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Artforum’s current San Francisco Critic’s Picks hit the sweet spot with four strong entries. Glen Helfand’s writing on Libby Black at Marx and Zavaterro touches on the shift in Black’s work with her recent move to Berkeley that reflects the neighborhood, and further personal exploration in her work. His piece on the last show at Jack Hanley Gallery fittingly focuses on Hanley’s important contribution to the art world, both here and internationally, with a special focus on Bay Area artists. Helfand’s choice of Ewan Gibbs at SFMOMA is also well placed, as he deconstructs the mysterious drawings played out with our standard tourist locales. Finally, Franklin Melendez writes about Miriam Böhm’s photography at Ratio 3, a lovely show of works that he says "evoke the doldrums of office cubicles…" and are "like Dutch still lifes reimagined in a UPS store." Böhm’s show at Ratio 3 ends April 24.

- Cheryl Meeker [Saturday, April 17th, 2010]

When he met David Lynch after a screening of Eraserhead (in anticipation of producing The Elephant Man), Mel Brooks was shocked to come face to face with the then baby-faced efant terrible. He recalled “I could swear I was going meet some stooped over Bavarian coot with Borsch dribbling from his mouth.” You might expect the same after watching the fiercely misanthropic minimalist animation of Don Hertzfeldt but you’d encounter not only the youngest maker to be given the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award, but an artist whose work has been in commercial distribution since he was he was in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Real pencil drawings (not the pseudo-“squiggle vision” that you see applied as an after effect in many cartoons) distinguish Hertzfeldt from what is likely the last generation of animators to bother to take pencil to paper. The Academy Award nominated short filmmaker uses a cast of characters of near stick figures with a Charles Addams/Edward Gory inspired morbidity, peppered with visual non-sequiturs and screeching, nonsensical dialog to create sucker punch, hit and run one-liners that have been shown all over American cable, International film festivals and beyond.

His onstage interview and screening of his new absurdist film Life, Death and Very Large Utensils will take place at 7:30 pm, Friday, April 23 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.

 

- Dale Hoyt [Tuesday, April 13th, 2010]

After having read Calvin Tompkins’s article in the March 29 New Yorker on Julie Mehretu’s recent commission for Goldman Sachs in NYC, I was gratified to see two posts on SFMOMA’s Open Space that responded to several things that occurred to me while reading it that were completely elided in the piece. Interestingly, Anne Walsh’s post began as a comment to the Rebar post, and takes the conversation further while describing her mixed feelings.
LOBBIES, and their varieties Posted on March 29, 2010 by Anne Walsh

Power and Patronage Posted on March 27, 2010 by Rebar

- Cheryl Meeker [Sunday, April 4th, 2010]

Once upon a time, long ago, before artists had much use of the internet, Jack Hanley Gallery was one of the only places we could go in San Francisco to see cutting edge contemporary art made by our colleagues in other parts of the world… well, in europe, mostly. Although I am sorry to see the gallery close, I am so grateful for the 20 years of Jack Hanley’s work both in bringing wonderful artwork to us and in exposing a handful of San Francisco artists to a wider audience. The last opening reception will be April 3, 2010, from 6-9. The final show features Tauba Auerbach, Carter, Ajit Chauhan, Chris Johanson, Ed Loftus, Alicia McCarthy, Shaun O’Dell, Leslie Shows, and Kal Spelletich.

- Cheryl Meeker [Monday, March 29th, 2010]

Wall Drawing, which opened at the Hosfelt Gallery Saturday, is a winner, and a confluence of several improbable events. Improbable event # 1: Gerhard Mayer, known for his small ink drawings, scaled one up and executed it as a large-scale, commercially fabricated vinyl transfer applied directly to the wall. The allure of the drawing not only survived this translation, it dialed up, too. Improbability # 2: Marietta Hoferer, who generally works with soft, neutral colors decided to experiment and turned in an eye-popping wall of red and blue stripes. And Improbability # 3, the most unlikely of all, unknown Wendy Hough showed up at the gallery as the show was being installed asserting that her work should be included—and to the gallery’s credit, they took a look and agreed. Hough’s disturbingly restless waves counterbalance the cool, delicate structure of Sol Lewitt’s composition and an evanescent contribution by Jim Campbell. While you’re at Hosfelt, check out Richard Shaw|New Works at the Braunstein/Quay Gallery across the way. The solid crush of well-wishers at Shaw’s opening made contemplation of the works challenging, but all those well-wishers were there for good reason. Shaw continues to deliver assemblages that have tender feelings for everyday life shining through the witty surfaces.

- Meredith Tromble [Sunday, March 21st, 2010]

Wallace Berman, the quintessential “Beat” artist, conducted his career by never getting his work out, according to his son Tosh Berman. Speaking to the L@ te Friday Night partiers at Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archives (BAMPFA), Tosh told stories about his father and screened his movie Aleph twice, once silent as it was made, and once with a soundtrack by John Zorn. During his lifetime Berman showed the funky 8mm movie to only a few friends, projecting it on the refrigerator. The footage is rhythmically punctuated by Berman’s most famous image: a hand holding a transistor radio, infilled with an image from popular culture. The moving image infilling the refrigerator door surely echoed in the minds of the people who saw it. Last night’s screening was part of Issue 4 of the Skank Bloc Bologna series organized by Anne Colvin.

- Meredith Tromble [Saturday, March 20th, 2010]

From the editors