Jesse Hazelip: “The Belle of the Brawl” at 941Geary

Read Full Post »

White Walls Gallery Presents Dan Witz: “What the %$#@? (WTF)”

Dan Witz’s integrity in expressing beauty through subversion and an enduring interest in realism has sustained the artist a copious 30-year career. Known for his hyper-realistic paintings, Witz challenges himself to keep representational painting relevant in the postmodern era and digital age.  This challenge commands that the artist must continually grow and experiment in his art practice which has contributed to him being cited as one of the most progressive and influential painters of our time.

White Walls Gallery is pleased to announce the debut solo show by Dan Witz entitled “What The %$#@? (WTF)”. The opening reception will be held on January 8, 2011 from 7-11pm. Witz is known for using  his mastery of the visual deception of trompe-l’oeil and photorealistic painting techniques to create conceptual visual pranks, producing a definitive and unparalleled street art practice.

The “What The %$#@? (WTF)” series is named for the universal reactions it often inspires within the viewer.  For this street art project, Witz is installing his Dark Doings pieces on walls beside highway ramps and interchanges–bottleneck locations where traffic backs up and a captive audience develops as cars pass by at low speeds. Dark Doings is made up of digital photo prints with extensive over-painting mounted on plastic and then framed.  For each piece that Witz will be showing within the gallery, a corresponding piece will be put up somewhere in the Bay Area.  The artworks come in an edition of 6:3 for the street and 3 for other distribution.  The street versions are unsigned, but marked with NFFS*.  The asterisk indicates (on the back of the piece) *NOT FOR FUCKING SALE.

Read Full Post »

Food in Plastic: Paintings by Victoria Mimiaga

Meat in Plastic

Through the traditional style of still life painting, Victoria Mimiaga explores the abundant and sometimes superfluous use of plastic packaging in the food industry. On December 30th, the SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery at Caffe Museo will host an exhibition Mimiaga’s work entitled “Food in Plastic”. In this body of work, Mimiaga captures the ephemeral nature of reflectivity while portraying the humor in the perfunctory uselessness of plastic receptacles. Cucumbers are Individually shrink-wrapped, sliced apples are packaged twice in plastic, a molded plastic half shell is manufactured for half a Bundt cake. These containers inevitably call into question the banal acceptance, redundancy and environmental implications of the overuse of plastic packaging.

Cucumbers

From the artist’s statement: “From thin gauge thermoform trays to seal tear bags, the use of plastic packaging in the food industry has undergone a renaissance. In supermarkets, corner bodegas and organic food stores, there are new and creative uses of plastic packaging – in some cases offering little more than heightened protection where none is needed. Items such as bananas, already covered in Nature’s skin, are further enveloped in a silky sheen of polymer.

Over the past decade, Victoria Mimiaga has been struck by this proliferation of plastic in the food industry. The traditional still life with fruit, fish or vegetable, a time-honored artistic subject, must now account for this new, man-made offshoot. And while plastic-wrapped food presents an aesthetic of its own, lying beneath the surface is the alarming reality of how this added waste material impacts the rest of the natural world.”

Cauliflower in Plastic

Food in Plastic will be exhibited at Caffe Museo, inside the SFMOMA, at 151 Third Street in San Francisco. The artist’s reception will be held on Thursday, December 30, 2010 from 6:30 – 8pm. The exhibit runs from December 23, 2010 to February 1, 2011.

Read Full Post »

Juxtapoz Interviews Glen E. Friedman for his 941Geary Exhibition, “Fuck You All”

Glen E. Friedman, photograph by Darren Wellhoefer

Glen E, Friedman, the legendary photographer and cultural influencer of all things music, skate, and underground aesthetics, is bringing his work to San Francisco’s 941 Geary space this Saturday for a major showing titled, in perfect punk, “Fuck You All.”

The new exhibition will be marked by some of Friedman’s iconic works, the touring exhibition portion that contains the shots of Black Flag, the Beastie Boys, and a far younger Tony Hawk. But the 941 Geary show will be highlighted by the Shepard Fairey collaborations together with the original photographs for the first time.

Henry Rollins, collaboration between Glen E. Friedman and Shepard Fairey

The collaboration comes on the heels of Friedman’s exhibition at Fairey’s Subliminal Projects last year, and a special interview Fairey did for Juxtapoz with Friedman in our 100th issue last Spring. As 941 Geary tells us, “Friedman’s 941Geary exhibition of Fuck You All will feature several never before seen collaborations with Shepard Fairey, which will be displayed along with the original photographs for the first time. These works are true artistic collaborations, executed symbiotically and inspired from a history of mutual respect between Friedman and Fairey.”

The opening reception will be held from 6-9pm on Saturday, November 6th at 941Geary in San Francisco. The artists will be in attendance.

Read the full Juxtapoz interview here.

 

Read Full Post »

Edward Burtynsky: OIL

Edward Burtynsky is, in my opinion, one of the most important photographers of our generation. Stark, beautiful, and poignant, Burtynsky’s images capture man’s impact on his environment. Unaltered, Burtynsky’s photographs do not reply on tricks of the eye and digital enhancements to make some overt commentary. Instead, Burtynsky captures beauty in the difficult subject matter he documents, subtly probing the viewer to engage in an ethical deliberation over the implications of what they are seeing.

Now, there is a new Steidl book release and touring exhibition organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC. that surveys a decade of Burtynsky’s photographic work exploring the subject of oil. Edward Burtynsky has traveled internationally to chronicle the production, distribution, and use of the most critical fuel of our time.

In addition to revealing the rarely-seen mechanics of its manufacture, Burtynsky captures the effects of oil on our lives, depicting landscapes altered by its extraction from the earth, and by the cities and suburban sprawl generated around its use. He also addresses the coming “end of oil,” as we confront its rising cost and dwindling availability.

“Edward Burtynsky: Oil is the definitive photographic documentation of this hotly debated subject.”
– Paul Roth, Senior Curator of Photography, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

View the whole exhibition here.

VW Lot, Houston, TX 2004

Breezewood, Pennsylvania 2008

Oxford Tire Pile 9ab, Westley, California 1999

Shipbreaking #13, Chittagong, Bangladesh 2000

Shipbreaking #11, Chittagong, Bangladesh 2000

SOCAR Oil Fields #3, Baku, Azerbaijan 2006

 

Read Full Post »

Wassup Censors?

Larry Clark‘s retrospective exhibition opens today at Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.  The artist is known for his talent in depicting both fictional and true stories of disturbed youth through a raw and glaringly graphic eye.  His photo documentations  (Tulsa, Teenage Lust) and his films (Bully, Kids, Ken Park, Wassup Rockers) have that certain “ewww” factor that makes you think you are smelling something disgusting, want to take 2 showers and think “I should watch  Little House on the Prairie right now”.  However, regardless of the  “ewww”, his work offers something more than just a superficial visual assault; his work heavily permeates the viewers’ thoughts, sensations and emotions not just when viewing but even at the mere thought of it.  That’s what I would call powerful work. However, “powerful” is not the word chosen by the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, I believe that word would be “censor”. The mayor is imposing the first ever age restriction on an art exhibition in Paris. Minors are prohibited from seeing his retrospective.   To read more >>

“Larry Clark: Kiss the Past Hello” runs from October 8, 2010 until January 2, 2011

Read Full Post »

I Prefer Stalking

Harry Callahan, Atlanta,1984; dye transfer print

SFMOMA will present the U.S. debut of a major survey that examines photography’s role in invasive looking.   Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870 is co-organized by SFMOMA and Tate Modern, and gathers more than 200 pictures that together form a timely inquiry into the ways in which artists and everyday people alike have probed the camera’s powerful voyeuristic capacity. How can the virtuous resist the 5 “forbidden themes” of this show? These theme are Voyeurism and Desire (Helmut Newton!, Blow Job!, Nan Goldin!), Celebrity and the Public Gaze (Ron Galella– the godfather of paparazzi), Witnessing Violence and Surveillance. The exhibition is on view from October 30, 2010, through April 17, 2011, make sure to have a peep at this show.

Georges Dudognon, Greta Garbo in the Club St. Germain ca. 1950

Read Full Post »

Photos: VIP Preview of Flotsam’s Wonder World

Artist, Mike Shine for "Flotsam's Wonder World", Photo courtesy Mike Cuffe and Warholian.com

A&O PR is proud to announce the tremendous success of “Flotsam’s Wonder World”, the epic “art opera” by artist, Mike Shine that was held in conjunction with the inauguration of Justin Giarla’s newest gallery space, 941Geary. These images from Friday night’s VIP party are courtesy of Mike Cuffe of Warholian. The evening included interactive carnival games, a set by DJ Junk Drawer (formerly of Extra Action Marching Band), operatic performances by Jonah Hoptan, “Opera Boy” and Whitney White, “Opera Girl”, as well as a folk music set that included Mike Shine himself playing harmonica. “Flotsam’s Wonder World” is up through October 31st. For more images, visit Mike Cuffe’s Flickr set here.

941Geary Gallery Owner, Justin Giarala, Photo courtesy of Mike Cuffe

Whitney White and Jonah Hopton, Photo courtesy of Mike Cuffe

Danielle Grant, Kimberly Verde and Lainya Magana of A&O PR, Photo courtesy of Mike Cuffe

Greg Escalante and guest, Photo courtesy of Mike Cuffe

Lyrica Glory, Photo courtesy of Mike Cuffe

Read Full Post »

Mike Shine: Flotsam’s Wonder World

Read Full Post »

Well done

Congratulations and thank you to Fecal Face for 10 years in contributing to and supporting of the contemporary art scene in the Bay Area and beyond.  Their celebratory exhibition opens tomorrow at The Luggage Store Gallery with a powerhouse line-up of artists that represent the magnitude of Fecal Face’s influence.  It is sure to be a perfect art pandemonium.  Cheers to a job well done and to another 10 years of being the shit.

Read Full Post »