2009 Spring Open Studios

Thurs­day night at Art Explo­sion on Sev­en­teenth Street in San Fran­cis­co Spring Open Stu­dios 2009 kicked off with an «after-work pre­view» show to pro­vide a peek at the new work that was on dis­play all week­end, begin­ning with Fri­day night’s open­ing at 7pm. I haven’t the time or incli­na­tion to pro­vide a com­plete sur­vey of the vari­ety of the work at Open Stu­dios this year, but I took some snap­shots of a small sam­ple of this year’s notable work.

A favorite from past years, Rachel Znerold’s work has been pro­gress­ing in a for­mal­ly abstract direc­tion for some time. Her play with col­or and shape con­tin­ues to evolve into more com­plex direc­tions. She’s been quite pro­lif­ic this year and she has been push­ing bound­ries of her own style and voice. I’m a fan of her old­er work, but the new work has a more mature, com­plex palette.

While her old­er work tends to use brighter, pri­ma­ry col­ors with a great deal of move­ment and ener­gy, this new work comes across earthy and naturalistic—in an inter­est­ing con­trast to the non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al nature of the work. The shapes sug­gest a grow­ing, liv­ing envi­ron­ment with ele­ments of vary­ing weight, or with grav­i­ty pulling in mul­ti­ple direc­tions. Rachel Z is def­i­nite­ly some­one to keep an eye on. http://www.rachelzart.com/

Tim Sveno­n­ius’s images are icon­ic and mon­u­men­tal (mon­u­mentesque might actu­al­ly be a bet­ter word even if not a real word), while being very haunt­ing at the same time. He works with sym­bols that feel very 19^th Cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca though his tech­nique is very mod­ern. His fig­ures read as sil­hou­ettes but have depth and vol­ume, lend­ing the impres­sion of a stat­ue shroud­ed in shad­ow rather than some form of sym­bol­ic cut-out. His work asks us to vis­it the ques­tion of our cul­tur­al mem­o­ry, asks us what it is that we com­mem­o­rate and why. It is not a reex­am­i­na­tion but an invi­ta­tion to sit with the tokens of this coun­try’s her­itage in a deeply-felt and respect­ful place.

Though the feel­ing of his work is com­mem­o­ra­tive, it engages the view­er in a very present, here-and-now man­ner. The work is not nos­tal­gic. It may in some way be about nos­tal­gia, but the pre­sen­ta­tion does­n’t wal­low in sen­ti­ment. It is evoca­tive with­out being declar­a­tive or melo­dra­mat­ic. http://www.sacredbeast.net/

I’ve only just dis­cov­ered Simon Cox, and I think his stuff is great. To have this whim­si­cal a style, ya got­ta have heart. And I don’t just mean the big yel­low one the robot on the right is car­ry­ing. Simon’s pieces are dig­i­tal­ly-col­ored pen draw­ings giclée-print­ed on can­vas in num­bered series not to exceed one hun­dred prints.

The com­mon ideas in his pieces are love and loss, and his sub­jects are robots. A less con­sid­ered treat­ment would end up corny, but instead Simon’s work explores the direc­tion our world is hurtling. It sug­gests a bright, shiny future where indi­vid­u­al­i­ty is a pre­cious rar­i­ty and emo­tion a tran­scen­dent phe­nom­e­non. A bright, shiny future which sad­ly may already be here. Simon’s robots do tran­scend their cook­iecut­ter con­struc­tion, and that’s what makes it beau­ti­ful and affirm­ing. They seem to say that no mat­ter how indus­tri­al­ized and deper­son­al­ized our soci­ety strives to be, it will always be pos­si­ble for the human heart to cause trou­ble and restore our humanity.

I’m remind­ed of a poem about the sprig of grass pop­ping up through the cracks in the pave­ment, show­ing us that nature will always find a way. While I believe in pro­tect­ing our nat­ur­al resources, I don’t get a charge out of Moth­er Nature tri­umph­ing over human tech­nol­o­gy. Human­i­ty tri­umph­ing over human tech­nol­o­gy, escap­ing the pris­ons we con­struct for our­selves, that has per­son­al, vital, and very time­ly mean­ing. http://www.ee2f.com/

Lucky Rapp, who recent­ly showed her Piece of My Mind series at the Reaves Gallery here in San Fran­cis­co, has a tremen­dous amount of new work on dis­play. Her skill with resin is unbe­liev­able and her use of lan­guage and typo­graph­i­cal ele­ments in her art­work always clever, charm­ing, and opti­mistic. Must be seen to be believed. If you have ever tried to work with resin or have some knowl­edge of the amount of pre­ci­sion is need­ed for it, you’ll be blown away. http://www.luckylucko.com/

Hei­di McDow­ell’s work (apolo­gies that her paint­ings are so far away in this image) is get­ting big­ger. Lit­er­al­ly. She’s nev­er been shy of work­ing large, but scale seems to be a new obses­sion for her. Her work is atmospheric.

The Bay Area will soon lose Jeeti Singh to grad school in Lon­don, but she’s still with us for a few months. This was her last Open Stu­dios in San Fran­cis­co for a while and she and her work will both be missed.

Her recent paint­ings have tak­en a mod­ern sacred theme as she delves into ter­ri­to­ry that seems at once more per­son­al and more uni­ver­sal than her ear­li­er work. While her pre­vi­ous body of work deals most­ly with issues of self-image, body-image, and sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, Singh’s new­er paint­ings por­tray myth­ic fig­ures in a com­bi­na­tion of mod­ern and tra­di­tion­al aspects, chal­leng­ing the view­er’s assump­tions about each aspect through the ten­sion cre­at­ed by the juxtaposition.

Blake Gib­son, a new­com­er to Art Explo­sion, wins this year’s Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look Choice Award (yes I made that up just now) by virtue of doing work that is most­ly, well, mono­chro­mat­ic. His draw­ings and paint­ings are beau­ti­ful­ly evoca­tive and com­plex. He has a free hatch­ing style, which looks loose at close range but very con­sis­tent over­all. His linework has great per­son­al­i­ty and he does a fan­tas­tic job of cre­at­ing motion and ener­gy with his pen and ink work. Draw­ing appears to be a dis­ap­pear­ing art, so I find it refresh­ing to see some­one who puts such pas­sion and thought into pen & ink. The work is non­rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al but employs a strength of form rarely seen in abstrac­tion and frankly, rarely seen in rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pen and ink draw­ings. At the same time his style is so flu­id and ener­getic it’s dif­fi­cult to believe. If you’re detect­ing a note of envy here, you’re right. I love this guy’s work.

Allyson Seal and Julia Lyn­ton’s This Is An Exper­i­ment: You Are The Inde­pen­dent Vari­able is an inter­ac­tive con­cep­tu­al envi­ron­ment. Passers-by are invit­ed to take a sci­en­tif­ic-look­ing dia­gram, schemat­ic or flow­chart and use it to map out some­thing from their own emo­tion­al, spir­i­tu­al, phys­i­cal or men­tal land­scape. These maps are put on the wall and make for great brows­ing. Allyson’s busi­ness card reads, «social exper­i­menter» and this is very much in line with the installation/experiments she and Julia have cooked up in the past.

There is, of course, fan­tas­tic art­work to be seen at a num­ber of loca­tions through­out the Mis­sion this week­end, most with­in walk­ing dis­tance of one anoth­er. With the luck of some nice Spring weath­er, there should be a good time await­ing any­one mak­ing the rounds this weekend.