Cohen Rese, Geras Tousignant, Aftermodern, Melting Point, Eleanor Harwood - San Francisco Art Galleries: May 19, 2007


SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERIES - OPENINGS
COHEN RESE - GERAS TOUSIGNANT
AFTERMODERN - MELTING POINT - ELEANOR HARWOOD
05.19.07

Cohen Rese Gallery: Cheryl Kline - Dancing in the Clouds.

Comment: The title tells it-- cloudscapes by Cheryl Kline, tranquil to dramatic. That simple and no more complicated. Of note are two oblong paintings that convert into a standing sculpture when taken off the wall and placed on the floor at right angles to each other.

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Art.

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Art.

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The pair on the left as paintings.

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The pair off the wall and on the floor as sculpture.

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Art.

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Art.

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Geras Tousignant Gallery: Daniel Tousignant - Single Tree / Double Tree.

Comment: Serene arcadian landscapes feature either one or two trees at various times of year, the paintings finished and framed in such a way as to appear classic or perhaps even antique. Enticingly spacious perspectives for such diminutive works-- you can practically walk right into them.

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Art.

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Art.

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Art.

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Art.

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Aftermodern Gallery: The Secretariat.

Artists: Walead Beshty, Tim Davis, Desiree Holman, Olga Koumoundouros, Yoshua Okon, Patrick Rock.

Comment: The show purports to explore "the various social, political, sexual and cultural ambiguities that characterize today's world." The art certainly engages on a piece-by-piece basis, but the premise is so expansive as to render the aggregate disjointed.

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Art.

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Curious hotdog mustard ketchup bun prison toilet contraption.

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One-stop ingestion digestion excretion station? Could be.

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Art.

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Art.

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Art.

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Melting Point Gallery, 1340 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 94103; 415.769.2939: Ilgin Seymen - Nothing Personal.

Comment: Every once in a while, I stumble across a delightfully unexpected artcident and this is once in those whiles. Ilgin Seymen essays on the platitudes of consumerism with competent on-the-mark mixed-media works and installations. My favorite is a set of shelves scrupulously stocked with monotonous bantamweight mock-ups of ordinary household furnishings. Seyman tells me she casts them in plastic resin. Nice work.

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Your own personal Ikea art (like it).

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Ikea art up close.

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It's made entirely out of miniature trademarks.

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See? I told you.

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Backlit bed art (like it).

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Day-in-the-life video art.

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Eleanor Harwood Gallery: Jill Sylvia - Ledger.

Comment: Jill Sylvia takes pages from ledger books-- mostly blank ones but some with writing-- and with mystifying meta-steady dexterity, excises the spaces where you're supposed to enter the numbers, leaving only the dividing lines. The upshot-- ridiculously delicate, mindbogglingly accurate, and unerringly decisive checkerboard mini-grids that Sylvia then either mounts flat or drapes or folds into dimensionality. As if that's not enough, then she takes the itsy bitsy cutouts and arranges them into hyper-ordered collages. What it all means, I have no idea, but it's kinda like who cares? The fact that she endgames it so flawlessly is more than enough for me.

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Ledger page art.

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Ledger page art closer.

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Ledger page highrise art.

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Jill Sylvia - art.

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Ledger page cutout collage art.

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Art.

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Articles © Alan Bamberger 2007. All rights reserved.