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Galleries
Profile of a local artist
Kimberly Austin is one of San Francisco's undiscovered treasures. Although her art resides in important international public and private collections - including Germany's Gelsenkirchen Museum, the Levinthal collection, Deloitte &
Touche, and that of Jane's Addiction founder Perry Farrell - and she shows regularly at San Francisco's Braunstein Quay Gallery and Cologne's Galerie Sieppel, the 38-year-old Austin remains relatively unknown. What makes her lack
of large-scale recognition all the more puzzling is that her photography-based work is among the most ethereally beautiful... More
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Galleries
The many faces of feminism
Feminism is a dirty word these days. Not wanting to be mistaken for the stereotyped feminist (the jack boot-wearing, man-hating lesbian with a chip on her shoulder), today's women instead embrace "girl power," a cuter, friendlier movement of well-manicured chicks who can kick ass and still look hot in stilettos. The new girl power is everywhere, from TV (think Powerpuff Girls) to movies (Charlie's Angels, anyone?) to video games (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider). You need only venture as far as your neighborhood Wal-Mart to fill today's girl power wardrobe, where everything comes emblazoned with suggestive phrases like "Goddess," "Bitch,"... More
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Galleries
Humans love to look at humans, particularly the broken ones. We crane our heads at car accidents, obsessively search for vicarious thrills on reality tv, stage freak shows, buy books about "modern primitives", and, in an especially crass gaze into the void, make a whole subgenre of films devoted to capturing the moment of death. The Mutter Museum, founded when Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter presented his unique collection of specimens to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1858, has long been a cult favorite for the pathologically curious... More
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Galleries
Immediately upon entering Juice Design, a graphic design company which stages occasional art exhibits "for fun", the scope of the show is clear. Think small. The high ceilings and white surfaces exaggerate the little pieces mounted, hung, pinned and stapled to the walls. The artists were given space perimeters roughly the size of a bathroom tile from which to create "keepsakes"; the limitations gave the artists room to play with the concept of an object which exists as a tool of remembrance. The lack of overt political themes, with a few exceptions, makes sense as one surveys the room... More
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Galleries
Nests for the Eye
Among the treasures of living in a city are visits to places creative people inhabit. Just a few minutes in a gallery can provide a visitor entry into an artist's imagination. Observations, ideas, creative processes, and materials worked through by another person can create new terrain. When the work captures your eye you are in business. More
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Galleries
The Sheer Force of Language
Chicken Little, that famous Bulrovian fairy-tale bird, knew what she was talking about when she ran around telling everyone that the sky was falling. When things fall from the sky it usually means something big is going on… More
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Galleries
A Lethal Cocktail of Art & Politics
Perfectly timed to the run up against the election, Enrique Chagoya's new drawings at Gallery Paule Anglim prove yet again that he is an artist of both style and substance. With facile hand and rigorous intellect, the artist continues to mine comic and history books with equal vigor, creating arresting artworks that put into context the current global state of affairs. More
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Galleries
A Bonefide Art Form Makes a Comeback
A couple of weeks ago, the gritty underworld carnival of the Tenderloin surrendered a couple of sidewalk squares to a luau jubilantly splashing out of The Shooting Gallery. A hut-like umbrella loomed over a debonair crowd sloshing back exotic drinks from the bicycle-bar, chatting excitedly. The toast of this swinging soiree? The second coming of tiki art -- what is already being called "nouveau tiki". More
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Galleries
Aping Popular Culture
Popular culture and modern art have been entwined in an incestuous embrace for quite some time now. Therefore, art that appropriates the symbols and status of media iconography can no longer justifiably be called subversive -- not when irony was mastered nearly a century ago by the likes of Marcel Duchamp. More
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Galleries
The wall outside the Haight Street headquarters of record company/art collective Future Primitive Sound is like a signpost to an alternate reality. Composed of hive-like edifices with no apparent function, swirly clouds of silver, and a menacingly elongated superhero figure, the mural indicates the distinct styles of the three artists who created it. More
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