Ongoing to June 16- Wyatt Kahn at Adrian Rosenfeld Gallery: Kahn pushes the boundaries between painting, sculpture, drawing and print-making in his latest body of work, which functions as a sort of musing on life in the studio and the weight of art history. Kahn constructs paintings from hand-cut panels individually wrapped in materials like raw linen and milled lead. He employs this process with a series of forms abstracted from the world around him, while simultaneously narrowing in on a group of figurative elements – a pair of glasses, a telephone, a hand, a foot, a tube of paint – that relate to his studio practice. Kahn has developed a distinct vocabulary in merging representation and abstraction, often times with an anthropomorphic and humorous gesture, that is in full range for this exhibition. Adrian Rosenfeld Gallery is located at 1150 25th Street. 

 

May 3 to July 5- Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: The Poetry Machine and Other Works at Fraenkel Gallery: The exhibition, consisting of multiple installations, features Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s interactive tribute to Leonard Cohen. The Poetry Machine is made from a vintage organ, a collection of speakers and recordings of Cohen reciting dozens of poems from his Book of Longing, many of which have never been publicly released.  Road Trip is an installation of slides made by Bures Miller’s grandfather in the 1950s, during a drive from Vancouver to New York City. Projected from a computer controlled carousel onto a standing screen, the slides show mostly empty landscapes, their color often changed by time. Accompanying them is a two-speaker recording of Cardiff and Bures Miller. In Sad Waltz and the Dancer who couldn’t dance, a robotically controlled marionette appears to play piano while a long-haired puppet dances erratically to music by Armenian composer Edward Mirzoyan. Fraenkel gallery is located at 49 Geary Street, 4th Floor.

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 3, 5:30- 7:30pm

Ongoing to June 30- Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller also have an audio installation, titled “FOREST (for a thousand years…)”, on view in the redwood grove of UC Santa Cruz’s Arboretum and Botanic Garden. UC Santa Cruz’s Arboretum and Botanic Garden is located at 1156 High Street in Santa Cruz.

 

May 5  to June 16- Doug Hall: Song of Ourselves (After Walt Whitman) at Rena Bransten Gallery: The two-channel site specific video installation situates a video of high school students reciting Whitman’s text with a projection that washes across the gallery walls. Following the 2016 election Hall felt that “something ugly and malevolent slithered out of the dark recesses of the American psyche. In the shadow of this misanthropy it is easy to lose sight of the alternative, democratic ideals that this country was founded on, ideals that, while not fully realized, were passionately expressed most clearly and beautifully by Walt Whitman in Song of Myself from his epic poem Leaves of Grass.” The exhibition proposes that a humanist tradition can provide an antidote to the venom seeping into the American conscience. This work brings forth the positive spirit that resides within Whitman’s words. By assembling a group of diverse students reading selections from the poem, the ‘I’ of the poem becomes not the voice of the single, male poet but the voice of us all, summoning the poem’s original, inclusive intent. Rena Bransten Gallery is located at 1275 Minnesota Street. 

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 5, 5- 7pm

 

May 5 to June 2- Deep Horizon: Richard- Jonathan Nelson and Dionne Lee at Embark Gallery: In the exhibition, Dionne Lee and Richard-Jonathan Nelson investigate the complex relationship between Blackness and nature. Considering histories of violence, the African diaspora, and the perceptions and realities of identity, Lee and Nelson explore the anxieties and trauma associated with the American landscape, and navigate us towards a deeper understanding of who is allowed to benefit from natural environments. The artists stake a claim to the solitude of nature and its potential as a tool for liberation, while acknowledging that at the same time, being alone and Black in the woods means, historically and quite literally, to be at risk for danger. Through video, photography, and installation, this exhibition provides a new cartography for the safe travel of Black bodies through the terrain of modern wilderness. Embark gallery is located at 2 Marina Blvd., Building B (3rd floor), Suite 330.

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 5, 4- 7pm

 

May 5 to June 16- Emil Lukas: Twin Orbit at Hosfelt Gallery: Labor-intensive and experimental, playful and poetic, surprising and delightful, Lukas’ sculptures and sculptural paintings grow out of investigations into gravity, perspective, mathematics, color theory and the properties of light. Lukas’ round “paintings” are parabolic bowls with tens of thousands of colored threads stretched across them. The works manipulate our sense of space and definition of color. Chunky, plaster works composed of honeycombs of multi-colored pixels create optically vibrating fields, their convex surfaces disrupting our perception of depth. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a monumental, pixilated, aluminum lens that both restricts and restructures our line of sight. This exhibition is an examination of seeing, where optics is a metaphor for the human ability to derive insight from abstract concepts. Hosfelt Gallery is located at 260 Utah Street. 

 

2018 MFA Thesis Exhibitions: The MFA Thesis Exhibitions of the Bay Area art schools concludes the graduate students’ two years of work and marks their transition to the public stage in a professional gallery setting. Throughout their time in school, the artists have expanded the possibilities of contemporary practice. The exhibition is a result of their learning and experimentation across media, their exploration of social, political, and cultural issues as well as personal inquiry. San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley and Stanford all have their exhibitions opening in May:

SFAI: May 10- 17

Opening Reception: Friday, May 11, 7-9pm
The exhibition is located at SFAI’s Fort Mason Campus, 2 Marina Blvd, Pier 2

UC Berkeley: May 11- June 17

Opening Reception and artist talk: Friday, May 11, 6pm
The exhibition is located at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center Street in Berkeley

Stanford: May 15- June 17

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 17, 5-7 pm
The exhibition is located at the Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery, 419 Lasuen Mall in Stanford

 

May 18 to 19- Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence Exhibition: Work by Neil Mendoza and Emily Budd at Recology Art Studio: The exhibition, of current artist-in-residence Neil Mendoza and CCA student artist Emily Budd, will be the culmination of four months of work by the artists who have scavenged materials from the dump to make art and promote recycling and reuse of material. Neil Mendoza’s series, Pretty Rubbish brings a variety of common objects to life using scavenged motors, computers, and other e-waste in combination with his own custom-written software. Themes of absurdity, humor, and the surreal are explored in kinetic sculptures and installations that function with a seeming effortlessness that belies the technical skills required for their creation. Emily Budd’s series, Artifictions uses contemporary trash to make objects suggestive of artifacts, gems, or geological forms. Describing her work as “future archaeology,” Budd imagines how our 21st century discards will manifest as a record of our times. Recology Art Studio is located at 401 Tunnel Avenue. 

Reception: Friday, May 18, 5 -8pm
Reception: Saturday, May 19, 1- 3pm
Additional viewing hours: Tuesday, May 22, 5- 7pm with gallery walk-through with artists at 6pm