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The Month Ahead in Oakland Art
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Theo Konrad Auer
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Last Updated on February, 05 2009 at 12:46 PM
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The last month has been a particularly
heavy one as we’ve seen tragedy in the form of Oscar Grant’s death at my
neighborhood Bay Area Rapid Transit station (Fruitvale) as well as the
riots that followed and made the papers from New York to Germany. But
it was also a heady month as we saw the inauguration of our first
black President, Barack Obama, and images from the ceremony and the
inaugural balls had people transfixed all over the world.
Meanwhile, artists and art critics, including me, have been trying to anticipate how the economic downturn will affect the art world. |
Northern Lights by Val Britton
The last month has been a particularly heavy one as we’ve seen tragedy in form of Oscar Grant’s death at my neighborhood Bay Area Rapid Transit station (Fruitvale) as well as the riots that followed and made the papers from New York to Germany. But it was also a heady month as we saw the inauguration of our first black President, Barack Obama, and images from the ceremony and the inaugural balls had people transfixed all over the world.
Meanwhile, artists and art critics, including me, have been trying to anticipate how the economic downturn will affect the art world. While we debate, we can agree that this month’s gallery offerings bode well for the creative future of art in Oakland.
Collective Compulsions, Johansson Projects
2300 Telegraph Avenue
http://johanssonprojects.com/default.htm
Reception: Friday, Feb. 6, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Just over a month ago, I wrote an article reporting on the efforts of many Oakland curators at the high profile Miami Art Fairs this last December. Prominent among was Kimberly Johansson of Johansson Projects who has in the last year or so become the buzz of Oakland’s nascent art scene. This month, her space features many of the artists she took to Miami in December, offering viewers an insight into what the world saw of Oakland’s art community there. Among the works on view is Val Britton’s captivating mixed media work, which documents her internal landscape through a map of places one can go to while viewing her hills, valleys and tributaries of cut paper collaged into an environment quite unlike any you’ve ever seen. Her past work has sprung from a desire to connect with and see through the eyes of her father, who died ten years ago.
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Anti-Police Brutality, MamaBuzz Gallery
2318 Telegraph Ave
http://www.mamabuzzcafe.com/index.php
Reception: Friday, Feb. 6, 6 p.m.
The recent tragic killing of Oscar Grant was bound to inspire an artistic response and for some, it took the shape of posters comparing the situation Oakland finds itself in to that of Gaza such as one designed by Jesus Barraza and Malanie Cerzantes. It was prominently displayed during the protests over Grant’s death and I made note of it in a recent op-ed.
Another artistic forum is being provided by Mama Buzz curator Lisa Calderon in her second show at this relatively long-lived venue. The show was also inspired by a graffiti memorial created by artist Paul Barron and commissioned by Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums at the site of another man’s death at the hands of police officers. Barron’s “graffiti angel” has been installed on a BART pillar at the intersection of 55th Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, where Gary King Jr. was killed.
John Paul and Brianna Bail of PoliticalGridlock.com and Ryan Saari of NotMyGovernment.org will be among the other artists contributing timely work to this show. At this show, I would hope to see a wide spectrum of responses to the recent painful tragedies in Oakland. Certainly, it is difficult to find one artist who will completely agree with another. An image which rather provocatively reads “Riots Work!” bothered some visitors to the cafe. After much debate, it was decided by the curator and the café’s owner that the artwork would remain on the wall. A public talk is now being planned in which the public will have the chance to air their feelings about the work on display. It should prove to passionate and hopefully healthy discussion. As curator Lisa Calderon remarked in her response to the criticism, “Artwork is supposed to spark debate, which in this exhibit, it has.”
40th Street Corridor Artquest
Manifesto Bicycles
http://www.wearemanifesto.com/
421 40th Street
Rowan Morrison
http://www.rowanmorrison.com/
330 40th Street
Premium Tattoo and Vintage
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=371274174
4130 Broadway
Issues
http://www.issuesshop.com/
20 Glen Avenue(just off of Piedmont Avenue)
Receptions: Saturday, February 21st, 6 p.m.– 9 p.m.
Almost everyone knows about the Art Murmur now. The event has its share of fans and critics. Hundreds hit the streets every first Friday, mostly congregating around the corner of Telegraph Avenue and 23rd Street. In an infamous East Bay Express article, Howard Junker, editor of a reputable San Francisco literary journal ZYZZYVA, was paraphrased as saying he was glad to have safely navigated the over ten “sketchy” blocks that separate galleries like Rowan Morrison and Boontling Gallery from the rest of the Art Murmur. Boontling Gallery is no more now, along with the Auto Art Gallery, which once was a few blocks away. Rowan Morrison is still putting on great shows, but now has opted out of Art Murmur participation, instead choosing to have a more flexible schedule for its openings. At the far reaches of the Art Murmur, Blankspace and the Compound Studios and Gallery often schedule openings concurrently.
Perhaps in logistical response to all this, local artist and curator Obi Kaufmann has helped organize the first ever 4oth Street Corridor Artquest, which encompasses four gallery openings conveniently located within walking distance of each other. The event will include raffles and giveaways and a solo show of his paintings. “I think 2009 is the year of all things local," says Kaufmann. "I live at 40th and Broadway, so I have gotten to know these places really well. In fact, I can't believe the quality of the businesses. Manifesto is hands down the most quality and most interesting Bicycle shop in the East Bay. Rowan Morrison is a world class art gallery with consistantly amazing shows. Matt Decker, the tattooist at Premium is going to be famous pretty soon: that guy's master skills are undeniable."
Olam Haba, Rowan Morrison
http://www.rowanmorrison.com
330 40th Street
Of all the shows in the Artquest, I picked this one as the most notable because Oakland-based sculptor Derek Weisberg is quite possibly still the best kept “under the radar” art talent here -- besides Oakland based painter Mark Dukes. He has had a rather high profile solo show at San Jose’s Anno Domini, he ran a critcally beloved art space(Boontling Gallery), and co-founded the Art Murmur event. But there has been very little laudatory press for him. The man deserves it -- for earnestly and tirelessly attempting to bring sculpture back into the local art world through a group show he has curated at many spaces, For fostering a whole lot of community and harnessing its efforts into great shows like Boontling Gallery’s 99 cent show, which featured drawings from the likes of future stars like Josh Keyes, with all the profits going to charity. Most of all, Weisberg deserves credit for innovating and evolving as an artist and creating a body of work that touches on art history, whether the art comes from the street or a museum.
But what is the work about? The artist says, “I hate it when people ask me what inspires my work, because I always have to answer with the lame and general answer of life. My work is about life, specifically the life I live and the world I live in. Now it is kind of funny because I say that my work is about life, but this show is actually more about death. Well, I cant say more about death, 50/50, life and death are the same they both inform each other, you can’t have one without the other.
"My mom passed away just over 2 years ago and that has been a major event, which I have reacted to and have made work about in attempts to reconcile with the loss, memorialize her, and journey into finding some kind of truth. A lot of this show deals with a Jewish idea that the voyage of the soul and the denouement of the deceased is dependent upon the actions of the ones who are living here on earth in the living realm. So there is an interactive element to the sculptures which is new for me. Just as the soul doesn't make it to its final resting place with out the help from the living, some of my sculptures will not be competed until the viewer interacts with them. The show will also be very much an installation, which is something that I have not really created before.”
The show’s title reinforces the work on display as it is Hebrew for “The world to come.” The candlelit altar-like works will be complimented by live music.
Enter/Exit, Swarm Gallery
560 Second Street
http://www.happenstand.com/sanfrancisco/events/522-enter-exit
Reception: Friday, Feb. 20, 2009, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
I have known and been familiar with the grittily fantasmic work of Jake Watling since meeting him at much missed Oakland space, Boontling Gallery, a few years ago. In the time between then and now, his oeuvre has developed even further, expanding from giant raccoons dining upon human flesh and working class parades led by an ice cream truck to works that become-at once-more acute and wildly obtuse critiques of the clumsy intersection of religion, culture and class. Swarm Gallery director Svea Lin Vezzone says that, “[Jake Watling’s]…work brings out the polarization we see in our society."
Joe Penrod’s tape-based shadow installations and Jared Clark’s “interventionist” art of the ready made installation fill the rest of Swarm’s three gallery rooms. When I ask Ms. Vezzone about the show’s title, which Watling came up with, she elaborates, “It is mostly talking about shifting paradigms…and sort of choices we make – extremes – Jake’s work most directly addresses that theme…though all of the artists fit.”
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