effrontery

At the Luggage Store - Rigo 23: Backtracking 199485.  Those familiar with Rigo's murals around the city (One Tree, Home, Birds/Cars) know that his work has always had a subversive bent, but in this show he busts out the politics, and how.  He picked one event for each of the years from 1985 to 1994 and has done a large-scale mixed-media drawing on canvas to commemorate it, as well as handmade zine for each one to help refresh your memory.  Because shockingly most of these happenings have indeed fallen out of public memory.  He refers to this in the works themselves by leaving certain parts of the drawings unfinished or only visible in outline.  Taken together, these canvases compose an important document of one Bay Area decade.

from the Booksmith:
"Rocker/knitter/author Share Ross personifies the indie spirit driving both the knitting and music scenes. In her new book, Punk Knits: 26 Hot New Designs for Anarchistic Souls and Independent Spirits, Ross shares her passion and unorthodox approach to an ancient craft."

At SomArts - Post ID Wannabe: Identity-Infused Art for a Post-Identity World.  Produced in association with the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, the artists in this exhibition explore identity and particularly what it means to be mixed-race.  I really liked Mark Baugh-Sasaki's sculptures and Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik's explorations of skin color, but I loved loved loved Nancy Mizuno Elliot's series of chalkboard stories, elucidating topics such as how to make big hair, and the commodification of anarchy at Ozzfest.

At Queens Nail Annex - Keith Boadwee and Patrick Rock: Cult Classics, Not Best Sellers.  If you know the work of Chris Burden and Paul McCarthy, you might be prepared for what you will see when you step into the gallery.  I was immediately greeted with a large photograph of Boadwee sitting in a chair wearing nothing but his glasses, a Supertramp t-shirt, and a giant erection.  The fact that I laughed out loud gives you an idea about the tone of the show.  Boadwee's art strikes a good balance between graphic and playful, while Rock's work is similarly deadpan, though perhaps a bit more mysterious.  For instance, his room contained an epic cylinder of frosted raspberry cake, filling the gallery with a sweet scent and slowly falling apart on the floor.  Was it supposed to be phallic?  Probably.  I don't care, it was awesome.

At Jack Hanley Gallery - Tauba Auerbach: The Answer/Wasn't Here.  I had just seen Auerbach's work in Lucky Magazine, of all places, so it was excellent to be able to go check it out in the flesh.  Auerbach plays with words and letters, pure crack to someone who loves language as much as I do.  Is there deeper meaning to the phrases and arrangements she chooses?  I think each viewer will have different resonances.  Me, I had a strong urge to do a crossword afterwards.  I was also fascinated with her black and white pattern drawings, and I stood in front of them for a while trying to work out if she was trying to tell me something in code.

At Johansson Projects - Excavations.  Saturday night was Johansson Projects' grand opening, and a very fine addition it is to my favorite strip of Telegraph.  The gallery is divided into several rooms, arched doorways leading you through to discover wonderful things around every corner.  I always love what Val Britton does with layers of ripped and torn paper, and I also spent some quality time with Andrew Benson's mesmerizing color fields.  But it was Misa Inaoka's modified twittering birds that stole the show.  Perched on branches, shellacked in white paint with added heads and limbs, many of them sang to you as you came closer.  The grass on the ceiling and peepholes in one wall just made the whole experience more magical.

At Ratio 3 - Ara Peterson: Multidimensional Warp.  The works on display first read as paintings of undulating color, but as you get closer you realize that they're actually sculptures.  I can only guess at his technique, but the resulting landscapes hanging on the walls shifted their topography for me as I looked at them from every angle possible.  I thought of the Albers color-field paintings at SFMOMA that my brother loves so much, and of Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes, and of half a dozen other artists who deal with color and texture in such a formidable way.  Multidimensional warp indeed.

Tomorrow and Wednesday: KALX co-announces Dinosaur Jr. and Awesome Color at Slim's (333 11th St., SF).  Show starts at 9 pm, doors at 8 pm.  Aimee and I will be there Wednesday night.

Too Good To Be Truly Green?
Check out The Christian Science Monitor's ongoing series of videos and articles about ethical investing. This month, Joel Makower and Andrew Shalit parse large companies making claims about going green.

Words for Windows: Mayakovsky's poster for windows at Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), USSR, 1920