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

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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.

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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.

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Rad: Michael Dotson

Nudashank in Baltimore recently exhibited the work of Washington DC-based artist, Michael Dotson. I love the playful and “rad” nature of his work. His vibrant, straight out of the box color palette is whimsical and attractive and manages to keep things light without being trite. Some pieces, referred to on his website as “drawings”, appear to be colored marker on graph paper while his paintings are executed in acrylic. He shows clear talent with both mediums and while there is a completely different feel between the two separate bodies of work, there is a cohesive sense of vintage abstraction to them that is reminiscent of 80’s and early 90’s aesthetics. Digital landscapes, pixel play, and “80’s modern” compositions that Don Johnson would most surely have had hanging in his “Miami Vice” bachelor pad. I kinda wish they had made a Trapper Keeper with Dotson’s motifs back when I was in grade school. Hell. I kinda wish they’d make one now.

"Living Room", 2010

"Dream Car Celebration at Tyrell Corporation", 2009

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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.

 

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Last Chance.

Congratulations to our friend, Ala Ebtekar on the success of his exhibition Indelible Whispers of the Sun at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.  The show is recognized in  L.A. Weekly’s Critic Choices: Highlights of the Fall Season. Not bad for the artist’s Los Angeles debut solo show. Indelible Whispers of the Sun closes tomorrow, so make sure to take a look before it comes down.

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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

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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.

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“Observed By Clouds” Solo Show by Mario Wagner

"The Hero's Return"

SAN FRANCISCO – July 30, 2010 – Gallery Heist is pleased to announce Observed by Clouds, an exhibition of new work by Mario Wagner. This event is highly anticipated as it marks the artist’s first solo show in San Francisco since relocating here from Cologne, Germany earlier this year. Utilizing imagery from the 1950s and 60s, Wagner’s pieces convey a sense of vintage futurism in beautifully anachronistic micro-narratives that describe one visual point in some larger, unknown story. Executed through a stream-of-consciousness based process: spontaneous, free flowing and of the moment, Observed by Clouds will be expressed through the techniques of painting, mixed media, collage, and installation and will present more than a dozen new artworks. An opening reception will be held at Gallery Heist on Saturday, September 4, 2010 from 7-11pm and the exhibition will run from September 4 – September 25, 2010.

Imbued with a sense of cinematic intrigue and sci-fi fantasy that speaks to the era from which he draws reference, Wagner’s pieces depict a time when futuristic fascination was widespread, space travel was imminent, and the possibilities of technology were limitless. Observed by Clouds will present a collection of work exploring some of the darker and more illusive narratives that have been steadily evolving in Wagner’s artistic oeuvre. As Wagner puts it, these new works “feel like the next step in a line.” Dreamlike scenarios of morose pallbearers assembled in funeral formation, masked marauders on horseback full of hidden agendas, and watchful strangers with questionable intentions lurking in shadows point to mysteries that border on the eerie, begging at the viewer’s imagination and inviting him to contemplate the origins of the story’s beginning and its probable end.

Mario Wagner, born in 1974, works as an artist and illustrator in San Francisco/USA. Wagner creates his works using analog methods of collage incorporating vintage print media. The execution requires finesse with scissors and glue to ultimately transform his vision from the mental to physical plane of existence. His work has been shown internationally and across the US in exhibitions at SCOPE, ART Basel Miami and the upcoming NADA Art Fair with the Pool Gallery from Berlin. Wagner’s commercial illustrations and artworks have been commissioned by Esquire, Playboy, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Magazine.

For more information visit www.galleryheist.com

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Matt Mignanelli @ Medicine Agency, SF

New York artist, Matt Mignanelli recently opened a new show at the Medicine Agency‘s gallery space in San Francisco. His work has been featured in numerous high-profile publications such as GQ, Juxtapoz, and Time Out: Chicago. I love his vibrant sense of color and his bold geometries. The work reminds me of some, pared down, vintage-futuristic landscape. His solo show entitled “Transformative Illuminations” will be on display through September 10th.

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