Through tightly woven narratives, formal and rigorous methods, historicized alter egos, and scientifically structured documentation, each of these artists presents compelling aesthetic, literary, and historical evidence of a completely constructed reality. This imaginative maneuvering between truth and fiction results in an ambiguous yet accurate picture of our own place and time. Benjamin Lord’s photographs purport [...]
“Urban Information” At SLATE
In our modern times, the urban environment is not changing so fast, but the way we experience it is. Today we find our existence increasingly mediated by a flow of digital and electronic information, which has shifted both how we move through the city and what we pay attention to. Whether on the street or [...]
Johannson Projects Presents “What To Do With Your Orphan: A Manual” featuring Jennie Ottinger
Jennie Ottinger’s What to Do with Your Orphan: A Manual is an exhibition of works in which orphans partake in orphan-like activities. These include sleeping, playing dodgeball, and eating breakfast. But don’t be fooled into thinking an orphan’s life is just like yours or mine. Ottinger nonchalantly renders a mouth too far unhinged or a [...]
Oakland Art Murmur Membership Area Is Expanding!
The Oakland Art Murmur Gallery Association announces the expansion of its membership area, south to the Jack London District. Whereas for the last year, Oakland Art Murmur members had to be located between 27th street and 17th streets, the organization has now opened its boundaries to include galleries and mixed-use art venues between 27th street [...]
Terryl Dunn At Mercury 20
Exploring the explosive forces of nature, Oakland painter Terryl Dunn presents a new series of work titled Megathrust. Dunn’s inspiration is the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. In this work he imagines energy as it moves through the different elements, examining how line can signal speed, reverberation, and cross current. In addition to conventional brush [...]
Christina Corfield At Johansson Projects
Christina Corfield’s recently uncovered archives of the mysterious effects of electricity on the visual imagination of the late nineteenth century and its impact on today’s digital age. Western society of the late nineteenth century moved from a mechanical to an electrical age, and now we too are living through huge shifts in technologies and communications. [...]
Beili Liu At Vessel Gallery
Beili Liu’s time and process based installations mine themes of cultural specificity and overlaps, transient or persistent energy, and conflicting and confluent forces. Thread, paper, incense, wood, salt, water, these simple materials and compounds are the vehicles by which Beili Liu hand crafts microcosms of fragility and poignancy. By working on these everyday materials, Liu [...]
Mary Curtis Ratcliff At Mercury 20
A look at an extended period of artistic activity by Berkeley artist Mary Curtis Ratcliff, the work in this exhibition links the feminist spirituality movement of the 1970s, a pilgrimage by the artist to Malta in 2001 to visit the ruins of 6,000-year-old goddess temples, and the contemporary feminine represented in pop culture where visions [...]
Johansson Projects Presents New Document
There is a new rectangular viewbox into understanding what it means to be human. Johansson Projects presents New Document, where our expanding visual literacy provides a schematic history of the materials and methods employed by artists Andrew Chapman, Matthew Draving, Hunter Longe and Hugh Zeigler. Temporal interpretations are generated and informed by our relationship to [...]
Radical Geographer: Portrait of My Father At Swarm Gallery
Allan Pred was a social scientist and professor in the Geography department at UC Berkeley for over 40 years. Geographers, he believed are well-placed to trace the contours of economic, social and military power and must play their part to defend democratic values against such abuses as racism, inequality and violence. His scholarship radically shaped [...]
