The title of this show, curated by Aaron Petersen, suggests possession and certitude, but the works themselves traffic in mystery and ambiguity.
Reviews
Phil Amrhein @ Axis Gallery
Many artists have stared at, painted and even feigned leaping into The Void. But few do so as energetically as Phil Amrhein.
Deborah Oropallo @ Wirtz & Gallery 16
These seductively posed apparitions drive us to question whether what we’re seeing. It is photography, painting or some new hybrid?
Rex Ray @ Gallery 16
Employing a boggling array of shapes, textures and colors, Rex Ray’s collages resemble mash-ups of ’50-style home décor motifs, extraterrestrial floral fantasies and symbolist imagery.
JENN SHIFFLET @ CHANDRA CERRITO
Jenn Shifflet’s paintings are like pools of light emanating from indeterminate sources. They exist in a brackish wash of terrestrial, aquatic and celestial atmospherics.
Joan Moment @ LIMN & JAYJAY
Joan Moment’s paintings suggest that we exist outside of time and space: that we are at once everywhere and nowhere — like stars and galaxies whose images are history before they even reach us.
Enrique Chagoya @ Electric Works
Enrique Chagoya builds on his love of pop culture, European high art and his knowledge of the dark side of sunny American optimism.
Paper Mylar Vellum @ Brian Gross
The goal was simply to showcase works from the gallery’s estimable stable. The result was one the strongest summer group shows in San Francisco.
Doug Biggert @ Verge Gallery
If you remember the ’60s you weren’t there, goes the saying. But Doug Biggert was there and he remembers, thanks to more than 2,000 photographs that do everything but import the scent of patchouli and pot.
Ursula Schneider @ Braunstein/Quay
Using double images that simultaneously appear right side up and upside down, Schneider’s paintings activate our impulse to separate the actual from the ephemeral.
Decline and Fall @ Rena Bransten
Every hierachy you can think of, from modes of artistic representation to gender roles, is being demolished and rebuilt. “Decline and Fall” offers a sneak preview.
Nigel Poor @ Haines Gallery, SF + Interview
Photographer Nigel Poor operates on the principle that the smallest, seemingly most mundane items are the very things that reveal the most about how we live and what we value.
Robert Frank @ SFMOMA
Robert Frank undermined “straight photography” with a bold, highly subjective approach that challenged “objective” reporting and nudged documentary photography toward fine art.
Art Stimulus @ JAYJAY
This group show of primarily abstract works from gallery artists is a triumph of programming with many individual highlights.
Westfall & Thibeault @ George Lawson
Stephen Westfall and Marie Thibeault are abstract painters whose work is rooted in bodily experience.
Gale Hart @ Solomon Dubnick
Gale Hart is a Sacramento-based artist/activist with a long and storied history of agitating on behalf of animal and human rights.