Thiebaud’s 4th solo show at The Crocker since 1951 comes at a propitious time: the museum’s 125th anniversary, the opening of its tripled-in-size exhibition space and the artist’s 90th birthday.
Reviews
Fred Dalkey @ CCAS
Painting the same scene 54 times over a 6-month period, the artist documented an acutely observed interchange — between raw optical sensations and the mechanism by which they are translated into recognizable forms.
Judy Pfaff @ Braunstein
Nobody manufactures chaos like Judy Pfaff. She continuously reinvigorates sculpture by moving it into painterly, theatrical, performative and architectural directions. “Tivoli Gardens” extends this formidable tradition.
Nellie King Solomon @ Brian Gross
Are they magnified views of chemical reactions or a visions of the Earth’s crust from outer space? In Nellie King Solomon’s “beautiful pictures of terrible things” both possibilities appear simultaneously and with equal force.
Vik Muniz @ Rena Bransten
When it comes to “non-traditional” materials, Vik Muniz is the undisputed king. Factory machinery, spaghetti, dust, peanut butter, sugar, chocolate and auto bodies – he’s used them all them to remake Old Masters. His latest targets: Hiroshige and Hokusai.
Natural and Creative Capital @ Montalvo
Here, at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, in a gallery exhibition and in a series of site-specific works, seven artists of vastly different persuasions, examine the complex and often conflicted relationships we have with animals and nature.
Henry Wessel @ SFMOMA & Rena Bransten
Making the quotidian look strange and familiar was Henry Wessel’s specialty. His New Topographics cohorts recorded the bald facts of our surroundings and elevated their impact through repetition. Wessel didn’t need to. His photos are self-contained stories.
Wondrous Strange @ SFMOMA Artists Gallery
Before museums we had cabinets of curiosities: rooms that housed natural history, ethnographic artifacts and archeological remains. Twenty-one Bay Area artists explore those traditions.
New Photos/Old Technology @ SJICA
Tired of big, banal theory-driven photos? A quiet counterinsurgency is gathering force. It’s composed of artists who are turning antiquated photographic methods to contemporary ends. Meet the antiquarian avant-garde.
Sac City College 4 @ JAYJAY
Ever since Robert Rauschenberg built his legendary “combines” from cast-off junk sculptors have relied increasingly on found objects and industrial materials. Repurposed, they convey new meanings that go beyond associations we normally affix to them.
Flatlanders @ Nelson Gallery, UCD
Contrary to Bay Area opinion, which holds that Sacramento is a backwater, “Flatlanders” stands as a smart rebuke. It not only serves as a showcase for emerging artists, but also spotlights artists who long ago established international reputations.
Jennifer Little & Mike Osborne @ Stanford
In 1861, photographer Felix Nadar captivated Parisians with his photos of the city’s catacombs and sewers. In “Excavating the Underground”, Jennifer Little and Mike Osborn, explore subterranean urban spaces in much the same spirit.
Local Treasures @ Berkeley Art Center
Katherine Sherwood, Robert Brady, Jim Melchert, Squeak Carnwath, Livia Stein and Gale Wagner would seem, at least on the surface, to have little in common. Look deeper are you find that each, in their own way, is committed to plumbing life’s mysteries.
Post-WWII Asian Modernists @ Togonon
Mixing works by Asian-American artists, both foreign and native-born, this show demonstrates how Zen, calligraphy and Automatism, as advocated by the Surrealists, combined to form one of the most influential movements of the 20th century.
Youngsuk Suh @ Haines
During the brushfires of 2008-09, Youngsuk Suh photographed people in places that were engulfed in flames. What we get is a fresh spin on the New Topographics mode of photography and portrait of the American West that is true to life and a bit vexing: You can breathe the air; just don’t inhale.
Reed Anderson @ Gregory Lind Gallery
Anderson’s obsessive paper works are composed of thousands of small, geometrically shaped holes. From a distance they look like giant doilies. Up close they unfold kaleidoscopically, like fractals, revealing a virtuoso technique.