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Kara Q. Smith
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Interview with Jason Kalogiros
by Kara Q. Smith
2013-05-12
San Francisco, May 2013: I met Jason Kalogiros at Building 11, an old warehouse-type structure at Pier 70, near the Port of San Francisco. Surrounded by an assortment of functional and non-functional factories, fences and loading docks, it was built in the early ‘40s by the government to support wartime production and now houses studio space for a selection of artists.
We first travel to the back of the studio so Jason can show me his Agfa Repromaster 310 from the late ‘70s. It's an old proc... [more]
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Look out for the unicorn
by Kara Q. Smith
Elisheva Biernoff at Eli Ridgway Gallery
February 2nd - March 9th
Posted
3/9/13
After going to this show, I spent the next two days holed up reading Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia.
In around 1200 pages, West details her journey with her husband to Yugoslavia after World War One. Indistinguishable between fiction and non-fiction, she tells stories of past and present lives and experiences, bridging the distance between the reader and the experience. The story opens on a train:
I could not have gone on to justify my certainty th... [more]
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le ventre de feu
by Kara Q. Smith
Dorothea Tanning at Gallery Wendi Norris
January 10th - March 2nd
Posted
1/15/13
Occupying the center, bellies hold babies, beer, guts (literal and proverbial), and intestines. They are a measure of our earthly life yet seem to take on a life of their own: ballooning, billowing, expanding, bloating, giving new shape to our bodies at any given time. In the work of Dorothea Tanning, the stomach is beautiful, sexual, and enchanting.
Wandering around the exhibition of Tanning’s work at Gallery Wendi Norris, I came to a halt in front of Traffic Sign, 1970. But then, that seem... [more]
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Modality, Material & Me: Carolee Schneeman & Gay Outlaw
by Kara Q. Smith
Carolee Schneemann at Gallery Paule Anglim
November 14th, 2012 - December 22nd, 2012
Posted
12/7/12
“We’re going to see some recent work by an inspiring feminist artist who is known for performing radical pieces about sexuality and gender and another female artist who I think is a lesbian cowboy,” I told my date. I prefer to see shows alone, and definitely not during openings, so I can retrace my steps and mutter to myself as much as I like. But this week, I deemed Gallery Paule Anglim a decent date destination. I’m not sure if I hoped the content would titillate or I could suss out... [more]
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ArtSlant Prize 2012: Steven Vasquez Lopez - California Reflections
by Kara Q. Smith
Posted
12/6/12
Steven Vasquez Lopez - 2nd Place, ArtSlant Prize 2012
Executed with laborious precision, it takes Steven Vasquez Lopez months to complete a painting. Replete with mesmerizing, detailed juxtapositions of line and color, layers of pattern and texture in his work reveal figureless landscapes, perhaps a view from poolside in Palm Beach where he spends a good portion of the year or the interior of his living room in the Bay Area. The tension between banal and chimerical in Lopez’s work reflects his... [more]
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Flipping the Switch
by Kara Q. Smith
David Shrigley at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
June 22nd, 2012 - September 23rd, 2012
Posted
9/5/12
Next to a taxidermy rat lying on the floor of the gallery is David Shrigley’s animation, Switch, 2007. Projected onto the wall in roughly a single square foot. In it, a finger, composed simply with black lines in the artist's emblematically elemental linework, pushes a light switch repeatedly, on-off, on-off, on-off. Click-click, click-click. Each time “off” comes into the rotation, the projection disappears, it clicks off. After a series of on-off’s the finger pulls back for a second.... [more]
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Long Live Cinephelia
by Kara Q. Smith
Deric Carner at Romer Young Gallery
June 15th, 2012 - July 21st, 2012
Posted
6/26/12
Upon entering Romer Young Gallery, it's quiet and cool, the way you want a gallery to be on the hottest day in San Francisco. About six minutes later, you hear baboon-like noises and jungle-nature sounds coming from the corner of the gallery and it is a relief because the absence of sound was already starting to get to the city girl inside of me.
The first tangible association I felt when glancing around Deric Carner’s exhibition, The Light that Failed, was: Hollywood. The pulp cinema kind of... [more]
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Where I’m From…beta pictoris gallery at ArtPadSF
by Kara Q. Smith
Posted
6/12/12
Friday night at ArtPadSF, one of the raft of fairs floated out these years to swell art commerce here in San Francisco. Trafficked, but sparser then remembered, the fair hosted a heavy load of California galleries, especially from the Bay Area, far outnumbering those from less local climes. Some switches and changes, neighborhood gossip and shifting allegiances: Eleanor Harwood Gallery previous exhibitor at fair rival ArtMRKT now at ArtPad, a change of scene…
Weaving through the rooms I caught a... [more]
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Drawing a Line
by Kara Q. Smith
Tom Marioni, Pat Steir at Crown Point Press
April 5th, 2012 - May 19th, 2012
Posted
5/5/12
I don’t know why I felt so driven to point this out, but I think it’s funny that Pat Steir is in a show with Tom Marioni at Crown Point Press.
It’s an exhibition with beautiful, if unlikely balance. Tom Marioni’s most recent color drypoint prints are minimal yet expressive. The movement of Marioni’s marks accentuates the expressive aquatint colorscapes of Pat Steir. Together, you can tell the works are full of intention and I can find forms within the conceptual formlessness. Comparing Mari... [more]
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Six Twelve-Year-Olds
by Kara Q. Smith
Rineke Dijkstra at SFMOMA - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
February 18th, 2012 - May 28th, 2012
Posted
3/31/12
Six twelve-year-olds walk into a Rineke Dijkstra retrospective.
They stood in each room, looking closely at each photograph, waiting for someone to share their observations. Again and again appeared the photograph of a young French man, Olivier, from the day he joined the military and over the next couple years.
The pictures are big, almost life-size. The twelve-year-olds eyeball Olivier, he mutely stares back. They spend a lot of time on the first two pictures of Olivier: one from the chest up a... [more]
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Vaporous Subjugation
by Kara Q. Smith
Christina Corfield at Johansson Projects
January 26th, 2012 - March 17th, 2012
Posted
2/7/12
“My relationship to new media is one predicated on imperfection, specifically, the importance of imperfection in a digital culture driven by the desire for seamlessness and unquestioned functionality.”
— Christina Corfield[1]
I found myself taking in Christina Corfield’s new work for Follies of the Digital Arcade by looking from one image to the other and back again, then repeating; piecing the images together, not unlike an early George Barnard panoramic landscape, to get the full pictu... [more]
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With Involuntary Sculptures
by Kara Q. Smith
Whitney Lynn at Steven Wolf Fine Arts
January 7th, 2012 - February 18th, 2012
Posted
1/10/12
In the two solo shows folded into a single exhibition scenario, the viewer is left the option to draw their own conclusions about the relationship between the two self-contained, but proximal bodies of work. I found the two artists separate sculptural installations to happily complement each other through whimsicality—even though they may be contextually unrelated.Whitney Lynn’s exhibition, Sculptures Involontaries, contains mostly a collection of charming, small sculptures, distributed over the flo... [more]
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A Salutary Glimpse/Love Affair
by Kara Q. Smith
Mauricio Ancalmo, Colter Jacobsen, Ruth Laskey, Kamau Amu Patton at SFMOMA - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
December 9th, 2011 - April 3rd, 2012
Posted
1/10/12
A regular round-up of best-of locals by the lights of the museum, SECA provides a continuity and perhaps the best yardstick of what the Bay Area thinks is the best thing it might be making. Ascending the staircase of the SFMOMA, the most fitting compliment is the Fifty Years of Bay Area Art, an exhibition featuring SECA award recipients from the last half-century and one which everyone traveling to the current SECA exhibition must walk through before arriving at their destination. Providing a superlativ... [more]
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Almost Exactly Five Things Seen in 2011
by Kara Q. Smith
Posted
1/3/12
A random and subjective mini time capsule from 2011 of things memorable, telling, or perhaps promising for the year to come…5: ArtPadSF
Questionable, I know. In May 2011 three art fairs occurred in San Francisco on the same weekend. “A risky endeavor,” local critic Glen Helfand said in the New York Times about the idea of this art fair trifecta in our blessed city. Risky, yes, but of the three, ArtPadSF held fashionably true to what I thought an art fair should look like in SF (held at th... [more]
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All the Waiting Rooms
by Kara Q. Smith
Sandra Calco, Vera Costa, Paz de la Calzada, others, Claudia Salamanca at Gallery at the Consulate General of Mexico in San Francisco
October 20th, 2011 - December 13th, 2011
Posted
11/8/11
Sitting in the waiting room at Planned Parenthood for a check up or squished between other bodies in blue chairs at the DMV while voraciously staring at my number, these are situations I have no problem dramatically recollecting in my head. One part physical memory of space: the dirty chairs, drab paint, lack of decoration, and horribly ironic magazines. And one part psychological place: being liminal, uncomfortable, scared I might have to empty my bank account for something I do not yet know... [more]
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Scribbled Notes on the State of Collaboration
by Kara Q. Smith
at Kadist Art Foundation
October 26th, 2011 - October 26th, 2011
Posted
11/4/11
On the Wednesday of October 26, 2011, I deliberately found myself sipping rum and coconut water at Kadist Art Foundation for the presentation of Corrected Slogans, hosted by Julian Myers.
Two performers, who I had never heard of previous to this evening, Jim Fairchild, famously known as a member of the band Modest Mouse, and Natasha Wheat, a Chicago-based artist, took the stage silently and began the show. A series of several very short song-like performances ensued featuring Fairchild on elect... [more]
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Light Rhythms
by Kara Q. Smith
Matt Borruso at Steven Wolf Fine Arts
September 10th, 2011 - October 15th, 2011
Posted
10/5/11
Perhaps like any work, the successful reception of video-based art in an exhibition is almost as dependent on its installation as it is the artistic merit and intentions of the piece, though sometimes the latter is built into the former. In the art world, there are varying schools of thought about the reception of video work in an exhibition. Recently, I have heard that viewers only watch a piece for a maximum of two minutes and that many people are now hesitant to put on headphones due to sprea... [more]
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Joie de Vivre
by Kara Q. Smith
Presley Ward at People's Gallery
September 7th, 2011 - October 22nd, 2011
Posted
10/5/11
“Imagine a very small formal motif and try to execute it economically . . . the essence of the subject must always become visible, even if this is impossible in nature. .... The absence of foreshortening also plays a crucial part in the process.... I begin to execute forms, as if I know nothing about painting or, have I discovered a small, undisputed personal possession, a particular sort of threedimensional representation on the flat surface!”
—Paul Klee, The Diaries of Paul Klee 1898-1918[... [more]
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Dissecting Urbanisms
by Kara Q. Smith
Carlos Villa at Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts
August 13th, 2011 - October 5th, 2011
Posted
8/30/11
It was my first time visiting the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts when I went to visit the current exhibition: a survey of recent work by the Bay Area artist, Carlos Villa. Upon entering the gallery, I had no expectations and limited knowledge of the historical background and importance – not to mention the oeuvre – that encapsulates Villa’s career. The exhibition houses an overwhelming collection of large works on wooden panels and doors. The doors leaned against the walls, while so... [more]
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Close Cut
by Kara Q. Smith
Ray Beldner, Adam Feibelman, Matt Gonzalez, Greg Lamarche, Joey Piziali, Boris Tellegen, Leigh Wells at Guerrero Gallery
August 30th, 2011 - August 30th, 2011
Posted
8/30/11
I have a shelf full of paper-based ephemera from exhibitions: price lists, post cards, business cards, curatorial statements, artists' take-aways. My graph-paper notebook is filled with notes from exhibitions, quotes by artists, titles and dates of pieces, and eventually, when the last page is full, I will add it to that shelf where I keep these treasures, swearing I might need them someday though I have yet to pull one thing from the depths. That’s just it; things on paper are usually suppleme... [more]
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Divine Midsummer's Night Comedy
by Kara Q. Smith
Alexander Chen, Adriane Colburn, Amanda Hughen, Ehren Elizabeth Reed, Lordy Rodriguez at Montalvo Arts Center
July 29th, 2011 - October 16th, 2011
Posted
8/1/11
Driving in our Zipcar down Montalvo Road toward our destination, we peered through the gated entrances of the houses along the way and I wondered if this set up made trick-or-treating really difficult in this neighborhood. Perhaps that is the point.
Hoping to be treated ourselves by the events of the evening, we arrived at the Montalvo Arts Center, a beautiful historical villa that unfolds behind its own wrought iron entrance, naturally.
The scene: pastoral attendees occupying picnic blankets and... [more]
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Otherworldly Production
by Kara Q. Smith
Jo Babcock, Marco Breuer, John Chiara, Pierre Cordier, Binh Danh, Susan Derges, Shi Guorui, Michelle Kloehn, MarieAnge, Klea McKenna, Abelardo Morell, Bettina Samson, Wendy Small at Haines Gallery
June 9th, 2011 - July 16th, 2011
Posted
6/28/11
Certainly science is central to the methodical processes witnessed in Science of Sight: Alternative Photography at Haines Gallery. This is a science of chemicals, of alchemy, of an Otherworld. Light reacts: transgressing the limits of minuscule holes, meeting new levels of exposure.
More than the fundamental techniques needed to produce a photographic image, Science of Sight seeks to expose something less literal: the mental faculties of sight, a vision evocative of memories and dreams. And it i... [more]
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Interview with James Chronister
by Kara Q. Smith
2011-06-16
San Francisco, June 2011 - I first saw James Chronister’s work at Eleanor Harwood’s booth at artMRKT San Francisco. Defiantly visceral and elevated, Chronister’s paintings stood out in the acute environment of persevering gallerists and the onslaught of visual engagement. A week later, I stopped by the opening of his current exhibition, Now We Lustre where I innately conjured associations with his work such as Roy Lichtenstein’s appropriation and Robert Ryman’s surfaces. To breakdown t... [more]
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Dinner is Served
by Kara Q. Smith
Richard Beaven, Christin Boggs, Nolan Calisch, Thea Maria Carlson, Kim Carr, Tierney Creech, Mckenzie Ditter, Makenna Goodman, Erin Harvey, Michele Ledoux, Ellie Lobovits, Genevieve Luikart, Esther Margolis, Connie Migliazzo, Aaron Price, Ethan Rafal, Trace Ramsey, Georgia Ranney, Ben Scott-Killian, Cecily Upton, Sara Worden at 18 Reasons Gallery
February 3rd, 2011 - March 31st, 2011
Posted
3/15/11
This is really about how a lot of complex stuff around Art and Community intersect in a specific place, a foodie-focused space, 18 Reasons, nestled in the hip, critically-acclaimed (food-wise and otherwise) Mission District becomes a site of these two, and how great/problematic those intersections can be.
Firstly, here is what I was thinking... I’m wondering if I am overstepping my boundaries as some sort of Community Critic. I don't exactly see myself as a constituent of 18 Reasons; I... [more]
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The Old Boys’ Club Wants You To Dance
by Kara Q. Smith
The Old Boys' Club at Haines Gallery
January 6th, 2011 - April 2nd, 2011
Posted
2/8/11
Amidst the polished concrete and the overwhelming strip-mall-blasé that permeates the floors of galleries at 49 Geary Street, Haines Gallery offers some spare reprieve in their back room space with this latest exhibition. Boasting grey walls (a welcomed contrast to the impeccable white dominating all other viewing experiences), I found the colorful works of Le Destitution de la Jeune Fille, the most recent installation by The Old Boys’ Club ( the recently coined moniker of multi-media artist Katya Bo... [more]
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Perhaps the Pointing Finger
by Kara Q. Smith
Posted
1/18/11
“When I began my career, the categorical imperative of every young writer was to represent his own time. Full of good intentions, I tried to identify myself with the ruthless energies propelling the events of our century, both collective and individual. I tried to find harmony between the adventurous picaresque inner rhythm that prompted me to write and the frantic spectacle of the world, sometimes dramatic and sometimes grotesque. Soon I became aware that between the facts of life that should h... [more]
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The Corporeal Qualities of the Yarn
by Kara Q. Smith
Jaime Cortez, Ken Lo, Ginger Wolfe-Suarez at Southern Exposure
January 7th, 2011 - February 19th, 2011
Posted
1/18/11
Because a faded Polaroid photograph of a Western American mountainous desert skyline could epitomize my distant memories and dreams…because I like Derrida, because of my grandmother’s tea…these might be the reasons I have always enjoyed the experience of Ginger Wolfe-Suarez’s work.
“Both Are True” is a constructed landscape of memory and experience where viewers must step around rocks or walk under a structure, forcing a sort of indirect interaction with the works in the space. In th... [more]
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Radical Empathy
by Kara Q. Smith
Posted
12/13/10
David Wojnarowicz’s piece, entitled A Fire in My Belly, was removed by museum staff from its exhibition, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC on December 1, 2010 after members of Congress and the Catholic League expressed objections to the video. The world lost David Wojnarowicz in 1992 to AIDS. December 1st was World AIDS Day. In response to this censorship, a panel of curators, researchers, activist... [more]
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Transcending Alterity
by Kara Q. Smith
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Dale Hoyt, Tony Labat at SOMArts
December 9th, 2010 - January 28th, 2011
Posted
12/13/10
In the corner of the gallery, there are cats. I personally don’t think you can go wrong with cat art. Sold! But the sketches of cats by Dale Hoyt and Steve Thurston, upon closer inspection, are disturbing (albeit pleasantly). Inspired by CC, the world’s first cloned cat, these felines have unrecognizable configurations, sutured heads and incomplete anatomies. On a nearby monitor, Hoyt is in the middle of his performance piece, Transgenic Hairshirt, 2001, making a shirt... [more]
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Perhaps
by Kara Q. Smith
Glen Friedman at 941Geary
November 6th, 2010 - December 31st, 2010
Posted
11/16/10
Glen Friedman’s favorite word is Fuck.
My favorite word is Perhaps.I knew Glen Friedman’s touring photography show, Fuck You All, was in town because I saw the wheatpasted posters all over my Mission neighborhood.Punk subcultures and its ephemera have been resurfacing in artistic and cultural venues for years now. The first show I saw was Bruce Conner’s Mabuhay Gardens photography exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum. I thought it was revolutionary. My primary interest in this e... [more]
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