and personal, delving into Baseman's background, family history, and all the layers of prolific work that he has done over the years. After the opening festivities winded down, I caught up with Baseman for an interview. We discussed the underlying meaning to some of the components of the show and how it felt for him, coming from such an honest personal perspective in putting this massive show together.
Fertile Menace, a new show of Mark Mulroney's (NY) work opened at Ever Gold on May 4th and it's not one to be missed. It is intelligently hilarious, with jokes riffing off sex, Foucault, and the body, and while it makes you laugh it's also going to make you think.
Our buddies Jay Howell, Andreas Trolf, and Jim Dirschberger are hyped as their show, which they've been working on for like 2 years, premieres on Nickelodeon Saturday. From the trailers we've seen so far and from what Jay has told us about, the show is going to be pretty epic. Congrats to those radical fellas.
Here's a little taste of work by the artists of the world famous The Skull and Sword tattoo shop who open their show at San Francisco's FFDG on Friday, May 17th (7-10pm).
Following his solo exhibition "The Collected" at Gallery Wendi Norris, painter Amir H. Fallah is in the throes of developing more new works for upcoming international exhibits. We spent some time in his studio in Highland Park, Los Angeles recently, discussing his process and inspiration.
We were first introduced to the photography of Spanish born NYC based Bubi Canal when he emailed us his great video Trust in Me a couple years ago. His solo show Special Moment recently ran at NYC's Munch Gallery in February, and he recently released his newest video Chrystelle below.
Although I missed the opening of Northern-California photographer Michael Garlington's newest show, Constructed Realities, I was fortunate enough to see the work still up during the Metaphysical fundraiser a couple weeks back at 111 Minna. Metaphysical fundraiser, an auction to benefit Wayne Ernzer. --- The ghoulish photographs in their heavy, hand-made frames are reminiscent of photos from the old west, and the glass crucifixes, complete with fetuses and guns, emphasize the accumulated time within the works themselves. Whether you're looking at the frames, the photos, or both, this show deserves a visit, and a walk through the golden archway Garlington constructed around the front door.
Fecal Face contributor Rachel Ralph (rachel(at)fecalface.com) has been profiling this Oakland based painter as he travels about Japan. In this segment, we feature some photos as he prepared for this show and residency at Spes-LaB in Tokyo which opened last weekend. Arnold will be featured in SFMoMA's Minna Street windows on June 8th.
Last Saturday, here in SF's Mission district, Guerrero Gallery opened two new shows with Philly based Alex Lukas and SF based Richard Colman respectively. Colman's work occupied the project space while Lukas' work and foliage was presented in the main space. Worth getting to if you haven't already.
Just got back to SF after a little trip south to Sayulita, Mexico. After 10 years without a vacation, me and the Mrs. headed south for some mental time off sitting in the sun, swimming and enjoying the watery Mexican beer. Here are some photos as we get back into the swing of things again.
Athens, Greece based designer, architect and artist Dimitris Polychroniadis emailed over more of his work which consists of mixed media, pop-humorous diorama sculptures that make a comment on the harsh realities my country and much of the world is facing at the moment.
FFDG will open a group show with the artists from the famed Skull & Sword Tattoo on Friday, May 17th (6-9pm). Artists: Grime, Henry Lewis, Yutaro, and Lango. Below are a series of videos on Grime for Vice's Tattoo Age produced in 2011. Fascinating look at one of the greatest tattoo artists alive today.
ARYZ (Spain) opened his newest gallery show at Fifty24SF last Friday and, if you live in the Bay Area, you need to go. This dude can obviously paint, and he doesn't need an entire building to show his impecable skill. The show has lots of small works on paper which contrast his highly-defined line work to his hard-edged painted objects. The contrast between the hard and soft was the most striking thing to me about his work, since I had never seen it in person before, and the washes blend with the thick paint seamlessly. The show also contains a larger work on canvas, a huge head suspended in the back of the room, and a big wood sculpture of a wolf figure. This diversity in such a small space was impressive, and those of us that went to the opening even got to meet the man in person. If you didn't make it out this weekend, check it out before May 31st when it closes and these works will be off to some very happy new homes.
Water McBeer is please to announce its latest exhibition "Precious" a solo exhibition by David Bayus (April 6 - May 4, 2013) -- David Bayus born 1982 holds his BFA from the Savannah College of Art and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. David lives and works in San Francisco and is a founding member of the basement collective. This will be his first exhibition with the world renown Water McBeer Gallery highlighting his most recent achievements with paint and digital media. David Bayus will be exhibiting 5 relatively large-scale mixed media works along with a collaborative object featuring Hungarian sculptor H.R KOONS.
The Shooting Gallery handed over the reins to the Red Truck Gallery (a New Orleans based gallery) which curated their new show, Hard Time Mini Mall and opened the it on Saturday night. This is my favorite show (so far) in the Shooting Gallery's new space and was packed full of art, a mini bar, and cowhide rugs. The Red Truck Gallery chose works with clear craftsmanship and it was easy to see in Ian Berry's denim assemblages and Chris Roberts-Antieau's awesome quilts. The space was completely packed, making it hard to see each piece individually, but this show deserves a second trip anyway. I look forward to spending more time with the chandeliers, automatons, and paintings before the show comes down on May 4th.
Toronto based photographer Nathan Cyprys emailed to let us know about his newest series "Neighbour State", and we were about to post it when we spotted this series on his site entitled "Ayre (of Distances)" and had to post this one instead. After you view this one, view "Neighbour State" on his site. Both are visually enjoyable.
Working from found photographs, Lyle's paintings are created through a reductive painting process where each piece is rendered using only black paint and turpentine. Lyle begins this process by priming a panel with white gesso. He then paints a thin, rich, oily black veneer over the primed panel, slowly and systematically developing his images by removing some of the black paint with a cloth. In doing so, Lyle renders layer upon layer of various values of black paint resulting in his signature-style of luminescent works.
London based David Shillinglaw who's blogged it up for Fecal Face in the past recently completed this mural in London as he prepares for his solo show at Stolen Space opening on April 26th.
Our buddy Henrik Haven, who brings us some goodies from his native Copenhagen, has been shooting some of his city's graffiti and street art. Last week we brought you part one of his camera's explorations.
San Francisco based artists Raphael Villet and Sean Vranizan are currently showing Just the Two of Us at Adobe Books through April 21. Here are some photos from the opening and works.
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