Archives for 2013

Applying contemporary painting techniques to vintage photos, Liu revisits Chinese history, turning Socialist Realism into social realism.

His feather-clad, kinetic sculptures mimic tribal dances and animal-mating rituals, lighting up a part of the brain that craves unfiltered joy.

Her exquisitely detailed drawings transform an environmental disaster — the Pacific Garbage Vortex — into fairy tales that belie the horror of it.

Technology has always promised a better tomorrow, and in that context, “Bay Lights” functions as the new sublime. Mark Van Proyen reports.

This latest exhibition, part of a series of international dialogs, probes the shifting line between the virtual and the real.

Her pictures are to painting what Harold Lloyd is to physical comedy: exemplars of the well-executed pratfall, tempting fate, but landing on one’s feet.

Ideas are vital, but without material engagement, you have empty visual rhetoric. Fifteen sculptors convincingly demonstrate this show’s premise.

The impact of manufactured desire on women has long been the chief concern of this esteemed feminist/new media artist. Her new targets: plastic surgery, sugar and smart phones.

In 1954, a little known painter and theorist called on Japanese artists to unleash the human spirit through “the scream of matter itself.” Their works influenced every movement that followed.

“Offerings”, the installation portion of Hung Liu’s upcoming OMCA retrospective, highlights the qualities that have made her one of the Bay Area’s most revered painters.

Works from three artists attempt to capture the visceral connection to technology that’s the lived experience of the post-Internet generation. Rachel Clarke reports.

In a blend of court painting and Social Realism, Wiley casts winsome black and brown males as power figures. Maria Porges reports.

Fact and fiction blur in a museum-quality show that gives shape to the inaccessible, the invisible and the incomprehensible.

For 35 plus years Marcus has been painting dark allegories populated by demons, geishas, beasts and innocents. He’s 84, and his work still packs a wallop.

He created works that transcended self-consciousness to reveal a world of pure spirit. Mark Van Proyen reports on this superbly chosen retrospective.