•Pulse, launched in 2005, hosted 66 Galleries with 8 West Coast Galleries represented.
•Josee Bienvenue www.joseebienvenuegallery.com One of Marco Maggi’s marvelous stacked and cutpaper installations has been recently acquired by The Hirshhorn Museum. Josee Bienvenue has chosen some smaller works for ABMB. They are intriguing in every way.
•Catharine Clark Gallery www.cclarkgallery.com reported brisk sales. If the crowd swarming her booth is any indication, she made her artists and collectors very happy. Rumor has it 3 collectors were vying for the same Andy Diaz Hope painting.
Here’s Andy waiting for the Pulse bus. Diaz Hope, a San Francisco artist, also participated in Quorum at ~scope. Quorum, a San Francisco based group of artists, encouraged fair goers to give a pint blood for a piece of original art. www.quorum-sf.org
•Rena Bransten www.renabranstengallery.com The witty work of Vic Muniz with his manipulation of images from popular culture and art history use unexpected materials and never fail to amuse and surprise. His energy and imagination are boundless.
•Heather Marx www.heathermarxgallery.com Much of Libby Black's work winks at high fashion. She goes deeper to peel back the glitz and glamor of the luxury lifestyle. Her sculptures are fun and poignant-- Paris Hilton be damned.
"Suitcases" by Libby Black
~scope hosted 92 galleries and with 8 representing the West Coast. This year ~scope occupied a much larger space that filled Roberto Clemente Park. In case you couldn’t find it, the organizers had a giant arrow in the overcast sky pointing to the ~scope venue:
•LightBox www.lightbox.tv Kim Dingle is back and she’s sassy as ever!!! Kim’s bawdy, sassy girls toss their ruffled bottoms in our direction. These girls ain’t got time for anything but “Pink Martinis as Fatty’s” Now, look again, these gals are not wearing Jimmy Choos.
“Pink Martinis as Fatty’s”
•lincart www.lincart.com Fresh from Slick-Paris, Charles Linder is showing in two venues: ~scope and Bridge Art Fairs. Linder is dedicated to the San Francisco art scene; his Lincart works against the sense of regional limitations by taking the work of Bay Area artists to European art capitals and vice versa. Here in San Francisco, lincart’s current show features the beautiful and joyful work of my heroine Beatrice Wood. Andrew Junge’s life sized Hummer constructed from scavenged and recycled Styrofoam is the perfect jab at excess. This installation drew lots of smiles.The cactus garden at ~scope’s entrance is the work of was installed by a Lincart artist. Linder’s own photo of a freshly scraped billboard made me look again, the only remaining word is “NEW” where clearly, there is nothing new.
•Heidi Cho Gallery www.heidichogallery.com Saya Woolfolk’s work is charged with sexual stereotypes and uniquely hidden in child-like soft sculpture. Is that really a penis garden? Woolfolk learned to sew, in beautifully executed hand, from her Japanese grandmother.
Work of Saya Woolfolk
•Dunn & Brown www.dunnandbrown.com D& B filled the entire back wall with Joseph Havel’s 10,000 shirt labels reading “Nothing!” I’m told that Havel painstakingly pinned each label to the wall—lots of pin pricks to achieve great effect.
•Umtrieb Gallery fur Ukuelle Kunst, Kiel Germany www.umtrieb.de
The spidery cutouts of Katja Flieger www.katjaflieger.com had great visual impact. They are quite delicately rendered and change as the lightsource shifts. Flieger, long affiliated with Umtrieb as an alternative space, was reluctant to show with the now “professional” gallery. I’m really happy she was persuaded to show the work.
Katja Flieger's work
•Solomon Projects www.solomonprojects.com Showed Joe Peragine’s installation, “Inflatable Tank”. This right-sized inflatable has us think of the best and work of fighting machinery. Tanks at first appear indestructible; history shows us that they are klunky, easy to disable, and in many cases, death traps for soldiers. Many soldiers have been stranded in a disabled tank. It must be said, “the gun pointing skyward is largely phallic.” One wonders about these toys of war.
Inside the fair, Soloman showed Sarah Hobbs’ chromogenic print of the periodic table whose elements have been supplanted by personality traits. Hobbs’s interpretation is thought provoking and hilarious. She is willingly and openly exploring personal pathos. We giggled and then we squirmed.
"Periodic Table of the Traits"
•douze and mille www.douzeandmille.com Toma Rivas’ temporary temple of art is visual theatre. Rivas scores and peels wallpaper covered sheetrock to construct these thoughtful pieces. You are immediately struck by the common nature of this material yet, within the context of recent disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, this material becomes very precious. Rivas will soon show this work in Germany.
“Unobtrusive”
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