Category Archives: news

Triple Base Door Closing Party

Triple Base Door Closing Party
Saturday, January 7th, 8pm-late
Music by Big Boy Scene DJ Alberto Cuadros

A Note from Gallery Owner Dina Pugh:

After seven years of adventurous exhibitions and events by emerging artists, Triple Base will be closing its doors, with a closing party to celebrate all of our friends and accomplishments on Saturday, January 7th, starting at 8pm and going late. Join us on the early side to converse and on the later end to D-A-N-C-E!

I think of this not as an ending but a new beginning for the space on 24th Street, myself and the artists who worked alongside Joyce Grimm and me to build the gallery over the years. The physical gallery will turn into a thriving new art space lead by Lindsey White, David Kasprzak and Jordan Stein (please support them!) The Triple Base website and newsletters will remain a resource to gain information on new works and exhibitions by Triple Base artists as well as my new curatorial projects.

Although I have relocated to New York, I remain dedicated to the Bay Area artists I have championed over the years and I hope to build on this work through my art advisory service, independent curatorial endeavors and a new creative agency I co-founded with Adam Katz and David Kramer, Imprint Projects. Please continue to contact me at dina@basebasebase.com for any inquiries about new works or commissions.

Although we have shown countless artists through our flat files, events and exhibitions I would like to thank the core group that really built the ship and who I plan to continue to work with in the future: Jay Nelson, Rachel Kaye, Todd Bura, Alexander Kori Girard, Bryson Gill and Oliver Halsman Rosenberg who founded the gallery in 2003 with Clint Taniguchi. I am so proud of how all of these artists have flourished over the past half decade. Joyce and I started showing many of them fresh out of art school and watched them steadily expand their practice and their careers, now exhibiting throughout the US and internationally to critical acclaim.

I would also like to thank the many people whose support the gallery relied upon: Larry Rinder who was a mentor and advocate since the earliest days of Triple Base, Steven Leiber our trusty critic and quiet champion, Leigh Markopoulos, Jens Hoffmann, Sabrina Buell, Kenneth Baker, Rene de Guzman, Marjory Graue and Marianna Stark. Although Triple Base did not have an official Board of Directors, these people (and many others too great to be named here) were integral to our past success and future accomplishments. I also have to mention all of our loyal clients who kept us afloat while giving our work meaning through their true passion for art.

We also owe so much to Will Brown who has led the gallery for the past six months, and to our many die-hard interns throughout the years (most recently Heidi Rabben, Anouk Jonker, Brandon Holmes and Leef Smith). Thank you, thank you!

I also write this letter on behalf of Joyce Grimm, my partner and Triple Base’s co-director who re-invented the gallery with me in 2005 and worked hard to create a new kind of emerging artist space for six years, one that did not rely on the traditional commercial gallery model, but integrated the values and strategies of non-profits and entrepreneurial upstarts. We are humbled by the outpouring of support Triple Base has received over the years. Please stay in touch and come join us on January 7th for a celebration!

All the best,
Dina Pugh

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Jay Nelson voted “Best of Home + Design” in 7×7 Magazine


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Lucid Art Foundation-J.B. Blunk Benefit Show: Works Available

Lucid Art Foundation-J.B. Blunk Residency Annual Exhibition Works:

Please note: All proceeds from the sales of work in the exhibition will directly benefit the Lucid Art Foundation-J.B. Blunk Residency program. Contact dina@basebasebase.com to inquire.

Click on images to enlarge:

Benjamin Britton
Broadcaster (garden below, we’re all gonna go), 2010
Oil on wood
30” x 30”
$3000


Rachel Kaye
Leopard (jacket), 2010
Oil on wood
12” x 10” x 1”
$700


Rachel Kaye
Givenchy I, 2010
Oil on wood
9” x 12” x 1”
$700


Jay Nelson
Inverness (60 day drawing journal), 2010 (click on image to enlarge)
Graphite on paper
36” x 60”
$3200


Beatrice Pediconi
White 1, 2010
from the series “Brown For Fog And White For Land”
20 x 25 inches framed
Chromogenic print on paper / 1 AP, edition of 5
$4000


Beatrice Pediconi
Brown 1, 2010
from the series “White For Land And Brown For Fog”
20 x 25 inches framed
Chromogenic print on paper/ 1 AP, edition of 5
$4000


Oliver Halsman Rosenberg
Scroll #1, 2011
Ink on paper
19” x 50”
$2250


Oliver Halsman Rosenberg
Scroll #2, 2011
Ink on paper
18” x 50”
$2250


Oliver Halsman Rosenberg
Scroll #3, 2011
Ink on paper
18” x 50”
$2250


Oliver Halsman Rosenberg
Scroll #4, 2011
Ink on paper
20” x 51”
$2500


Jenna Didier
Cut Stone, 2010
Granite
4 ” x 8” x 8”
$650


Oliver Hess
Cut Stone, 2010
Basalt and video
5” x 10” x 5”
$650

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SF Chronicle Review: Alula Editions

Link to original article

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New American Paintings Review by Nadiah Fellah: Alexander Kori Girard

New American Paintings Review
by Nadiah Fellah
“Alexander Kori Girard at Triple Base”
March 10, 2011


Alexander Kori Girard, System of Space 3, 2010 | Gouache on watercolor paper, 30 x 23 inches. Courtesy the artist and Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco.

Visit Triple Base Gallery in San Francisco’s Mission district and your head will spin for days with the colorful geometric abstractions created by artist Alexander Kori Girard. For the precision and planning needed to carry out many of Kori Girard’s pieces, it is astounding how prolific he has been, with most of the works in the show created in the last few months. The artist drew inspiration from recent trips to India for the palette employed and in the spirituality of his subjects. His compositions are built from a central axis or horizon, unfolding into structures that are at times mirror images, and others that grow out concentrically.


Axis mundi, the term for which the exhibition is named, is the convergence point of the universe: where heaven meets earth, north meets south, east meets west, earth meets sky. This notion of divine symmetry is presumably the inspiration behind Kori Girard’s body of work, but on closer inspection one notices the undulating lines that make his drawings just barely asymmetrical. It is this hint of imperfection that makes the works in the show distinctly appealing.

Some works are reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s graphic, mathematical drawings, and many others conjure the pictograms of pre-Columbian codices with their flattened depictions of figures and mirror-image symmetry. The idea of something that is simultaneously complex and rudimentary is perhaps what makes the pieces so memorable.


A Blink, Aneon, 2011 | Ink on paper, 13 x 9 inches. Courtesy the artist and Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco.

A few are done on Bhutanese paper, a material that imbues each balanced design with an irregular texture covering the entire surface. My only regret was not being able to get a closer look at one of the show’s key pieces, Blue Circle, which was hung so high above eye level that it was difficult to appreciate the subtleties of the small painting.

The Triple Basement, where Kori Girard and Altman’s video is installed, is not for the faint of heart. Climb down a set of steep stairs, past an understated Enter At Your Own Risk sign, and one is rewarded with an interpretation of the drawings upstairs, animated. Shapes swell, recede and mutate into countless variations on the screen, on a cycle of revolutions in which it becomes impossible to tell if what you’re seeing is different or has begun to repeat itself.


Wheel Handed Lady, 2011 | Ink on paper, 13 x 9 1/2 inches. Courtesy the artist and Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco.

In the past, Kori Girard has worked in a variety of mediums, often creating collages from appropriated photographs and cut-out paper shapes, with elements of his drawing patched and woven throughout. This body of work is quieter, but much more focused, and the quality and cohesion of his oeuvre is captivating. It seems that he has come into his own as an artist, and the exhibition at Triple Base displays his talent as a draughtsman, colorist, and collaborator.

On the whole the show is exquisitely hung in the small space. After several minutes of careful looking—at vibrantly painted structures and heavy-lined patterns that transform into monsters and robot-type figures on the page—one appreciates the refreshing elements of the meditative selection of works in the gallery, a calm sanctuary away from the chaos of 24th street just outside.


System of Space 5, 2011 | Gouache on watercolor paper, 30 x 23 inches. Courtesy the artist and Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco.

Alexander Kori Girard’s drawings and paintings, in addition to a stop-motion animation movie created in collaboration with Raphael Altman, are on view at until March 20th at Triple Base, San Francisco. Kori Girard currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He is the grandson of renowned designer Alexander Girard.

Nadiah Fellah is a curatorial assistant at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

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Oliver Halsman Rosenberg Open Studio @ JB Blunk Residency

Oliver Halsman Rosenberg Open Studio
Saturday, March 19th, 1-6pm
JB Blunk Residency, Inverness, CA

Continuing our partnership with the JB Blunk Residency, Triple Base is pleased to announce that Oliver Halsman Rosenberg (Triple Base co-founder and artist) is wrapping up his two-month residency at the Blunk house and now it’s time to celebrate and share his new work!

Please RSVP to mariah@jbblunkresidency.org if you can join on Saturday, March 19th. She will reply with driving directions.

It would be great to see you there!

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Lunar Mission

Lunar Mission
Saturday, March 19, 2011, 7 – 10pm

Triple Base will present Felt Spot #1, a stop-frame animation by Alexander Kori Girard, in collaboration with video artist Rafael Altman. In conjunction with his exhibition Axis Mundi, Girard will share this animation outside under the stars (despite the rain) on 24th street. Over the last eight years, Altman has been documenting Girard’s painting and drawing process, capturing thousands of photographs that demonstrate the numerous transformations that an artist can have with a given work. This animated film directly relates to the artwork on display in the Girard’s larger gallery installation at Triple Base.

On March 19th, eight galleries off the axis of the Bryant and 24th Street veins of the district, including a brand-new venue to be debuted that night, will come together to showcase the importance of art, community, and the public they serve. Eleanor Hardwood Gallery, Galeria de la Raza, Gallery Hijinks, Guerrero Gallery, Kadist Art Foundation, Southern Exposure, Steven Wolf Fine Arts, and Triple Base join forces to present a day of unique and unforgettable programming, from live performance to sipping sessions, spoken word to street projections. It’s not an art crawl, or a one off-event; it’s the beginning of the Mission cultivating a celebration of vibrancy between us all, and a declaration art is here to stay.

Participating Galleries:

ELEANOR HARWOOD GALLERY
Eleanor Harwood Gallery will host a light show extravaganza presenting the work of Jeffrey Manson. Throughout the evening, the artist will fill the gallery with multiple performances featuring graphic light patterns, narrative shadow puppet theater, and a variety of musical accompaniment. Manson’s light show will coincide with and play off of the dark elements of current show, In the Dark: Three Considerations, featuring the works of Niall McClelland, Joe Bender, and Francesca Pastine, all revolving around a premise of the color black.
1295 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
415.867.7770 http://www.eleanorharwood.com/

GALERIA DE LA RAZA
The full moon, mystical and majestic, works in its own way as a symbol and catalyst to the underworkings of each of our worlds. In Galeria’s monthly Lunadas, all are invited to step in, up, and in front of one piece of equipment as a thorough means of expression: the mic. For March’s moon, called the Worm Moon, Heather Watkins (singer/songwriter), and Ilia Correa Sepulveda (poet), alongside special guest Mijo de la Palma from Puerto Rico (poet/singer/songwriter), come together to pull in the Venezuelan, Colombian, Salvadorian, Puerto Rican, and Brazilian contingent. Curated and co- hosted by Labohemia SF and Sandra Garcia Rivera. Founded in 1970, the Galería is a non-profit community-based arts organization whose mission is to foster public awareness and appreciation of Chicano/Latino art and serve as a laboratory where artists can both explore contemporary issues in art, culture and civic society, and advance intercultural dialogue.
2857 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
415.826.8009 http://www.galeriadelaraza.org

GALLERY HIJINKS
Group exhibition The Letter Collector will exhibit 50 artists of varying mediums, spotlighting exceptional aesthetic in the form of a letter from our contemporary alphabet. Artists confirmed to exhibit and interact include Aaron Bo Heimlich, Alexandra Zee, Andrea Wan, Andrew Johnson, Austin McManus, Beau Stanton, Casey Gray, Catherine Ryan, Chris Blackstock, Christian Rex Van Minnen, Christopher Davison, Claire Colette, Damon MacGregor, David Bayus, Denise Santillan, Dustin Klien, Eli Harris, Eric Helve, Erik Otto, Fernando Pizarro, Hannah Stouffer, Jakub Kalousek, Jason Vivona, Jing Wei, Jon Contino, Kyle Jorgensen, Lafe Eaves, Lisa Congdon, Louise Chen, Mark Warren Jacques, Matthew Reamer, Meryl Pataky, Mike Giant, Molly Bosley, Morgan Blair, Nas Chompas, Pakayla Biehn, Timothy Karpinski, Rich Pellegrino, Robert Minervini, Rosie Hanna, Russell Leng, Ryan De La Hoz, Ryan Riss, Sarah Patterson, Sean Somers, Seth Neefus, Shea Greene, Uri Korn, and Whitney Lasker and more. Gallery Hijinks is a welcoming space for fresh and progressive art to reside, venturing out to create a genuine space for emerging talent, locally and internationally.
2309 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
415.371.9330 http://www.galleryhijinks.com/

GUERRERO GALLERY
Guerrero Gallery will host the first collaborative effort by Bay Area artists Jason Michael Leggiere and Christopher Robin Duncan. SOUND AND SHAPE is an audience-participatory, and optically-challenging sound sculpture based on basic triangular shapes. The negative space of the sculpture is filled with stretched piano wire (think post-modern harp), intended to be touched, felt or played by visitors. A horn speaker at the base of the sculpture, powered by hand built tube electronics, emits resulting amplified tones. Resting upon a mirrored floor that revisualizes the sculpture’s triangles into diamonds, viewers can easily become engulfed by the sonic and visual noise. Over the duration of the exhibition, Guerrero Gallery will host several performances by local musicians invited by Duncan and Leggiere. While some performances will incorporate it as a primary instrument, others will include it as a conceptual invocation of sound by its mere presence.
2700 19th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
415.400.5168 http://guerrerogallery.com/

KADIST ART FOUNDATION
Lunar Mission includes the opening of a new series of storefronts, where 20th Street meets Folsom Street, by new San Francisco branch of the Kadist Art Foundation. The foundation supports an international residency for artists, curators, and art magazines as its primary program, but will also host evening events and a Saturday reading room for international art magazines. Echoing Tom Marioni’s long standing bar-night on Wednesdays, established for his famous work “The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art,” the Kadist SF Wednesday evenings will begin and end with a bar. Occasional offerings in the form of performance, ephemeral installation, video screenings, and live conversations, will be programmed in cooperation with an array of advisors including Hou Hanru, Jens Hoffmann, Tony Labat, Steven Lieber, and Larry Rinder. The foundation also supports a year-long project gallery organized by Harrell Fletcher and Jens Hoffman, called The People’s Gallery. It will present a series of solo shows featuring the work of artists included in their traveling exhibition The People’s Biennial, organized in association with Independent Curators International. Specifically for Lunar Mission, Kadist will present a selection from the magazine reading room, a program of videos culled from various Kadist collections. The People’s Gallery will feature an inaugural exhibition of rodeo photographs by Bob Newland. Lastly, in partnership with the Kadist Art Foundation, THE THINGS’s Will Rogan and Jonn Herschend will present British artist Ryan Gander’s parallel blackjack tournament. Kadist participates in the development of society through contemporary art, collecting and producing the work of artists and conducting various programs to promote their role as cultural agents. Kadist’s collections include works that reflects the global scope of contemporary art, and its programs develop an active exchange between Kadist’s local contexts (Paris, San Francisco) and artists, curators, academics and art publishers worldwide.
Taking place where Folsom meets 20th Street, San Francisco, CA

STEVEN WOLF FINE ARTS
Steven Wolf Fine Arts will host a one-night exclusive engagement with performance artist Margaret Tedesco, whose works installation, photography, sculpture, and video. Selected exhibitions and most current performances include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, SF Camerawork, Saarländisches Künstlerhaus, Germany, and 11th Nippon Performance Festival, Japan. The recipient of many awards and grants, Tedesco has presented and collaborated with visual and performance artists, writers, and filmmakers since 1985, hosting and curating programs in venues such as Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, Queen’s Nails Annex, The LAB, Oakland Art Gallery, and SF Arts Commission Gallery. Steven Wolf Fine Arts exhibits post-war and contemporary art in a 2000-square-foot building.
2747 19th Street, Unit A, San Francisco, CA 94110
415.263.3677

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
For “Sipping Session,” Southern Exposure is transformed into a convivial gathering place for drinking and conversation, operating like a public house for one night. Each of the participating artists work to create a beverage, often distilled from local ingredients. Because the drinks these artists serve are an extension of their creative practice, each beverage made operates as a work of art. “Sipping Session” responds to On the Ground, the exhibition currently on view at SoEx exploring artists’ response to a particular locale, by literally offering up a taste of our own locality, responding to the Mission’s enthusiasm for hyper-local food and beverage culture by serving a drink created and sourced right here.

About the artists and drinks: Lauren Anderson, founder and director of Produce to the People, ferments the crops she collects with the Backyard Harvest Project into homemade drinks under the moniker, Garage Brew. She will be serving up blackberry-infused green tea kombucha and snakebites, made from equal parts cider and ale. Eric Cabunoc’s Coffee Bike is a hand-built, full-service café on three wheels where coffee is roasted, brewed, and served on the spot. Mariah Gardner’s Tonic No. 4 is brewed from all-natural ingredients and infused with local citrus. The tonic is added to cocktails or sold on its own in small, hand-labeled bottles from behind an old-time San Francisco bar, built by the artist herself. Pete Nelson’s sound and sculpture installation, The Cod Fish Poem, dispenses “shine” from an elaborate hand-built still. Alison Pebworth debuted The Americanitis Elixir at Southern Exposure in April, 2010. Distilled from spring water, honey and wild yeasts collected within San Francisco and flavored with backyard fruits and herbs, it was offered as a homemade, hometown antidote to the national ailment, Americanitis, first identified in the late 19th century. Pebworth’s project was a great inspiration for the night’s programming. For “Sipping Session,” Pebworth presents The Lunar Mission Elixir, sourced from within the perimeters of the eight co-presenting galleries and aged under the Mission Moon.
3030 20th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
415.863.2141

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Alexander Kori Girard Opening Night Pics

Here are some great pics taken by Jake Cahill, a friend of Kori’s, at last Friday’s opening:
Thanks Jake!

Flickr link to all images

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Triple Base + ReadyMade Magazine

Triple Base artists Jay Nelson and Rachel Kaye are on the cover of this month’s ReadyMade Magazine!

http://www.readymade.com/magazine/issue/issue_51

The issue also features many more pics of Jay’s paintings, drawings, customized vehicles and treehouses. Check it out!

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San Francisco Chronicle Review of Jay Nelson Solo Show

View full article on SFGate.com

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Serena Cole – KQED

Visual Arts
STUDIO INVASION: Serena Cole












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Jay Nelson KQED Review




Read article on KQED…

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Serena Cole in “Fabrications” @ Marx & Zavattero

FABRICATIONS
Artists: Libby Black, Jennifer Celio, Serena Cole, Melissa Manfull, and Taravat Talepasand
January 4 – February 5, 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 8, 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Marx & Zavattero, San Francisco


Serena Cole
I’m an Animal I, 2010
22.25″ x 16.5″, watercolor, gouache, & colored pencil on paper

Triple Base gallery artist Serena Cole will be featured in a new show at Marx & Zavattero titled “Fabrications”. This work on paper exhibition focuses on five women artists hailing from the Bay Area and Los Angeles who depict reality at odds with imagined states of being. Utilizing majestic iterations of critiques on society, fashion, and environmental alteration & decay, each artist’s work makes use of decisive marks to graft the external world into something less tangible. Intimate and mysterious, the work in Fabrications promises to establish conditions of suspended animation and fantasy.

Jennifer Celio’s delicately rendered graphite landscapes manipulate perception, creating delightfully naïve iterations in which artificial and natural imagery fuse to become newly impossible sites. Hinting at the contemporary threat of environmental degradation, Celio’s dense drawings depict seemingly mundane spaces that have been artificially altered or supercharged.

Melissa Manfull’s richly colored watercolor and ink works push the space of the paper into an irregular maze of dizzying architecturally impossible spaces. Tightly rendered decorative architectural elements bleed out into colored washes reminiscent of Helen Frankenthaler stain paintings, creating drawings that are in constant states of suspension – toggling back and forth between explosion and implosion – her delicate marks resemble the fragility of a dream becoming artificial oases or nightmares.

Libby Black and Serena Cole create works that highlight fashion as a starting point for fabricating new fictions. Mining the fashion world’s exoticized fantasy, Cole’s limp, emaciated models exude a pride in the dream they sell and at the same time deny and elicit a sense of desire. Constructed directly from fashion ad campaigns, Cole’s signature airy brushwork in ink, watercolor, & gouache suggests a hazy altered state and fairytales gone awry. Black’s luscious gouache & graphite drawings take desire into new realms of illusion. Using direct references to extraordinary luxury goods, Black devilishly depicts luxury and class as an empty surface. Branded goods are paired with seemingly mundane objects, or models are set within fantastical spaces that peddle the good life, all the while leaving room for reflection and her signature sense of humor.

Taravat Talepasand’s highly detailed, figurative graphite on paper pieces delve beyond the actual, accentuating her personal inventions to address the complicated cultural and surface identity of her dual heritage as an Iranian and American. Using herself as primary subject, Talepasand masquerades in a variety of iconic poses that challenge traditional hierarchies in art and society, both in the United States and in Iran.

In “Fabrications” each artist addresses an array of highly personalized and constructed realities that are alternately parable and horror story. The exhibition guarantees to present a visual feast ranging from the bold contrast of stark black and white graphite works by Talepasand and Celio to the lush color-laden pieces by Manfull, Black, and Cole.

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Edmund Wyss interview

Great interview with Triple Base Flat File artist Edmund Wyss!

View original article: http://popphoto.wordpress.com/

Q&A with SF painter EDMUND WYSS 01nov10

This piece is about San Francisco painter Edmund Wyss, a favorite among local photographers for his photorealistic images of vintage cameras. Wyss shares a passion for light, precision and beautifully designed objects (in this case the aesthetics of vintage cameras) with photographers which in part explains the affinity for his work. Beyond this, they are just very cool paintings that both in their subject matter and in his painstaking methods speak to something that has been underground in our culture and is just now making a revival, the profound ability of something well-made and beautifully designed to make us feel right with the world, to simply reflect the quality of caring into the level of the mundane.

I spoke with Ned about his love for the analog, his process and not surprisingly about his collection of vintage cameras.


image: Speed Graphic, Oil on Board, 2008

POP: Why do you paint cameras?

Well, it really stems from my commercial art background and ideas I have about image making. I’ve always been amazed by the skill of artists in previous centuries and their ability to meet high standards of representation. This is not only rare these days but considered somewhat pointless. Why not take a picture? Consequently, photography has reshaped expectations about what painting should be. It’s all about surface, material and expression. Most painters don’t try to compete with the representational precision of photography because they don’t have to. The photograph is also a fine reference for painters who are concerned with retaining accuracy. So, in this way the camera is a double-edged sword as it relates to painting.

image: SP Float, Oil on Hardboard, 2010

POP: What kind of cameras most interest you?

I consider pre-plastic analog cameras of all formats to be just amazing and beautiful objects. However, I especially love the style and compactness of mid century 35mm rangefinder cameras. It’s safe to say that I have a bit of a fetish when it comes to these. A Leica M3 or Nikon SP is so wonderful and meticulous with as much concern for aesthetics as utility. These cameras were made for more sensitive skillful hands than today’s clunky plastic digitals.

image: M4 Float, Oil on Headboard, 2010

POP: Where do they come from?

In the past, I bought them through online sources like Ebay and Craiglist after much research and did quite well. I kind of reached my limit for practical purposes so I don’t really buy anything outright anymore. After so many years of painting cameras they now come to me through friends on loan. It’s not really commission work but more the fun of having someone paint your camera’s portrait.

image: Flex, Gouache on Paper, 2009

POP: What is your background with photography?

I got my undergraduate degree at Pratt Institute in communication arts so I took a lot of photography courses and shot my own subjects for graphic design projects. I’ve turned a few of my bathrooms into darkrooms over the years but I don’t really print anymore.

POP: I’ve noticed that most of the stylists and photographers I interview
have collections. Do you collect vintage cameras? Or anything else?

Yeah, I’m a packrat. I have a bunch of rangefinder cameras made between 1953 and 1968, Nikons, Leicas and a Canon. Of course I also own a number of corresponding lenses as well.

image: Range Finders. Leica M3, Canon P, Nikon SP, Nikon S2, Leica M4, Leica M8

image: SLRs. Nikon F2 AS, Nikon F, Nikon F3

POP: Serial numbers appear in most paintings, why?

Like any quality product the serial number is a mark of authenticity. This becomes a signature for the object which makes it personal and yet a result of collective production. There’s a dichotomy here between evident multiplicity and the uniqueness of a specific number. It represents a specific instant in time when the camera was assembled by hand. I like that.

image: 57933, Gouache on Paper, 2009

POP: The paintings are realist in style but does photography inform the work in other ways?

I always develop my compositions based on an idealized perspective. This amounts to a diagram brought to life through hyperrealist rendering. I deny any depth of field or tapering of form through perspective. This is a quality that may not be immediately recognizable to some. The inherent distortion of photography, with it’s flattening of the visual field or exaggerated perspective does similar things. Since I use the camera to build my imagery, it is very much informed by photography.

image: Slice, Oil on Hardboard, 2010

POP: What significance does scale play?

Big paintings always have a huge impact but I like to mix it up. Some compositions deserve a large scale and others don’t. When I want to emphasize the individual components and focus on detail I tend to make the painting larger.

image: Mamiya Colossus, Oil on Canvas, 2010

POP: Your most recent show is titled Broken Down and for the first time, the cameras are ‘broken apart.’ How did this evolve and what is your process? How do you paint each part while keeping the lighting and perspective? Do you work from photographs?

This series of deconstructed pieces came from a desire to best utilize my process. I spend a lot of time photographing my subject beforehand. I probably take a minimum of a dozen digital photographs so that I get a detail of every component in focus and from a fixed point. I like to combine natural and Tungsten light sources because that gives me a broad color spectrum. Then I stitch all these photos together in Photoshop and this serves as my reference. Often I need to make a line drawing of the composition so that the geometry is perfect and transfer this to the painting surface. I use oil or gouache paint to carefully reproduce the photo composite with extra emphasis on sharpness and detail.

image: Deconstruction, building tube, vinyl, foamcore, 2010

POP: What painters and photographers have inspired you?

As far a painting goes, I am a huge Gerhard Richter fan. I suppose this is no surprise as his early painting was of photographs. Beyond that basic point, there is an effort to capture a certain quality of perception. That is to say, the subject is really informed by a filter of cognizance. This is a difficult thing to paint and can be approached in many ways. The Baader Meinhof series or ’18. Oktober 1977′ reflected the media filter of a painful and contentious event, the group suicide of leftist terrorists in prison. Blurred and closely cropped newspaper photos served to show the small window through which the public was allowed into this world. The camera registers the photographer’s decision of what not to reveal and this tells it’s own story. Richter’s more recent ‘abstract’ work was painted with the intention of showing ‘something’ which has been obscured by his process and by the viewers perspective. I always consider this when making new work. I suggest a space where my subject resides through the use of reflected light on it’s surface.
Simultaneously, I subtract everything else so the viewer is allowed to create their own narrative.

As for photographers, I like all of them.

POP: You have an upcoming show at the SFMOMA café. What will you be showing and what are the dates of the show?

Thanks for mentioning it. The exhibition runs from November 10 until December 21st. I plan on showing a number of pieces of different sizes materials and formats. I hope all your readers have a chance to check out the show.

Big thank you to Ned for his interview and for sharing his incredible images with us.

image: Wyss at Hatch Gallery, Oakland CA. 2010

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ArtForum Critics’ Pick: Elisheva Biernoff

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Shotgun Review: Elisheva Biernoff

Art Practical Shotgun Review

Art Practical
Elisheva Biernoff
Sep 10 – Oct 10
by Leigh Markopoulos

For her first solo exhibition at Triple Base Gallery, Elisheva Biernoff has drawn inspiration from architectural follies—the whimsical neoclassical structures devised in the eighteenth century to lend interest to the gardens of the European aristocracy.

The notion of enhancing nature or using nature to decorate our interiors and the extended implication of “folly” in the sense of a foolish or ill-advised undertaking are encapsulated in Biernoff’s installation. Comprising a set-like fragment of a room in an advanced state of disrepair, Folly is richly resonant in the context of an overhyped art market and as a comment on the fetishization of production values. Every element of the ruin is handcrafted by the artist. The finely wrought textured layers of wallpaper, the trailing morning glory vines overhanging the walls, and the “trash” littering the floor create a dizzyingly faux scene of decorative decay. The flatscreen TV, which serves as a window, is the only technological intrusion. It is there to provide a twenty-first century folly in the form of a time-lapse view of native flowers transplanted to and filmed by the artist on Mount Tamalpais. The distant sound of birdcalls that at first appears to be part of Folly in fact derives from Out the Window (2010), which is installed in the basement. Here Biernoff creates an eerie shadow play from paper cutouts and clever lighting. The silhouetted plants and birds are animated by an audio that starts relatively simply with a single piping bird call and amplifies gradually to a jungle composition which includes a full blown lion’s roar.

Luckily any panic induced by the crescendo and the slightly dank basement is diffused by the static view. The success of this work seems to lie less in agonizing about where “nature and culture meet” as the press release claims, and more in providing an environment where the imagination and reason can wrestle.

Folly is on view at Triple Base Gallery in San Francisco through October 10, 2010.

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“ABSTRACT” review in The Oregonian


Read review on The Oregonian website

Abstract art has earned a reputation over the past 40 years as loud, splashy, colorful, gestural — an in-your-face kind of painting spawned during the mid-20th century that forces the viewer to regard it and regard it well. You can try, but you can’t ignore the Jackson Pollock painting in the room.

In this cultural context, it comes as both a surprise and a breath of fresh air to walk into the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College and spend a moment or two surrounded by the calm, soothing, subdued and polite paintings of the three contemporary artists brought together in “Abstract.” The show is Reed curator Stephanie Snyder’s most recent triumph and the first offering of the fall season at the Cooley Gallery, one of several galleries at the city’s colleges launching their fall programming.

Snyder is one of the most ambitious curators at work in Portland and one of the few who makes it a point to infuse her academically grounded programming with heady, challenging currents drawn from the international and national art world: exhibits like “Abstract” are prime examples.

The artists share some biographical information in common. They are all women, a fact that seems important but probably isn’t. They all have careers outside Portland: Ruth Laskey and Leonie Guyer in San Francisco, Lynne Woods Turner in New York, among other places. (Turner lives in Portland.) They are each fascinated with pure, cold abstraction: non-representational, non-figurative. Each of the artists creates works that are fully articulated explorations of the vocabulary and tradition of abstraction.

The pieces are mostly within the same, plate-sized scale. Most require a squint-eyed study before stepping back to take in the whole. There is color, but not a lot of it — the overwhelming impression is of white and beige inspired by milk and bone. The pieces span an impressive number of materials and techniques: pencil drawings on archival paper, loom pieces with hand-died linen, paintings on canvas, watercolor, and paintings on wood. Given the variety, however, there is also an impressive unity of theme.

Consider, for instance, the seemingly simple act of making a single shape on a piece of paper. Two questions to start with: “What shape?” and “What paper?” As displayed here, there are as many ways to place a shape as there are to paint a haystack.

Guyer’s approach is to use thinning, yellowing, folded, crinkled and crimped antique paper, drawing on it with a single, gutsy line, creating a final product that looks like a delicate jewel nestled inside its two-dimensional nest. Turner’s approach also involves archival paper but smoother paper than that chosen by Guyer. Her shapes are both more geometric — think the elegant curves of a classical vase — and fuller. They fill the paper, but some of them are ghosted out, some are made on the backs of the sheets, and nearly all the colors require the viewer to get right up close to the work. At first glance, both Guyer and Turner’s pieces seem like nice works, but upon closer inspection they come to seem angry and a little confrontational. The emotion lies in what the pieces require of the viewer: They don’t give much, but they demand all.

On the other side of the mark-making spectrum are Laskey’s pucker shapes on smooth, blue-lined graph paper. Each of the squares that makes the shape is saturated with obsessively placed watercolor ink — there are no lines in pencil or pen. The result is a shape that seems to hover above the paper, making the cold abstraction of pyramid form seem somehow warmer because of its treatment on the page.

Guyer, Laskey and Turner are wrestling with Big Concepts of abstract art, but they each arrive at their own idiosyncratic answers to the questions of tradition, placement, line, color and form. There is not a “star” piece among the work hanging on the walls, no single painting or drawing or loomed piece shines out from the rest or even announces itself as more ambitious or qualitatively different than its friends. The strength of “Abstract” is the dialogue created between and among the works, the sensibility on display.

Even though there are three artists here, there is a fourth intelligence at work. Hats off to curator Synder for bringing these artists and their individual practices into conversation with each other. Standing in the Cooley gallery with their work surrounding you is like sitting around a late-night kitchen table with three brilliant sisters: each is unique, and together they hold a lively, loving conversation. You don’t want to leave the room, and you can’t turn your eyes away.

– Victoria Blake

“Abstract”
Curated by: Stephanie Snyder
Where: Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College, 3203 S.E. Woodstock Blvd.
Hours: Noon- 5p.m. Tuesday-Sunday
Admission: Free
Closes: Dec. 5.
Website: www.reed.edu/gallery

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Anonymous Lecture Series @ JB Blunk

J.B. Blunk Residency Open House Day
Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess from Materials and Applications hosted an Anonymous Lecture Series at the Blunk home and we celebrated their two month residency stay.
This is how it worked: Each participant submitted a 5 minute slide show with up to 12 images. The images could have been of anything, a doctoral dissertation on spear fishing technologies of prehistory, or a photo essay on clouds. Those selected to attend the event were asked to present someone else’s slide show at random. They had about five days to come up with a narrative of your own. The slide show might have titles on the slides, or perhaps the titles of the images will say what they are intended to be. Presenters were to create whatever meaning they wanted for these words and simply think of it as an invitation to explore their own interest in the content for the enjoyment of the group. This format for sharing ideas was a direct response to the standard mundane ubiquity of the power point presentation that we are all called upon now and then to assemble and present. Oliver and Jenna wanted to experiment and see if, like good art, a good presentation is open to interpretation.

Thanks Everyone!

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Featured Off-Site Exhibition: Léonie Guyer in ABSTRACT

A B S T R A C T
Léonie Guyer, Ruth Laskey, Lynne Woods Turner
September 4 – December 5, 2010
Cooley Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR
View Léonie Guyer’s works in the exhibition


Léonie Guyer
Untitled, no. 63, 2009 (Detail)
oil and true gesso on wood panel
13 x 9 x 1 1/8 in.

“My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.” —Agnes Martin

Abstract and non-objective artistic methodologies are most often associated with Modernism and the European and Russian avant-garde; but visual and material abstraction has flourished for millennia, globally, as an essential human activity, as symbolism, ornament, and plan. ABSTRACT brings together the work of three contemporary women artists inspired by the breadth of abstraction’s spiritual, esoteric, and ritualistic dimensions.

For Guyer, Laskey, and Turner, abstraction, and specifically, geometric abstraction, is a means for examining and manifesting experience and sensation as directly as possible, rigorously visualizing, in Agnes Martin’s words, “… what is forever known in the mind.” Continuing the rich legacy of women abstract artists such as Hilma af Klint, Anni Albers, Agnes Martin, and Nasreen Mohamedi, the artists in ABSTRACT engage abstraction’s radical self-reflexivity as a natural expression of understanding, making, and being in the world, offering the viewer the same experience in return.

An exhibition catalog will be published by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery with essays by curator Stephanie Snyder, and Lawrence Rinder, Director, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, with a poem by Franck André Jamme. Publication date: October, 2010.

Leonie Guyer’s work in the exhibition is available through Triple Base Gallery. Email info@basebasebase.com for more info.

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revolver – Artist Profile: Jay Nelson

Revolver was lucky enough to chat with artist Jay Nelson over his magical   vehicles, art, and the ocean.

Q: Could you give us a quick overview of who you are, what you’re doing, and where you are right now in life, work etc?

I was born in 1980 in Los Angeles. I’ve spent the last 10 years between SF and NYC and Hawaii. My first show was at Needles and Pens. I built a tree house in the space that was inspired by my tree house in Hawaii. My tree house in Hawaii was built from local found materials. When I built the needles and pens tree house I used that same model, salvaging materials from a walking distance radius of the gallery.  I’ve built similar tree houses at the Oakland airport and at the Mollusk Surf Shops. Building these structures started my interest in art as functional space, which led me to customize my Honda civic into a camper, and then a custom motor scooter, an electric camper car and most recently a small live aboard boat.  My sculptures always border on non-function and sometimes fail to actually work.  I think of them as an optimistic attempt to simplify and control my surroundings.

I don’t think people know me so much as a painter, but of all the work I do I feel most connected to painting and always return to it. I think painting is mysterious and exciting. My new paintings are abstract and although they may look different than the sculpture they feel totally connected.  I think of them as windows. A window in a vehicle or home would be positioned by the maker in a way to control the viewer’s gaze on the landscape.

My drawing are pencil on paper. I originally started drawing because I was interested in an art practice that could fit a nomadic lifestyle. One pencil one backpack one pad of paper. At the time it made sense for my lifestyle. I wasn’t interested in working to pay for a studio or a large home. The first drawings were small but eventually became larger as I felt the need to completely enclose myself and the viewer into the space of the drawing.  Read More…

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THE THING’s SASE Project Launch Party @ Triple Base- Friday, August 20th

THE THING’s SASE Project: #1 Suzanne Husky
Launch Party @ Triple Base: Friday, August 20, 7-9pm

THE THING will launch their first project in the SASE series (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope) at Triple Base Friday, August 20th! SASE #1 is now available and was created by Bay Area-based artist & Triple Base Flat File Artist, Suzanne Husky. It is a double sided poster, available for free to the first 80 people who send a standard sized, self addressed stamped envelope to THE THING’s studio between now and the end of August. This is an unsigned edition of 80. For more information on the project, visit THE THING’s project page.

Suzanne Husky’s original poster drawings will be on display and the gallery will have envelopes available (bring your own stamp). SASE is an ongoing project of THE THING, artists are commissioned to produce posters that must fit within a standard envelope and are free and available to anyone who sends in a SASE. Over the next year, three other SASE contributors will be announced.

This project is made possible by Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Grant and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

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Runnymede Farm SECA Picnic

Thanks to the SFMoMA SECA committee & staff and our tour guide, artist Alice Warnecke for a lovely day at Runnymede Farm this Saturday!


Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

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Interview: Serena Cole – THE BLOCK

T H E B L O C K: May 19th, 2010
Fashion loves art, no question. But the functional canvases of YSL, Marc Jacobs, or Alexander McQueen aren’t frequently seen as a painter’s muse. However, we like to think the line between art and fashion is a little blurry, so discovering California artist Serena Cole’s fashion-fantasy paintings was a bit of a revelation. A life-long worshipper of fashion, Cole questions our veneration of pop culture by melding images from fashion ads with traditionally saintly symbols (think halos and haunted eyes). Her goal is to create iconic faces that explore “the strange double-edged sword of being wanted.”

(See Full Article)

The Block: What’s your life story, in a nutshell?

Serena Cole: I am a native Californian, born to a musician father who went to work at eBay and an artist mother who went to work for the Post Office. Seeing my parents giving up their own dreams has made me work even harder to see to my own goals realized. I spent my childhood in the Sierra foothills – the middle of nowhere – drawing in my room, creating piles and piles of fashion designs, complete with tilted lines of clothing. The glamour and fantasy of fashion always intrigued me. As I began studying art more seriously in high school, I realized that fashion design was a childhood dream better put to use in my art. Painting allowed me something really satisfying, but until I started showing my art, I had not realized that it truly made me different. I didn’t believe I would ever be able to go to art school and become a professional artist; it seemed too far-fetched, like wanting to be a rock star. It wasn’t until my early twenties working at crappy jobs that I knew I had to go to art school to study what I loved, regardless of the practicality. I saw the alternative in my parents and everyone else I knew who worked jobs they hated and were filled with regrets of not following their own passions.

TB: We love the gold details in your work. How did you discover this particular method?

SC: I have developed a large body of work over the past five or six years using mostly watercolor, colored pencil, gold leaf, and some other mediums as well like dye, acrylic, and gouache. I am a medium nerd – I like to collect and try everything. In art school our professor gilded a hammer in class, and after that the possibilities were endless. What I like about using gold is that it is both beautiful and completely superficial. I only use imitation gold, so at the same time that it is reminiscent of older styles of art, it is a completely contemporary reference to our fascination with the surface of beauty.

TB: Your art has a great Klimt vibe. Do others often make the comparison?

SC: Thank you for the compliment. Yes, I do often have conversations with people comparing my work to Klimt. He was a seductive artist, painting beauty and colour and pattern into a frenzy of desirable images. I do admire his work, but I am interested in how I can transition some of those themes into a modern day practice that says something about our contemporary culture.

TB: We see fashion everywhere in your paintings. How does fashion inspire your art?

SC: Fashion is pure adult fantasy, in the way that The Lord of the Rings is fantasy. You couldn’t live in an ad even if you had the clothes – it isn’t there. I desire a world that I can only be a part of through my art. The designers that I love to look at are the strangest ones, the ones who create the biggest spectacles, like John Galliano for Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Lacroix, and sadly, the late Alexander McQueen.

TB: Your recent art focuses on images of the human face taken from ads and made rich with symbolism. How do you choose your subjects?

SC: In the past I worked fairly intuitively, finding imagery that I was somehow intrigued by and attempting to create an iconic painting, crafted in paint and gold. What I have been interested in more recently, with the images from ads, is how depictions of a human face have changed from an honoured way in historical imagery to become a vehicle of advertising. I was investigating how historically the mainstream masses revered images of a saint as a means of escape in the same way the masses still look toward a beautiful face in a campaign as a means of escape.

TB: You mention magazines a lot on your blog – what do you like about magazines?

SC: I love magazines because they encapsulate what is most desirable about fashion. A good fashion magazine acts as its own better-than-real world, with a big dose of escapism to fulfill those fantastical needs to be transported to another dimension. Our worlds are mundane, and magazines make them colorful, beautiful, glossy, and newer than new. Some of my very favorites are AnOther Magazine, POP, Wonderland, and V.

TB: Where do you plan to take your art in the future?

SC: I have some fun projects in the works, including collages and drawings, as well as a side project taking photos of my friends as if we were re-shooting a catalog for Urban Outfitters. I would love to have some more exposure internationally, as well exhibitions in other US cities such as Los Angeles or New York. As far as what shape my work is taking, we will have to see as I finish my graduate degree next year!

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Chechu Álava

We are really excited to present the work of Chechu Álava, a Paris-based artist in our new group show opening this Friday. There is one beautiful painting of hers in the show, “Jeune Fille”, but we wanted to share more of her other paintings from the same series with you.

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Chechu Álava Bio
Born: Piedras Blancas, Asturias, 1973

Álava received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Salamanca in 1995 and won the Erasmus scholarship to study at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She currently resides in Paris. After her stay in London in 1997 she began a kind of artist journal – made up of drawings, collages and photographs. Her personal way of working is focused on the eternal representation of what surrounds us and the search for identity through painting. This trail begins in her subconscious and is completed with visiting museums, the reinterpretation of genres such as portrait or landscape, literature of the nineteenth century and cinema. Her final work is shown through the representation of reality and the passionate love of pictorial language.

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Ukiah Memorial Day Weekend

Ukiah!


9 1/2 minute video of performances and scenes from the kitchen

This Memorial Day weekend, Larry Rinder hosted the most epic outdoor music, art, cooking, camping extravaganza at his property in Ukiah. Organized by David Wilson, Jesse Schlesinger and a crew of other makers, the weekend unfolded in mellow fashion with around 100 buddies meandering up and down the hills of the stunning property, finding art installations and music performances all along the way. Artist/chef Jerome Waag manned the hearth — massive paella one night, slow roasted pig in the ground the next. I imagine Burning Man started with these kinds of best intentions (ambitious creativity shared among friends) and I was privileged to be a part of it.

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