Conrad Ruiz
“Cold, Hard and Wet”
Silverman Gallery
December 11, 2009 – January 30, 2010
Ruiz’s watercolors wash up on oversized freshman canvasses. No Hudson River—come on, this is California: the school of infographical cut-and-paste assemblage-scapes starts somewhere with http://. Obama astride a corgi, NFL halfbacks bereted like revolutionaries. Cold, hard, and wet as the waxy finish on a jet-black sports car, the sheen of Jay-Z’s Amex, the in-use ice-pack.
Ara Peterson
“Turns into Stone”
Ratio 3
November 6, 2009 – December 19, 2009
Do I spy a tessellated magic eye? There, atop a podium, a fluorescing, vascular vessel coalesces (Orange Tube) in laser-cut relief. A pair of prim, collecting-keen ladies stumble presumptively onto a woodshop-cum-gallery, then trundle out again, with backgammon boards built by Ara and Jack (Dad Peterson) bundled under each elbow.
Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt
“Conceptual Color in Print”
de Young Museum
October 17, 2009 – March 7, 2010
Judd presses pigments into paper, LeWitt scribbles giddy vectors, and the white cube is re-reflected in the primarily primary color palettes of these (quasi-) minimal post-war pals. Yellow as a daisy, fresh as a Mondrian. Is this how we used to see rays of light before TV, RGB, LCD?
Ari Marcopoulos
“Within Arm’s Reach”
BAM/PFA
September 23, 2009 – February 7, 2010
Photographic intimacy is not easily won from hard streets, hot rappers, cool Kids, Cairo (his kid), or the Berkeley Art Museum. A gaze, hazy—worth a look. But this viewer, on holiday, barred entry from concrete foyer, is forced to turn away (even The Cheeseboard’s vacation is comparatively abbreviated). Sorry, Ari. Reach you another day…
Maurice Sendak
“There’s a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak”
Contemporary Jewish Museum
September 8, 2009 – January 19, 2010
Inevitably: Sendak strung upon an ethnographic cross. But also strollers full keel, A Kiss for Little Bear, Max and Mickey in full-bleed dress rehearsal, biographical facts (a heart attacked suffered at Tate Britain in 1967, still later suffering for the love of a psychoanalyst). Bravely revisit childhood’s line drawings, before Spike Jonze. And find them, in cahoots with that other story (are your visuals loyal to your narrative?) tattled on by wall text. [Spoiler Alert] The Wild Things are named Moishe, Bruno, Emil, Bernard, Zippy. Textured illustrations make for extra lines to read between. So what’s in a picture, Maurice? (What you look for.)
“One Day: A Collective Narrative of Tehran”
Intersection for the Arts
November 4, 2009 – January 23, 2010
The lay of the land in Tehran. Under foot, a die-cut magic carpet cartograph (Hemami). Framed pages from a notebook-in-lap, ballpoint-in-hand richter-scale held in a taxi, traveling (Heyadet). An auspicious bird in a cage on video loop (Sirizi). Iranian radio excerpted and translated: “We are going to show our strong fist to the world”; “Our artists expect us to support them” (Alizadeh). At day’s end, a diagram of dissident emotion, banned from its city of origin.
“The Anniversary Show”
SF MoMA
December 19, 2009 – January 16, 2010
Carefully examine Rauschenberg’s palimpsest-performance de Kooning (1953), once witnessed by an accessory Jasper Johns. Present in absence and home for the (75th) holiday, a modern gem from a filling-the-holes-in permanent collection, culminating in emerging Mission school (the 90s made jurassic, already!).
“When Lives Become Form: Contemporary Brazilian Art, 1960s to the Present”
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
5 Nov 09 – 31 Jan 10
Tropical s/punk. Oiticica butts up against assume vivid astro focus territorially; absurd vanilla anus flavor against Hélio, oedipally. Both total environments serve up bean-bag chairs, techno-nostalgie, joy. Food-based sculptures by Rivane Neuschwander engage the grid on a Fischli/Weiss latitude: do ants dream of Beef Carpaccio Pangaeas dividing across the porcelain ocean of a dinner plate? Two generations of Ohtakes don’t know. Jum Nakao offers cake-like creations of laser-cut paper lace, Lygia Clark’s metal Bichos bend and collapse. All stoically arranged by Japanese curators, letting go no gleeful crumbs.