ESKing

More Recent Works by SAKOE...

2012-02-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

Everything Was....

2012-01-26T13:39:00.000-08:00

This is why I am a bad blogger and its been too long since my last post....

Check it out if you are around...Peace, Big Ups, Stay Up, and lets build.....ESK

Blaqk-Another Contemporary Calligraphy Moneyshot

2011-12-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

Check out Graffuturism for the recent Blaqk collaboration. Awesome use of abstracted calligraphic stroke as a means of creating a larger work....love it.

http://graffuturism.com/2011/12/09/blaqk-new-works/

Been Busy ESKing...

2011-12-13T23:26:00.001-08:00

Its been a crazy couple of months, tattooing and painting, and printing shirts and paper. Check out some of the stuff below...

A Reflection on Current Events

2011-11-20T01:08:00.001-08:00

As a world, as a nation, we are once again caught up in the assurgent span of humanity’s cyclical progression. Every generation has their share of tumult, but with every crisis we learn more from those who strive to make sense of it. I feel the need to make my feeble attempt at digesting our current unrest, and in perhaps greater amounts, reflect upon the knowledge of those who have translated previous lessons of the times for our hearts and our minds.

Culture accumulates as the generation march steadily forward, but it seems as if the pace has quickened. Mass access to tools of documentation and proliferation allows the exponentially expanding number of tech savvy individuals to process the torrential amounts of societal stimulus that occurs everyday. But sometimes, amid that haste certain things can be forgotten. This is not an admonition to others, it is a reminder to myself.

When barraged by violent stimulus, both media born or painfully existent, I am instinctually moved to anger, incensed and in need of immediate action. But, the Buddha teaches us that at times inaction can yield a more positive long-term result. Perhaps a pause for reflection would benefit us all, from those of the 99, 53rd, 15, 5, and 1 percent.

But, inaction cannot equate to passivity. The mortal fires, fed on the flesh of one monk in the 1970s era Vietnam as well as the countless more in more recent years in Tibet show us that inaction must be viewed and paired with right action. I express my gratitude to those who have peacefully sought an inner peace at the sites of unrest, most recently at the Occupy Movement sites. I thank you for teaching me that spiritual practice is inaction in positive action.

But, as Malcolm X taught us, inaction and violence cannot peaceably abide, and when appropriate, self-defense is a reflection of intelligence. To allow you and those you love to suffer by the hands of an oppressor is merely being a pliant rod in the oppressors hand. But, being to rigid in a response make things brittle, and to0 quickly quenched can cause things to shatter. Taking time to preemptively form and temper our communities and to reflect upon large-scale dynamics seems to forge the strongest defense. Localized defensive education and a search for a higher understanding has been one of mankind's greatest tools in the ancient and un-ending struggle for survival, as well as along the holy path of progress.

But, let not the lessons of Mr. X be the un-tempered Left Hand of Hate. Mr. X existed in relation to the humble handshake of the Right Hand of Love, Doctor King. MLK warned us that violence is not the ultimate means for progress, for it merely engages us back into the fray, rather than ending the fight completely. Self-Defense is not a means to protect pride, ego, wealth or ambition, it is to protect and uphold the sanctity of life itself.

We must then listen to the voice of Mahatma Ghandi, who spun the wheel of passive resistance. Ones mere presence, alongside the physical reinforcement of ones mental and bodily humanity could be the ideal action. To hold the right path, we must be strong enough to stand firm with conviction, yet supple enough to soften the inevitable blows dealt by the oppressors and their ignorant violence. Let us accept the teachings of Morihei Ueshiba, and utilize our creative impetus as societal Breath Throw, utilizing the momentum of the oppressor in order to cast them aside.

And, let us heed the teachings of Jesus, not as the Son of God, but as the teacher of wisdom, and seek to create. Create beyond procreation, create beyond the bounds of the present, create in the physical and beyond the physical, create boundlessly. Let creation leak onto every wall, because though the oppressor may utilize the physical, visual, musical styles of our creation against us, they will never have the heart of intent that lies in the center of it. Write on the wall what the walls cannot say themselves, build the world into the Empire it does not have hands to form, and play the rhythm of everything that beats beneath the surface.

As Always,
Keep it Real,
Stay Up,
And build that Empire Sans Kings….

"The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter - it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.” -Morihei Ueshiba

MSK in Detroit Video

2011-11-18T17:41:00.001-08:00

Great new video documenting the MSK Crews recent visit to Detroit. Heat.

OCCUPY your own Empire Sans Kings

2011-11-06T14:06:00.000-08:00

Really, which looks better.....

This

Or This?

Recent Visit To LA

2011-11-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

I recently had to install a piece that someone purchased from my first show @ the McLoughlin Gallery back in August. It was one of my plexiglass pieces, Layer 5, and the thing was so heavy-yet-fragile that I decided to drive it down personally and install it in the clients home so that I could ensure that as little could go wrong as possible. It was an honor to be inducted into a world-class private collection, which included original Sheper Fairey works, as well a gigantic triptych from the Del Torres Brothers, and other California notables.

While in LA, I also got to stop by and see How and Nosms show in the Known gallery, Auchtung. The german twins really killed it, as usual, and it was awesome to not only see the amazingly rich and detailed finished works that were the main attraction, but to also be able to see a bunch of their sketches they had accumulated in their world travels, which they installed on the back wall. Really epic show.

I also did some mural hunting, and got to see some awesome large-scale public works. I was really excited to see RETNAs most recent LA mural, painted on the side of the new West Hollywood Library, alongside Shepered Fairey. This work is worthy of a day of staring, so rich with texture and stroke, yet still simple and graphic, a real testament to his mastery and personalization of his calligraphic style. Hope this stuff does not become too trendy. Oh LA, you lucky girl you...

Recent SAKOE work...

2011-11-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

Recent works from Sakoe Woner...All photos courtesy of ESK

And Were Back!....

2011-11-06T13:04:00.001-08:00

I took some time off from working on my blog, which those few people who actually pay attention to such things may or may not have noticed. I felt like I was wasting my time talking about art work that no one wanted to have a voice super-imposed over, and felt like I was acting way too much like the 1% of the art world which assigns value to artwork merely through giving a show a yea or nay. So, I am going to try and shift the focus of this blog a little, and see how that goes. I am going to try posting more quality photos, less subjective art critique and more overarching art trend analysis and theory. No guarantees that the content will really get any better. If you want really good content, go check out www.graffuturism.com. Come here to check up on whats going on in the world through the ESK lens, and maybe discover some interesting musical and artistic tidbits you wouldnt have otherwise stumbled upon.....Yeah, welcome back.

More Stuff....

2011-06-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

Weightless: Old Crow Tattoo and Gallery

2011-06-25T19:21:00.001-07:00

Country Crushn Vol. 1-Video Coming Soon!

2011-06-25T19:08:00.001-07:00

Havent seen an ESKER piece in a while, huh? Well, here you go! Country Crushn Volume 1, the best in cutty tunnels, bridges and woodsie piecing. Video Coming Soon!

Reppin the KRATE, SC

Pro

Love to OGIZ, thanks for the Tech Help!

Interview: Kool Kid Kreyola @ Old Crow Tattoo

2011-06-25T00:50:00.000-07:00

ESK: First off, I want to say that you get mad props for getting deep into muddy waters early on in your career. You address so many issues in your installation in Weightless, the new show that opened at Old Crow Gallery and Tattoo. I feel you really put them out there for people to deal with, which is a tough thing to do, especially when you aren’t there to really dialogue with your audience about where you were at when you made this work. This is one reason I wanted to get your point of view on this work, since circumstances made it one of the most talked about pieces in the show.

KKK: Actually I’ve been around for a while. In 2006 I was with the Donna Tribby fine art gallery, and I sold enough work to buy a truck, cash, straight out of high school. I was also featured in Art and Culture Magazine. Then the Tribby gallery shut down and my work stopped selling, then the San Francisco Art Institute called me and asked if I wanted to attend school, and that they had pre-approved my portfolio, so they hooked up a fat scholarship so I’m in school! There! I was not present at the opening for two reasons: first, I have one-hundred-seventy-five community service hours I owe Palm Beach County for graffiti I did in 2004. The second reason is that I am on an art tour called Froggy Style where I’m going from city to city making art from anything and everything!

ESK: So, to get to it. Obviously you talk a lot about race issues and ingrained racism in

your work, using a very grimy, rough, street kind of feel. The quality of your characters and paintings that you had installed, as well as the other multi-media facets that were there, were rough-hewn and full of almost abject energy, seeming to capture the underlying feel of race in America. Can you talk a little bit about where you are coming from with this, and how you think it vibes with the overarching issue of race that heavily informs this body of work?

KKK: I am more so reusing iconic racist imagery and reappropriating it as a new generations killing free! No free! The work looks grimy and child-like because the subject matter is rooted in some stupid childish hate! I seek to break down race. A lot of people say “I see past race.’’ I say, what the fuck, don’t look past it, look at it! Breaking it down to its core! It is the only way to see that deep down inside there’s more in common than on the outside! I come from the south, a country boy, born and raised. What I mean by this is that I eat gator and like lifted trucks, and I also grew up in the American school system! And, I’m a Haitian Voodon American on top of that, so I feel like I got a lot to tell the world! Im not a race artist!

ESK: In your video installation, you have this music video full of scenes that almost seem grafted from mainstream hip-hop, and elements of hip-hop culture seem pretty ingrained in the vocabulary of all of your work. Seeing as we are now in the third, fourth, or some even claim fifth, generation of hip-hop, how do you feel your own exposure and voice can add to the rapidly growing world of hip-hop? And, how do you feel that being a young black man who is a part of hip-hop culture predisposes you to certain prejudices and stereotypes, which seem to be expressed in your work?

KKK: I am in no way a race artist. I like peace and love and shit like that, I am a rainbow warrior! Hip Hop is an outlet for expression! It is important to realize that there are so many other outlets, I am looking to play with them all! I see no boundaries and I’m not the only painter to play with racist imagery, Banksy just did something.

ESK: I am interested in the way you used so many different outlets to explore the subjects you wanted to present. I mean, you filmed yourself walking around the SFMOMA in a KKK hood, installed totemic images of racism in the bathroom, painted images of pink chicks blinged out and texting, you even made a giant ass children’s book entitled Me and My Niggas, including a pop-up picture with a huge fold-out penis! Explain a little bit about why you felt that you needed to work in so many different mediums, and how you feel they all work together to further your overall message.

KKK: The walk through the MOMA was part of a spiritual art cleansing. I actually prayed for change and peace in the bathroom and flushed away the negative iconic power that the racist imager has! And then when it was all brand new, I took a stroll upstairs to look at the art!

ESK: Finally, to cut to the chase, lets talk about what happened at the opening. Some young woman came and spray painted over a central part of your installation, claiming that the whole piece is “racist,’’ which kind of seems to be right in sync with a lot of what you were talking about. How do you feel about that whole deal, and what is your response to her claims of your work being racist?

KKK: I am so grateful that my work moved someone to react and think, I feel that evolution is subtle. It happens internally, through thoughts and feelings, then it manifest itself through action! In this day and age where most people are too lazy to scratch there own asses, any art that has the power to motivate, agitate and push or pull people is doing society a favor. I will wear the t-shirt she sprayed and I would love to take her out for coffee and chat it up!

ESK: How do you feel about your work being shown next to the other work that was in the show? A lot of the other work in there was really awesome as well, and I don’t mean to overshadow it by highlighting the drama that surrounded the night. I know that you and Spencer kind of work together. Do you feel that working together with another artist who definitely has his own distinctive style influences the way you go about your work?

KKK: I am extremely proud to be in a show at the Old Crow, some of the artist that I am showing with I look up to. Spencer and I have so many things in common, we make work in the same fashion, we go off and create in a manic storm of fast, fun passionate style pushing every ounce of ourselves into our work! Then, we look back and refine we created, so our styles may not be the same but our work ethic is and that is why we work so well together!

ESK: Finallly, is there anything else you want to add that you feel I missed?

KKK: Fuck Spencer! LOL. JK. Thank you for your time! Chad Hasagawa is the man!

http://vimeo.com/25256983

The House of Others: UC Davis MFA Thesis Show

2011-06-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

Last year I checked out the UC Davis MFA Program’s first year review (check it out here), and was impressed by what I saw. So, I went back and caught this group of talented artists after another year of development, in their MFA Thesis Show, entitled The House of Others. I must say, a lot can happen in a year, and in this case it was almost all time well spent.

The interesting thing about the UC Davis MFA program is that it is a program that operates outside the traditional art-school/overly prestigious art academia methodology, which frees the artist to really explore some interesting and diverse directions. And diversity seems to be the running theme for this group of talented artists.

I’ll start off with my friend and one-time peer Mathew Zefeldt, who has continued to increase his level of productivity and scale. Showing a series of his massive canvases, as well as the first showing of his sculpture work, this body of work was impressive, with the half a dozen eight feet by ten feet canvas and the five foot high sculpture all completed over the last couple of months. These new paintings continued to push his visual language, with large, monolithic forms made out of layered, viscous paint drips, barely contained by the minimalist and depth-rich settings that are squeezed into the edges of the canvas. These large forms generate a feeling of claustrophobia, while at the same time dwarfing the viewer with their totemic scale. Also, seeing Zefeldt’s gradient and color play exposed in sculptural form really reveals the intellectual approach to color and tone that has become central to his body of work.

Another notable sculptural accomplishment of the show was Lisa Crallé’s installation of a collection of large-scale sculpture. Last year, Crallé’s installation hinted at the generation of a sculpture environment in which the viewer could engage only through visual means. In this most recent show, she extrapolated this into an entire interactive environment, in which large scale pieces contained smaller little gems of sculptural insight. The large scale work utilized rough material like plywood, cardboard, bailing wire, paper-maché, and styrafoam to make a series of sculptures that the viewer could walk through, seeing both the representational front side, as well as the “hidden’’ backside of the works. Stashed throughout were what at first glance seemed to be a variety of building tools, paint cans, and other materials that appeared left behind after the construction of the work. But, on closer inspection, these were art objects made to enrich the dialogue of the work, visual reminders of the effort that goes into the making of an objet d’art.

Another notable series were the mixed media paintings of Manuel Rios. These large scale works were colorful collages of vein-like lines, running in rivulets amongst the other graphic, amorphous shapes. Some of the works were executed on striped bed linens, raising thoughts of childhood safety and home, which enriched the map-referencing shapes that coalesced in the foreground. Speaking of travels, delineations, transitions and excommunications, these works charted interesting terrain through the movements, both real and ethereal, that occurs through one’s life.

I also enjoyed the photographic documentation of Paul Taylor’s urban re-appropriations. These clever and temporal gestures took everyday icons of industrial development and urban hierarchies and re-organized them to seem out of place or skewed from the normal paradigm. Although this is well-charted territory, Taylor’s interpretations of urban appropriation captured a sense of poignant intimacy that much of the urban landscape is devoid of. For example, a caution barrier, usually demarking public areas where the public cannot go, is taken out of context and found floating on a lake reflecting cumulous clouds and refracted, wavering pine trees, giving the barrier a sense of lost longing for solid, concrete foundation, doomed to float freely, unable to limit its own movement, much less the movement of anything else.

These works, as well as the other MFA graduates, really show how the realm of object making and art academia is still alive and well. Well, not only alive and well, but also stretching new places outside of the isolated bastions of strictly art colleges and ivory towers of ancient prestige. Congratulations to all the MFA Graduates of UC Davis, this was a great show, and great indicator of the successful careers ahead of these talented individuals.

Mathew Zefeldt

Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor Manuel Rios Manuel Rios Matthew Taylor Lisa Cralle Lisa Cralle Lisa Cralle

Website for The House of Others

Cunninlynguists @ Slims: SF

2011-05-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

What have you been bumping in your headphones? A common question for most audiophiles indeed, and one that quickly becomes worn when my response includes an annotated list of artists organized by genre, era, year of production, and common affiliates. But, recently, holding a pretty solid spot among my most played albums of recent* would be Cunninlynguists’ newest release Oneirology. So, when I found out last minute that they would be rocking Slim’s in San Francisco, I couldn’t really say no, now could I? Especially for the low, low price of $16.

Upon arriving at the venue, I walked in and got caught up at what I saw. An entire room filled with middle schoolers, high school at most?!!? Well, I suppose I should have realized that an all ages show and a cheap entrance fee paired with underground Hip Hop could only bring the most annoying and fanatic Hip Hop enthusiasts. Everywhere I turned there were wasted Hiphey man-childs running around wasted off the Smirnoff they chugged in the car chased with Gatorade, and tentative inductees who just downloaded their first full length LP off Pandora trying to buy a dub sac from some other conspicuous looking fifteen year old. When the fuck did I start being such an old hater? Oh, right. When I graduated high school, I was already on the outside of the underground Hip Hop demographic. Oh well.

Despite being an old curmudgeon, I was excited to be at Slim’s for my first time to see Cunninlynguists, who while not really able to ever achieve classic status, have had the staying power to produce albums throughout their ten-year career. And in a scene of false starts and “My demo was a classic!’’ mentalities, that is something to respect. And, the fact that their early 2011 concept album release showed a great deal of development and musical maturation, I was definitely ready to see these guys headline.

Unfortunately, I turned up too early to miss the first opener, Tonedeff. Don’t get me wrong, Tonedeff can rap fast, and kills it on his feature tracks with Cunninlynguists, but his performance left a sour taste in my mouth. Tonedeff epitomizes everything about the underground Hip Hop community that I never liked, and ended up making me fall from grace with the whole movement with the heavy weight of irritation and apathy. With a monotonous fast rap style, outrageously misogynistic lyrics**, and a tendency to rely on in-between track banter and self-proclaimed party tricks for crowd support, I was definitely under whelmed. But enough hatin’.

The next opener was a definite change of pace, coming straight out on stage and cutting loose straight into his first track. And with a name like Homeboy Sandman, it might seem wise to spit some flows before introducing yourself. Homeboy brought something really different to the stage. Flailing the air around him with his large-limbed gestures while he kicked strange, robot-voice backed lyrics over cracked out neo-hop production reminiscent of Madlib and Doom, you couldn’t help but get down to his honest and outrageous performance. Losing the psychedelic, bass heavy beat at times, his plodding off-rhythm flow was way on the edge of what you call underground hip hop, pushing the envelope in a lot of dissonant ways, the Hard-Bop to your Kenny G. But in the backpacking scene of the teenage-backed Hip Hop underground, new shit is damn refreshing!

Finally, jumping straight into the mix was Cunninlynguists, backed by West Coast representative DJ Flip Flop on the ones and twos. I never claimed to be a die-hard Cunninlynguists fan*, but I have heard most of their standard tracks off a majority of their album, and slapped the shit out of their newest release, so I was just as excited as the rest of the crowd when they opened with the first two tracks off Oneirology. With three MCs and a DJ, and a crowd full of hormonally charged, sessed and boozed out teenagers rubbing their sweaty pelvises against the stage, there was plenty of energy for a hyped show. Running through a bunch of their classics, the majority of the focus stayed with the original duo of Kno and Deacon the Villain, with Kno spending a lot of time pulling the whole self-deprecating but killing it MC act, while Deacon just stepped up to crush his delivery of each verse. They played most of their classics, bringing Tonedeff in to do all his features on their well-known tracks, which is where his style shifts towards a more poetic note and his vocal ability really shines. Then in the last quarter of the show, they started playing more off the newest album, allowing the newest MC Natty to come forward out of the role of backup vocals and spit his verses off the new album, which I think are some of the strongest on the whole record.

Then in a surprised move, amid the chaos of bouncers ejecting copious amounts of under-age pot smokers, Cunninlynguists exited the stage to allow the production new comers Blue Sky, Black Death to take over and play a set. And I am not talking just one or two songs, I am talking a whole set. This awkward, college vibe duo mumbled into the mic about an impending album release, before launching into their bass-thwomp heavy trip-hop production backed by synthesized guitar licks. Now, these are not guys that I would say you should go out and immediately by their album, and definitely not an act I would pay to stand amid the throes of late pubescence to see. Yet. But, with a little polishing and deeper forays into Hip Hop backed musicology, this duo definitely has future potential, and makes it onto my New Age Production watch list. And judging by their recent large music festival exposure, they will have the support to make it through the rough first couple of years, and hopefully bring us a solid, fully developed album in a year or two.

So, final notes: Tonedeff, c’mon man, use that vocal tenacity to produce some well-planned and solid funky lyricism, not more underground, battle-crap garbage. Homeboy Sandman, shit was def. Weird, out there, but def. And Cunninlynguists, you deserve the accolades you have acquired in the underground world for all you previous albums and showmanship, and a much wider acceptance that has yet to come for your newest album, which is still mah JAM!

PEACE!

ESK

*Vying with the standards of Grouch and Eligh’s No More Greener Grass and AZ’s Legendary albums

**Including a track with a refrain of: I’m a Pervert and I can’t help it! C’mon bro, your thirty-five or something, yes you can. Or maybe not, hence the acceptance by high-school boys

***With their first album dropping around the same time my interest in grimy underground was.

Photos From Recent Shows

2011-05-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

So, I have been working to get my Curated Show INDELIBLE MARKS, so havent been posting all of the photos and reviews I promised earlier. Well....here they are! The photos at least. Enjoy!
Peace,
One Love,
I See and Empire Sans Kings,
Lets Build It

Fabric8-Abstract Geometry Show
Apex
Chor Boogie
Damon Soule
...Evan Venegas
Jet Martinez
Nome Edonna

Abstract Geometry will be on exhibit from April 22 through May 23, 2011 at fabric8, 3318 22nd Street, San Francisco, and open 7 days a week.

941 Geary-Indoor Mural Project Closing Reception
941 Geary Presented on of the most killer large-scale installations of mural works by some of the leading artists of the Bay Area and Beyond! If you missed it, you at least have a chance to revel in you sorrow while looking through these photos.

Lords V Cobras

2011-05-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

LORDS vs CoBraS!

I know that this is about two weeks overdue, but I just wanted to put in my two (or 25 with inflation) cents about this pretty epic show. LORDS and CoBraS have been two of the most continuously present graffiti crews in California, with serious names changing and evolving parts of the game. These are heads that I grew up seeing in secondhand, Xeroxed black and white ’zines, and despite the poor quality, the shit was still fresh! So, this show definitely came with certain expectations of work of a certain caliber. Did the show, opening @ Project One last Friday deliver?

Well yes. And no. And yes. It is hard to really decide a straight answer to that question. Being someone who appreciates a majority of the graffiti expression out there, I would have dug this show even if it was just white walls both crews had gotten drunk and scribbled on. But, being a critically engaged viewer and creator of art, as well as a firm belief in the constant, unyielding progression of graffiti, there were points in the show that did fall slightly short of the Olympic-trials set bar.

Don’t get me wrong, for a graff show, this was a major success, with artists that hit the street hard doing their thing on canvas. And, with folks like Alex Pardee (CBS) and CRAOLA (CBS) who have some serious gallery representation for their fine art works, there definitely was a strong gallery feel to some of the work. Individually, each artist held their own, and there is no doubt that all these cats have a lot of natural and developed talent. But, unfortunately, this show fell prey to the paradox that is emerging to be the standard dilemma for graffiti-art shows. There is just something lost when straight graffiti is brought from the streets, and put in a gallery setting. Capturing the energy and voracity of giant works executed on the street, and confining them to canvas somehow relegates them into a childish, low-art aesthetic that is extremely hard to emerge from. So, what I really look for in these shows are individuals who really push it, and take a graffiti aesthetic, combine it with gallery sensibilities, and create something that is neither wholly street or wholly gallery, but an enticing amalgum of the two. And there where definitely those that managed this. ROMA brought some seriously cool new flair with his abstract graffiti pieces, celebrating the feel and weight of line generated by a spray can. ADEE got fresh and different with it, cutting copper and wood to make really impressive graffiti works. Coming in with some of the most unique stuff of the show was MERS, with his crazy Godzilla-esque sculpture, with the giant lizard creature running amok in the trainyard like any writers dreams. Yes, the freshness was there.

Have to give big props to Project One for bringing a really awesome and diverse range of shows through their space, and always packing em in.

h==

The Importance of Ai Weiwei Freedom

2011-04-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

or Why I Am One of Those Obnoxious People Who Uses Social Networking Sites as a Vehicle of Change

On April 3^rd, 2011, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was arrested by the Chinese Police while attempting to board a flight to Hong Kong for supposed “economic crimes.’’ No one has been able to determine his whereabouts or his safety since.

Looking at China’s batting average for detaining activists and dissenters, this comes as no real surprise. Even Ai predicted this would happen eventually. So why is this such a big deal that a majority of the biggest art institutions in the world have started a petition for his release, a petition which then was the victim of a cyber attack that many blame on the Chinese government?

The news has been full since the start of the year with news of democratic uprisings popping up across the Middle East and Northern Africa, revolutions that have successfully overturned very well established regimes in oil-rich countries, and revolutions which have turned into bloody civil-war conflicts that drew intense UN-sanctioned military action (anyone heard of the name Libya?). The kicker of these social movements is that they have been able to engage the international community in a way never seen before by utilizing social networking tools such as Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. Through these tools, the people in the middle of these conflicts were able to give front-line view of what a populist revolution looks like to the rest of the world, breaking out of the confines of government controlled media outlets. Almost.

The reason Ai Weiwei’s detention is so distressing, besides the obvious human rights violations that China seems to get away with all the time, is the fact that China one of the most technologically advanced and governmentally regulated internet infrastructures existent today. The Great Firewall of China is evidence of some of the most heavily censored internet communication in the world. As the information networks of the internet rapidly expand, world governments are starting to look at the different avenues of internet development while the net continues to grow exponentially, rapidly approaching the limit of available net-space that was established when the internet was first unleashed upon the world. So, as the Internet 2.0 is being developed governments will start to tip their hands, showing where on the spectrum they will lay.

Groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous represent one extreme, complete populace control of internet content, with information sharing happening un-impeded. China represents the other extreme; complete government control of internet content, with severely limited civilian internet infrastructure development.

By allowing China to continue to silence its dissenters, especially figures of prominence like Ai Weiwei, we give idealogical support for a shift towards this extreme. Ai Weiwei utilized Twitter so effectively, with the help of a server located outside of China, that all of the dramatic lead up to his detainment was precisely and evocatively documented, leaving very little room for questions as to why he was detained. China has worked hard to suppress his critical voice over the last few years, shutting down his blog, installing surveillance around his original studio compound, and even destroying his multi-million dollar studio facility with no explanation. But, Ai documented it all, turning the gaze back onto the authoritative figure in a shining example of post-modern anti-authoritarian engagement. So, with successful democratic uprisings occurring in the world, and a growing voice for democratization occurring in China, their last resort was to physically remove Ai and fellow supporters of democratic reform from the scene, and actively work to erase their existence from their controlled internet database.

To expand beyond purely Chinese politics, I want to point out another reason why I spend my time posting abrasive, awareness raising content online. When you look at countries in the world that have established internet infrastructures paired with a government capable and prone to media manipulation, China is far from alone. In fact, one of the countries most noted for internet manipulation is much closer to home, the United States. Let us look at ICE’s crackdown on torrents and other file-sharing methods. Remember YouTube, Amazon, Bank of America, and others submitting to government demands to remove servers supporting Wikileaks and other whistle-blowing sites? And do I even need to bring up the detainment of a 23 year-young soldier being held without charge or legal consult in sub-human conditions? It is not hard to see which side of the Internet 2.0 spectrum our home country lands.

So, much to the annoyance of my Facebook Friends (and probably all the real ones as well) I am going to keep posting material advocating the immediate release of Ai Weiwei and other Chinese political prisoners, and demand that China be held accountable for their violations of numerous human rights. So, feel free to un-friend me, block my blog, and ignore my protests, because I will continue to be an annoying social networking activist, clogging your Facebook feed with links to the things we don’t want to see…

One Love,

I see an Empire Sans Kings…

Lets build it!

PEACE

Another Day Off, Another Gang of Photos

2011-04-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

SNARL

KAER

PORNO, BROWN

OSKER

HORNS

SNARL, CLEPTO

ANIMAL ?

JUST BECAUSE

SAKOE

SWEATY YETI BY PINK EYE

BEN BLAIR: back in the saddle

2011-04-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

BEN BLAIR: back in the saddle: "Hello and welcome to my art blog! I've returned to my drawing board after four months recuperating from a repetitive motion injury... goin..."

Check out my friend Bens blog. He is an amazing artist and illustrator, and also just one of the most awesome and genuine individuals I know. BIG UPS!

Photos...

2011-04-11T16:59:00.001-07:00

Photos...

Ai Weiwei-Inspiration

2011-04-10T01:31:00.000-07:00

PBS Documentarly on Ai Wei Wei: Whos Afraid of Ai Weiwei?

First Friday Photos!

2011-04-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

As always, Telegraph was poppin on the First Friday, maybe even more so because of the good weather recently....I was slangin shirts @ 2022 and enjoying the DJ, and then rolled over to ERA where BOUNCE was having his opening/birthday jam. ERA was packed in, even folks lounging VIP with the peacock women (go to ERA. They are there, I swear. Let me know what you think they look like.) Got hiphy to one of the Oakland Faders on the ones and twos, which recieved the usual stares and White-Boy-Did-What? looks. Good times.

Unfortunately did not get out to Gamma Space that night till too late, but I am gonna peep the show this weekend, when they are open for viewing. If you missed that show last week, roll through this weekend and peep a hot new gallery space with some sick work by Isaac Saavedra. Fresh.

Peace,
One Love,
is see an ESK,
Lets build it.
ESK

My Work @ 2022

BOUNCE opening @ ERA

BOUNCE was live screenprinting the whole time

I do this thing sometimes...

2011-04-04T00:51:00.001-07:00

SAFETY FIRST

LEGOS!

GATS and PINKEYE

SAKOE

Love the blue, new poses too!

Cant stop KOLEO

Good Line folks...

The UDON!

Does this need a caption?...PEAR, OCULT

B.I.C.

Yummm....lines.

Artsy farts...y

B.I.C.

Strength through numbers...

SAKOE

Doubly OPTIMISTic

SAKOE

Liked the layering effect of the two CLOUTS...

Bred In Captivity

...where I take pictures of shit....

Just a sample out of nearly 200 taken on the last two days off....

PEACE,
One Love,
I see and Empire Sans Kings,
Lets build it!

We Are All Animals Review: Brick and Mortar Media

2011-04-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

The world’s is a jungle out there, for real. In the competitive environment of the Bay Area art scene, it’s hard to put together a show of emerging talent that can draw some serious attention. But, We Are All Animals, which opened this last Thursday at Brick and Mortar Media in San Francisco, had all the elements required for a successful homegrown art event. In

collaboration with BAMM.TV, this artist run show organized and put together by Louise Chen presented a pretty solid line up of up-and coming bay area individuals, including SWAMP DONKEY, Mary Marxen, Samantha Mancino, Isaac Osher, Louise Chen, and many other talented folks. That, combined with some up-and coming music performances, and FREE BEER(!!!!), the courtyard and gallery spaces of Brick and Mortar Media were pretty damn filled.

BAMM is broken down into three slightly separated spaces, and each housed a slightly differenttype of work. The main space contained the stage area, backed by the cardboard and paint installation, which provided an interesting backdrop for the musical performance by the Blank Tapes, without making the band a secondary item. SWAMPY’s one piece in the show was a delicate interpretation of his street work. It has been interesting to see how his work has translated from the large, iconic street images that pour from the sides and roof of buildings, into more condensed, dark, and mark heavy creatures and scenes. Definitely excited to see how his work develops, both inside the white walls and outside on the concrete.

Samantha Mancino’s found-object masks guarded the massive line for beer, perched as golem-like sentinels on pillars, each an engaging amalgamation of sympathetic imagery and metaphor. Hovering above these stoic forms was Louise Chen’s “Urban Nesting Installation’’, a series of nests made out of trash that seemingly had been picked up and stuck to the wall, playing with the ideas materials within the urban space and their re-appropriation.

The inside gallery at BAMM is contained by a glass wall, which provided an interesting approach towards the collection of prints and paper works done by a variety of artists. This space was one of the most visually appealing parts of the show, providing a rhythm that invited the viewer into the space, with a slightly more polished and minimalist feel that successfully contrasted with the business and rough-edge aesthetic of the main space.

Inside this space, Tim Shriver attracted some attention with his minutely detailed and complex copper etching prints, which read as a morass of characters and loose shapes all fighting for breathing room amid the small confines of their frames.

Mary Marxen provided a really nice new work, expanding upon her previous explorations of muted-tone abstractions of common imagery, and loading references to the animal nature of the urban confines through form and presentation. This is one of my favorite works done so far by this artist-organizer. Next to Marxen’s delicate paint works was another of my contemporaries, Isaac Osher, who has been quickly rising to be a valuable voice in the world of printing. His mutli-layered print “Mysterious Mammal’’ was imaginative and complex, well highlighted by Osher’s technical facility with his medium.

Upstairs, Danny Shimoda presented a large body of fun and creative prints, sharing the space with a great combination of work, including Alec Shwarz engaging art-experience installation, as well as other two-and three dimensional work by a variety of artists.

Overall, We Are All Animals was a great success. Although some of the work seemed crowded into too little space to breath, much of what this work represents and exists as forced its way into view. BAMM accomplished exactly what is looked for in a successful emerging artist group show, presenting work from a range of artists and mediums, while still keeping a sense of congruity throughout the show. Definitely worthy of praise, this show is a great look into some bay area cats that will continue to steadily climb up the proverbial food chain of the SF scene.

April Calender of Events!

2011-03-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks,

So its shaping up to be a month of great shows! The weather is looking lovely, and the pretty people are out in abundance, going to see the pretty things that people make.

So tonight ESK will be ESKing to a show of emerging Bay Area Artists, We Are All Animals, at the Brick and Mortar Media Gallery. With a variety of different works by different artists, this show should be an interesting cross section of the younger Bay Area art scene. 7-12, come check it out, 43 Norfolk St, SF.

Tomorrow is going to be a CRACKING first friday in the O. I will be starting out by heading to 2022, where they will be having a big gathering of folks for first Friday, hopefully some of them that gathers will be them with fresh paychecks so I can sell some more work. Big ups to the people of 2022 for repping my work for four months. Props.

After that, I will cruise over to Era Art Bar and Lounge to check out Bounce and his new work. This even is going to be POPPING, with a bunch of the Bay Area Graff heads in attendance, as well as a bunch of other folks rolling through for a night of music and art and fun. Come peep, 19 Grand Avenue, O-Town, CA (ALL DAY!). Goes from 6:00pm-Last Call for Whatever.

After that, I will be going to the GRAND OPENING!!!!!! of the Gamma Space Gallery, showing the work of the Owner himself, my homie Isaac Saavedra. Isaac puts out some fresh, unique and interesting work, and having a well known Dub-step DJ like DJ ONEZIE will add to the event. Come out to support a sick new space in the E-BAY, and get ready for this spot to start going off. I am curating a show there next month, so swing by and get a feel for the awesomeness that is going down, 6-11 pm, @ 6608 San Pablo.

Next Thursday, Bay Area artist Josh Keyes will open his Solo Show at FFDG on Fillmore, definitely a show to check out. Also, opening on the first to the Public will be the Indoor Mural Project, a 3000 sq ft warehouse space covered by your favorite artists. Should be dope!

On the 22nd (Friday) of April, there is going to be a crazy sick show, LORDS vs COBRAS. These two crews will go toe to toe, actually only canvas to canvas, showing of the classic and neo-classical west coast graffiti styles they helped to keep burning up and down Cali. I will be there. Will you? Project 1, 251 Rhode Island St, SF, CA.

And, at 1AM, the Saturday after that will be the opening for THE ART OF GRAFFITI show. Should be some wild, crazy stuff.

So, I will be trying to go to most of these events. As always, there is too much sick shit going on in the bay, but you gotta try right?

Well, catch you soon with reviews.
Peace,
One Love,
Lets Build.
Imagine an Empire Sans Kings.

ESK

More ESK Media! East Bay Loop

2011-03-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

Watsup yall!!!! So, more ESK news. I am the featured visual artist on the new website, the East Bay Loop (www.eastbayloop.com). Its a great arts and entertainment website and newsletter, covering creative events and individuals in the East Bay. Check out my Feature Article . Peace, One Love.

Stand Tall Part II Media: High Fructose

2011-03-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Yes YALL!

If you all remember, I was recently part of a bad ass show entitled Stand Tall Part II: No Ceilings, hosted by the wonderful folks @ Old Crow Tattoo and Gallery. Well, that show was reviewed and flicked by High Fructose Magazine, a contemporary art magazine, and posted on the homepage of their website. So, check it out!

Peace,
One Love,
Lets Build
ESK

This one guy at this one spot....

2011-03-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

Sakoe

NATRL

AURA...CAKE

ANEMAL

Bred In Captivity Bred in Captivity

Sakoe

7 Seas

Roar

Yall know the spot, and if not, its not hot, but burned by the burners that caught, the cans and able hand that peeped the shots....

Shooting White Wall Galleries

2011-03-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

Ducking and dodging the meth sales and sex industrialists, I moved through the shadows of the Tenderloin last night to check out the dual gallery spaces of White Walls SF and the Shooting Gallery for the first time. Being the “premier’’ space in San Francisco for the gallery representation of urban art, it is surprising even to me that I haven’t been to check these spaces out. Why? Well, no real excuse besides I can be a tentative lazy ass just like everyone else.

The two gallery spaces each housed an individual showcase of relatively well established artists fitting within the urban or contemporary art genre. The Shooting Gallery housed Yumiko Kayukawa’s new show, “Rock You in a Tatami Room,’’ named after the title of one of the largest works in the show, depicting a modern Japanese pop-rock band performing for a crowd of (literally) wild animals. Performing out of a traditional Japanese-style building instead of a contemporary stage, this painting was one of the first seen when entering the gallery, setting the thematic mood for the whole show.

Kayukawa is a Japanese born, Seattle based artist who has some of the deftest hands I have seen in a while. Overlapping pop culture imagery with a mix of traditional Japanese symbolism, calligraphy, and cartoonish characters, these works wove a series of narratives tying modern cultural edifices to more classical expressions of Japan. The main figure in all of the paintings is a female character (or characters) who interacts in a variety of scenes with a menagerie of critters, Shinto gods rocking out to a three piece neo-pop band. The scenes seemed to be metaphors for the contemporary world’s search for a middle ground between old and new, the wildly natural and the urbanely civilized.

The strongest parts of the works were expressed in the interested interplay between the natural scenescapes and the animals that morphed between realistic and anthropomorphic within the settings. At times, the female figure or figures seemed to detract from the overall work, making the entire piece overly focused on a central character that seemed at times contrives and conventional. As well, the work seemed to be almost too beautifully rendered, dipping too far into the realm of animation, losing the authenticity and visceral reaction inspired by the raw mark making of paint. Still, the pieces remained visually exciting with heavily saturated colors popping off the small canvas, capturing attention perched in the middle of the wide expanses of gallery-white walls.

Crossing through the doorway that connects the two sister galleries, entering into a vastly different space. Ironically, the White Walls gallery was painted a muted red-orange. Contrasting with those bold, expansive walls were canvases that were hung in an array across the two story surfaces. London-based street artist EINE brought his newest body of work to SF, transporting his stencil born typography off the street and into the realm of prim walls and stretched canvas.

His body of work was a collection of bold words, such as “Greatest’’ (the title of the show), “Fastest,’’ “Hottest,’’ “Quickest,’’ “Louder,’’ “Sharper,’’ “Wild,’’ “Strong’’….you get the idea. Basically words that typified what most street artist seek to be in the tooth and nail struggle for fame.

There was also a series of letter studies, containing 25 out of the 26 letters of the English alphabet. (EINE seemed to pass up W, for reasons I can only guess, X is a much harder letter to render.)

These pieces inspired an appreciation for the sheer amount of effort involved to plan and overlay the different stencils required for the show, as well as the accuracy that belied an accomplished stencil artist. But, I found myself attracted to the work that was more minimalist, with letter executed in a limited pallet, overlaid on a background of more character than the poured-enamel black and red backgrounds that made up the rest of the work. For some reason, these works inspired a greater response than even the massive installation of one-word canvases piled on top of each other that filled the main wall of the space. The works were all great studies of classical letterform, well executed and vibrant, but it seemed like there was and element of vitality that seemed to be missing out of the work.

Now, in hindsight, both shows seemed to fall short of spectacular due to similar reasons. In a world where digital reproduction has proliferated to the point of exhaustion, and telling the difference between what is painted and what is designed is an increasingly difficult task, both of these shows dipped too far into the stagnant lake of design, leaving behind the vitality born through the changing tides of painterly strokes. Kayukawa’s works were stimulating and beautiful, but at times too perfect. They read as vector drawings for advertisements, without the commentary that work that seeks to analyze media usually contains. Pristine became placid at times, while some of the work contained captivating enough imagery, with enough moments of awe-inspiring handling to hold their own. EINE’s work was respectable due to the amount of work and precision involved, but there is only so much you can do with mid century typography stencils and spray paint. Both of these artists obviously have quite a facility and an eye for the visually stunning, but in reality, they overlooked the fact that the first wave of graphic inspired fine art is becoming stagnant just as it reaches its peak, the trajectory of so many of the contemporary and urban art forms.

A Little Hip Hop Preaching Goes a Long Way

2011-03-11T22:51:00.000-08:00

As an artist, I am constantly searching for ways that artists, visual, musical, intellectual artists, can move beyond being stagnant, insular self-reflections, and impact society. This is one of the biggest critiques of artists, is their lack of relevancy and social impact. Well, I just wanted to post this video series of KRS-One, one of the godfathers of Hip Hop culture, speaking his mind. Yes, his views are extreme. But, if you have not looked up from your insular place in the world, which we all tend to neglect to do, let me remind you. The world is an extreme place right now. If you do not believe me just Google one of these words: Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Japan, China, Wisconsin. Nuff said. Please enjoy with an open mind and feel free to engage in PEACEFUL and CONSTRUCTIVE dialouge. Thanks.

Peace,
One Love,
Lets Build
ESK

Old Crow Part II: No Ceilings! Process and Opening Photos

2011-03-08T22:18:00.000-08:00

The much anticipated show, Stand Tall Part II: No Ceilings, held in the Old Crow Gallery and the Addis Habbana Dance Studio on Grand Ave, opened to a raucous crowd. A vast mix of hipsters, burners, writers, and heads from all over the rest of the spectrum came out to see these sixty four artists get down. And when I say get down, I mean really throw down some of the hottest, grimiest, cleanest and dopest work Oakland has seen. It was a huge privilege to be a part of such an awesome show, I definitely was a little pup among some big, big dogs. Things got hectic, with the entire space being filled to the max, with live music going on during both nights of the opening, artists and appreciators packing both spaces wall to wall, and revelers spilled out inot the street, filling the sidewalk for nearly the whole block. Some of us got more rowdy than others, but overall things went pretty smoothly. Again big, BIG ups to Terry and Barrett of Old Crow for putting so much sweat and effort to curate, coordinate, and basically rock the shit out of this show. Much respect!

Optimist

Swampy

Ken Goto

Deuce 7

Live Music Both Nights!

Junre

Vulcan

Werido

Siloette

Satyr

Salem and Lupo

Snow Monkey

BDS

Hyde

Max Ehrman

Peace,
One Love,
Lets Build,
STAND TALL!!

The Krush Bus Photos....Finally!

2011-03-08T21:43:00.000-08:00

Through the wonderful world of Craigslist, I was able to have the opportunity to get down on a whole, 33 ft side of a school-bus-turned-festival-trekker. This was an awesome experience, letting me flex my can control on the biggest space Ive had in recent months. Also, some really dope Oakland-local graff cats got down on the other sides of the monstrous vehicle, and VIOLA! The Krush Bus was born! The lovely owners of the bus kept me supplied with all the necessary supplies, food, etc to keep me going all afternoon. Here are some process shots, and photos of the finished pieces. Large thanks to the bus owners, and much respect to Eon 75, Satyr and Goser who blasted the other sides.

Stand Tall Part II: No Ceilings-ESK Production Shots

2011-03-08T21:23:00.001-08:00

Here is the Semi Time Lapse of my piece for the Old Crow Tattoo and Gallerys Stand Tall Part II: No Ceilings showcase that opened last friday, March 3rd. One of the most enjoyable on-site painting experiences ever. Big ups to Terry, Barrett and all the folks at Old Crow for making this awesome event happen.

Stand Tall Part II: night one!

2011-03-05T11:38:00.001-08:00

last night was dope. look for photos coming monday of both night of the event. until then....

Up and Coming!!!!

2011-03-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

So, here are some thing coming to the ESKing blog this month:

First-Tonight! Stand Tall Part II: No Ceilings. Old Crow Tattoo. 8:00. Oakland. Be There. Info Here. Gonna be off the CHAIN!

Following this two night event, I will post crazy photos of the art and festivities, and give a little schpiel on the importance of such events that expose new artists and cross the boundaries of street and gallery scenes.

Next-Also, photos of the bus painted last week. Hoping to get the photoshoot done by next week!

Going to hang some new work downtown @ 2022 next week, be on the lookout for that. 22nd and Telegraph.

And then after that, some show reviews, and maybe some ramblings.....ESKing Out!

Peace,
Stay up,
Lets Build

Pictures from INFINITY OR BUST

2011-02-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

Project One- Infinity or Bust: An Art Exhibition and Curated Experience by SHRINE

2011-02-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

To be completely honest, I had no real idea what to expect when I set out for Project One this last Friday. When someone invites me to an “art experience,’’ I generally get a little nervous, having been witness to some really weird, wild shit, and not always in the good sense. But, the foundation of this show provided me with some confidence and solace, with Bay Area veteran and LA based Artist, SHRINE providing the artistic direction for a rather extended list of artists including: i.Ameni, Ceci Castelblanco, Franky Beans, buddhamonkey, Michelle Elmore, Vinny Ferraro, Juniper, Lindquist Fletcher, Hunter De La Ghetto, Gene Lushtak, Alexander, Kori Girard, Damion Mcgregor, Jesse Spears, Joel Dean Stockdale, Star Simone Weit

Swallowing my apprehension, I navigated through the looming warehouses and ritzy-rennovation apartments to find Project One, surreptitiously placed on yet another warehouse block in the SOMA, on Rhode Island Road. I knew I had found the right place when greeted by refer smoke and the heavy odor of cigarettes mottling the unseasonably warm night, diffusing the glow emanating from the front window of the gallery space. This window seemed to be an opening into another realm, the white walls woven with a barrage of visual stimulus providing a stark counterpoint to the monotone streets of the outside world.

Breezing through the suffusing haze, Project One opened up to a large foyer directing traffic straight toward the cluster-fuck that piled up at the bar, a tight knot of Burning Man garb and city-smart gear. I paused to take in the large video installation that activated the wall just inside the doorway, before forcing my way towards the relief of a sweaty, city-priced Prohibition Ale (you pay in so many ways for that urban-chic experience.)

Moving into the main art space, I prepared myself to be experienced. Every space of the gallery was taken up with an eclectic mix of urban and spiritual expression, in a range of mediums from paint-pen on cardboard done by SHRINE’s daughter, to the found object installations done by STAR, including a praying mantis made from the skulls and bones of small mammals. Nearly each wall was oriented around one of SHRINES found-object experience-spaces, which if you haven’t seen them, are beautifully crafted accumulations of recycled food containers and found materials, assembled into interactive spaces adorned with wisps of SHRINE’s trademark curvilinear and free-form designs.

A large collaborative piece between SHRINE and BUDDHA MONKEY covered one of the first walls of the space, with cardboard and found wood paintings of geometric forms enclosed an intimate installation of children’s faces with various goofy hats and mustaches connected by prayer beads of different traditions. Opposite that wall was a multitude of small works from FRANKY BEANS, extending out in the form of a pair of wings emanating from one of SHRINE’s new pieces, "Coffin", generating a transcendent spread of artwork. Adjacent to this was Hunter de la Ghetto’s installation piece,“Temperance and Preconceived Notion of Forever”, with dread-like forms made out of coals hanging willow-like around the mixed media collage of images culled from African-American culture. Shadows of past and present mixed, bleeding into each other, as the whole piece seemed to fold through time, and drift down towards the hand-painted container perched among black sand below.

One wall was filled with giant, hi-resolution photographs of grills taken of New Orleans local celebrities, by Michelle L. Elmore with menacing snarls being softened by the blingy chrysalises of phat, one-of-a-kind grills, which really just makes those images that much more hard. These pieces surrounded another new SHRINE work, "Garden", in the form of a three part window, etched a-la SHRINE.

Tea was being served from underneath one of SHRINE’s shelter installations, "Tea Master Jon Oda Tea Shack," while the whole room was abuzz with excited talk and New Age flair. Every space of the gallery had been filled, and while as a whole slightly overwhelming, the critical-mass effect was offset by the plethora of beautiful, intimate moments that were scattered across the artistic landscape. In every corner and on every surface there was some magic little moment that captivated the attention, fully pulling the viewer into the experience. Painted skulls sat gracefully under a giant statue of an exotic god, while a graceful New Age rendition of traditional thangka paintings hung over cryptic forms. Each nook held some little nod to greater transcendence of the artistic moment.

The other room of Project One was echoing with the live-music performances, with the grand walls softened by stretches of white leather couches, which were filled with the chattering masses. A giant glitter painting of Madonna shimmered under the rotating light of the disco globe, while beads, weaves, and robes shifted over the variety of tattooed flesh that crammed the space. After being emptied into the fullness of the night’s events, my crew and I emerged back into the night, experienced nearly to an infinite bust.

For more info:

Project 1

251 Rhode Island Rd,

SF, CA

ESKing blog events for this week!

2011-02-08T15:58:00.001-08:00

Hey Folks (all ten of you plus certain un-following viewers) come check out these events with me!

Shrine is installing an entire art experience @ Project One. Tomorrow @ Eight. Be there or be parallel.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=147681611957305

The homie Laurel Smith will be showing work as part of this all-women show entitled YIN opening this Friday @ 7:00 in the Drip Studios. Check it out!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=133553056708092&index=1

2011-02-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

I found this gem while browsing....A canadian extreme sports company titled ESK. I think I should get one of these...

Windows: Women Work

2011-02-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

Public Works has newly emerged as a place to go in the Mission, combining a happening electronic club scene with local art. In their most recent exhibit, female artsists display work that engage with the contemporary female perspective in the urban environment. With a large variety of work on display, from video installations like Myrina Tunberg`s Dirty Girl and the delicate stencil work of Niz`s skateboard collection to Iris Alden`s comic influenced pen and ink series and the 3d installation Grapplinknit, by Julia Russotti, this work engage with the entire pantheon of feminine art. Check out the Roll Up Gallery and Public Works other event, cause they are going to keep on happening in style. For more info check out Public Works` website.

Aerosoul 2 @ the Joyce Gordon Gallery

2011-02-05T16:45:00.001-08:00

It was poppin off downtown last night, a usual occurrence during Oaklands Art Murmer, with people trudging the full length of Telegraph, from Temescal to Twentieth. But, one of the liveliest places last night was on 14^th St, at the Joyce Gordon Gallery. The sidewalk was populated with a crowd that was different from the usual crowd of mid-twenties and up art appreciators; hoodies, baggy jeans and blackbooks made up the street collage outside of the bustling gallery. Pushing past these groups, graff slang hung buzzed through the air in a less-than-subdued hum, with circles of teens and pre-teens all huddled, head down around an active page like a holy moment was being had. Upon reaching the door, the long gallery space stretched before you, clad in a brilliant barrage of color, line, and style.

This is where Aerosoul 2, Oakland’s celebration of the graffiti culture of the Black Diaspora, is taking place. Starting last night, this month-long event explores the graffiti culture of Oakland and the world as a means of representation and social change. With a series of discussions on a range of topics including graffiti’s place in the art-historical pantheon to its relevance to current socio-economic issues, this event is not one to be missed.

And, this is all excluding discussions about the actual show, which was phenomenal. Pieces ranging from new-school legend Kofie One, to first generation Oakland writer Del/Phresh, even old school heads from NYC. It was amazing to see Pose 2 catching a tag underneath a whole battalion of legendary names. Old school flavor was mixed with New-School styles, while pockets of youngsters watched as the older legends furiously scribbled on page after page.

Included in this event are multiple painting sessions with a variety of artists and youth, as well as several discussions on Hip- Hop culture, its role in context to the world of art, as well as its versatility as a community development and education tool. Check out the website for more details.

Stay Up,

Stay Fresh,

Lets Build,

Peace

Berkeley RAW Showcase

2011-02-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

Come check out some recent ESK works Showcased at the Downtown Berkeley Shattuck Hotel, tomorrow February 3rd. Tickets are ten dollars at the door, come support this great organization, and ESK! One love....

http://www.rawartists.org/berkeley

Old Crow Tattoo and Gallery: Foundations- New Work from Poesia and Francisco Franco

2011-01-16T14:14:00.001-08:00

Old Crow Tattoo and Gallery’s first show of the New Year, “Foundations,’’ was a captivating way to kick shit off. Highly anticipated, the two-person show featuring Poesia and Francisco Franco, both from San Jose, CA, was a definite success. With two very different bodies of work that ran some interesting parallel lines, these two seasoned South Bay artist held it down in the O-Town. Although less well-attended than a lot of Old Crow’s events, there was still quite a crowd filling the front gallery space, viewing the large works of the two artists that saturated the walls.

Francisco Franco’s work definitely caught attention, with his representational, nigh upon photo-realistic paintings depicting human faces and forms trapped inside some type of cellophane or plastic material that ensnared them. Struggling to get out, these forms generated a sense of unsettling discomfort in the viewer, a sympathetic holding of breath that mimics the panic and suffocation of the figures depicted in the nearly life-sized mixed media paintings on paper. The larger pieces that displayed the whole uppers torso of the figures worked better than the face-only close-ups, which seemed slightly more two-dimensional. The arms, hands and shoulders pushed and stretched the plastic that both coddled and ensnared the figures, giving them a dynamic sense of urgency and realism. A great example of contemporary realism, these eye-popping and complicated works combined realistic, blended and gradiated strokes with more bold and straight-line marks creating a vivid image.

Poesia’s work had to be viewed on a grander scale. Embracing abstraction to a very heavy degree, the large-scale mixed media and canvas paintings contained planes of color carved out by exacting lines that traced the surface of the works, reminiscent of both abstract graffiti, as well as cubist era classics. On the first cursory glance, the paintings draw the viewer in to explore the shapes and lines themselves. But the work is activated again into a dynamic visual experience when one realizes that those shapes become the abstracted form of figures engaged in a dramatic narrative. Now, at that point, I was thoroughly impressed by the grand scale and skillful abstraction that the pieces presented. But, when it was pointed out that each of Poesia’s pieces was referenced from a Renaissance Era masterpiece, that was the clincher. Poesia proved the viability of contemporary abstraction, especially from a more graffiti-esque perspective, totally killing it with his large-scale works.

As always, Old Crow managed to bring the noise in the New Year, and I will continue to look out for the, new, fresh and dope streaming from the Old Crow Folks.

Peace,

ESK

New ESK Shirts!

2011-01-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

New ESK Shirts email eskartanddesign@gmail.com for more info and ordering...

Shades and Scripts: ESK New Years Solo Show!

2011-01-16T13:12:00.001-08:00

Beatnik: A Beautiful Space
ESK Verses 1&2

Book From the Concrete

Mindblown During Install

All My Ladies!

ESK and the Lovely Isabel from Musical Charis

Quite a Crowd

Its a Party Yall!

Musical Charis Ringing in the New Year

The Tribe

And Thats One To Grow On....

Destin Manifesto-A. Aversano Galleria

2010-11-30T22:53:00.000-08:00

The A. Aversano Galleria, located in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, always provides a refreshingly cutting edge and experimental view into the Bay Area art scene, that rises out of the quagmire of SF’s high (and mighty) art scene. “Destin Manifesto,’’ A. Aversano’s new show developed in collaboration with the Grey Flag Society, is no exception. This show is a great example of when a concept for body of work is fully realized, with all fourteen pieces of the show are collaborations between the Galleria’s owner and manager Anthony Aversano, and Oakland’s own Isaac Saavedra.

All completed within a month’s time frame, each piece was a fully developed and cohesive work, quite a feat when considering the usual hardships that arise out of collaborative projects in the art world. A whirlwind of symbolism and stimulus, each piece was a reverberating universe exploring the two artists’ worldview, anchored in the grimy and surreal world of West Oakland where most of this work was done.

Saavedra’s refined aerosol work and large gestural strokes merged with the highly symbolic representational take of Aversano, generating complex and riveting compositions. “The Grey Flag Society’’ stood out among the large format compositions, depicting the grimy warehouse where the collaboration occurred, chocked full of animated scenes that walked the line between urban reality and psychedelic fantasy, creating a dark and moody take on the contemporary urban experience.

The small space was packed on the rainy Saturday night, with a wide range of ages and demographics milling about, creating a warm and lively atmosphere. Different works could be viewed through 3D glasses, adding a layer of depth to the already complex work, and adding a sense of fun to the youthful show. A. Aversano always seems to hit its mark, bringing the freshness to SF.

Old Crow Tattoo-Femininity

2010-11-14T23:18:00.000-08:00

Old Crow Tattoo opened yet another top notch show this last Saturday, entitled “Femininity,’’ proving once again that this is a hot spot to watch in the Bay. As suggested by the title, most of the works were engaging with the female form, channeled through the talents of Joshua Mays, Jordan Quintero, Amanda Lynn, and Aminah Slor. And, keeping with the collaborative nature of Old Crow, the event was also the launch party for Stalk Bamboo Bicycles. Celebrating the custom made, bamboo-framed bikes hitting the market, four of these amazing hand-painted whips were being auctioned off. And, continuing with the feminine formula, this auction was a benefit for the Keep A Breast organization. So, basically the joint was slammin’ all night long with great art, vibes, and community building. That basically seems to be the M.O. at Old Crow.

With this mix of artistic perspective going on, the female form was expressed in quite a vibrant variety. Josh Mays presented beautifully rendered figures embodying the ideal female form, gracefully and joyfully existing amidst the radiant and complex worlds that populated Mays’ paper and canvas. A collection of paintings and pen on paper works, Mays demonstrated his facility with color dynamics and composition, a great hand that near flawlessly executes dynamic visions, as well as just damn good taste in painting arrangement. Definitely a talent to watch.

Amanda Lynn also was exploring the idealized female form in her singular, large canvas. The twenties era female form was rendered delicately in black and white, nearly inhuman in the perfection and serenity of the form. The background of this piece was really working as well, with a beautifully subtle black Victorian pattern airbrush on a graduated black background, adding intrigue to the plane that the form existed upon, without overwhelming it entirely.

Aminah Slor was straight chillin’ on the opposite side of the spectrum, with the obsessively detailed and grotesquely conceived figures writhing across the canvas. Aminah Slor had a really good thing going on, with a variety of well executed media, ranging from delicate relief prints and raw paintings on found material, to wood burned panels and just plain fetishistic art objects. Already immensely appreciated among urban art heads, Aminah Slor is also currently proving the strength of such cryptic works in the gallery setting.

Jordan Quintero established a nice middle ground amidst the varied works, with a series of works that combined form and abstraction. Although all of the mixed media works had a great asthetic quality, most notable out of all of them was in piece entitled “Native American Person Pt. II.’’ This large-scale oil painting had some really nice visceral moments, providing the most paint-heavy textures out of all the works. In a world where the clean graphic aesthetic is king, it is nice to really see some investment in paint’s inherent, delicious qualities.

And, to reiterate what I said last time I wrote about Old Crow, this space is tight. Everyone there brings such an approachable and appreciative energy, building a sense of collaborative art community that is refreshing amongst the usually pompous art world. Just being able to lamp out in the Old Crow backyard under the haphazardly splayed branches of the foliage is a unique experience in the middle of the Town. Watching the blue and reds from a nearby corner cast a shadow display on the hip and eclectic crowd that filled the whole spot, it once again hit home. Oakland is on the up and up.

For More Info:

www.oldcrowtattoo.com

www.stalkbicycles.com

www.keep-a-breast.com

I love Oakland

2010-11-09T21:42:00.000-08:00

Caught this gem being worked on today, always great watching the masters do their thing.

RVCA Golden State Part 2: Delineations

2010-10-10T12:45:00.000-07:00

Once again, RVCA on Haight has provided us with a show that excellently represents a wide range of emerging California based artists. The second show in their Golden State show series, coyly entitled Delineation, housed two-dimensional works from 13 different artists, and provided a wide range of approaches to two-dimensional expression.

With the usual accompaniment of a vinyl-only Indie rock DJ, the show opened on a cold, fogged in Saturday evening. Still, RVCA managed to pull in a crowd of folks floating in and out the back gallery space. Delineation seemed to be hung with more attention to space compared to the photography show (see Golden State Part One: Stills review), with many artists providing only one larger piece of work. This seemed appropriate, emphasizing each piece’s nuanced moments than if a more shotgun approach was utilized, as well as solidifying the look of the show on the whole.

The show held a captivating range of expression, with each piece or group of works When first entering into the space, on the right hung a collection of pieces entitled “Alchemy of Infinity’’ by Amelia Layton, planar shapes forming abstract forms that popped out of the black background, with the tonal gradients emerging like topographic maps.

To the left of Layton’s work, hung a work by a peer and personal favorite, Mathew Zefeldt. Entitled “Yesterday or Something Like That,’’ the large, single piece was a beautiful example of Zefeldt’s new, colorful work. A large, pear-shaped, dripping form of color reminiscent of a pile of ABC gum existed in the foreground, the lone colorful inhabitant in a checker-board landscape that extended into the background of monochromatic tonal gradients. This colorful form seemed to be a lonely monument of vibrant and active existence, isolated an expansive gray environment, a testament of the contemporary experience.

Next to Zefeldt’s large work hung another large, vibrant canvas, made by Sage Vaughn, entitled “Your Face is Momentary.’’ A large figure of a masked child pranced against a backdrop of a fluttering myriad of multi-colored, pastel hued birds. The figure was beautifully rendered, with moments of gentle accidents dripping in combination with bold gestural strokes, giving the figure a strong feeling of movement and character. This, against the fleeting background of birds in mid-flight, provided a subtle yet understandable interplay of imagery, making this one of the most sophisticated pieces in the show.

All of the work in the show held a captivating perspective of California’s youth, with a lot of skill being evident in the multitude of works. RVCA has managed to curate some really consistent shows, getting me excited for Golden State Part 3.

ESK@ 111 Minna Gallery SF: RAW Artists Showcase

2010-09-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

I was one of the featured artists in the RAW Artists Showcase in San Francisco's 111 Minna Gallery this last Thursday, September 23rd 2010. RAW is a non-profit out of LA that supports emerging artists in a variety of ways, including recruiting them foe showcases like this one. I met a lot of great artists amid the swirling crowds, live music, dancing, and fashion. Check out the RAW website, www.rawartists.org. Search their artist database for ESK to see exclusive interviews, video and other content.

Purveyors of Style: Review

2010-09-14T22:39:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday, September 11^th, a truly rare event was witnessed in Oakland. There was an entire show dedicated to style. Old Crow Tattoo, 362 Grand Avenue, housed some of the best of both local and national graffiti artist talents in their show Purveyors of Style. Running until October 1^st, this was a show that appealed to the sensibilities of the hardcore graff writer, while still being available for those laypeople with little to no urban art exposure.

The concept: Give nine distinct and talented graffiti artist a piece of the alphabet. Let them go wild with each letter. Hang the result. And man, the results were good. The show provided an expansive range of the different approaches to letter structure and stylistic expression. From the classically bold approach of CES’ well-structured and complex arrows and break-aways, to DIET’s more avant-garde adoption of mainstream symbols, such as the FILA symbol for F, there was a stylistic approach for everyone.

And, Old Crow also supplied quiet the venue. A phat and well-pieced paddy wagon parked outside signaled where things were jumping off. The whole front room was beautifully set up as a classic white walled gallery space in which the twenty six pieces of the show hung, complete with a graffiti merch table for the graff junkies, of which there were plenty. Heads filtered through the back room view the beautifully rendered drawings of Old Crow’s work, as well as his aesthetically pleasing workspace (if you are looking for a really accomplished Japanese-inspired tattoo artist, check this spot out). A mix of electro jazz with live saxophone accompaniment serenaded the crowd, drawing them through the space towards the outside, where the real party was going on. Old heads and new alike mingled in the beautiful back yard space, complete with pieced up exterior walls, two tiers of space to hang out it, and a beautiful seating and lounging area underneath the tender embrace of several large, languid trees.

This was one of the hippest graff shows that I have been to on the West Coast, and really was a nod to Oakland’s ability to represent as a hip-hop and graffiti center of California and the United States. And, Old Crow Tattoo Shop is definitely a spot I will have to check out

Fortress of Solitude

2010-09-03T19:07:00.001-07:00

Loneliness is truly something that you cannot understand without being completely and directly immersed into its expansive realm. It is an experience bordering on the psychedelic, a feeling of slow dissolution, a mere whiff of existence that rapidly expands into less and less density, until all there is left is a meandering feedback loop drifting on the breeze of complete anonymity. It is the most painfully liberating piece to the human puzzle.

I am afloat in a wandering fortress of solitude, a bastion of isolation that is painfully built by one exacerbated neuroticism stacked on top of another. Much of my time is spent in the blaringly white walls of my job/prison, consumed by the repeated soundtracks of looped video display that couldn’t have been better designed by psychological warfare specialists. I exist in the common agony of hunched shoulders over books that give up their tied string endings after far too short of a perusal, the gentle chill of the fogged in prison of the San Francisco peninsula, and the gratingly fake smiles that trigger a tape-recorded monologue to eject from my mouths tape deck.

The random activities that I build into grandiose ventures of self-satisfaction are fleeting mementoes of the vibrant, alive individual I used to be, fueled by fiery passions of social interaction, now slumbering coals waiting for the final extinguishing hiss under a dash of cold water. No amount of books, downloaded television shows, or random calisthenics can possibly anchor the expanding vapors of my lonely boredom. I pace with the essence of Monte Cristo, circling my cage not like a wild animal, but a cat waiting to find a new, more obstructive place to curl up into the fetal.

My fortress of solitude is not contained by any manner of foundation, it is laid upon the floating clouds of my mediated paranoia and flashing moments of heart-broken sadness, which are welcome counterpoints to the mundane fading across wasted time that is the ether through which I drift. Carried by whims of unheralded passion I usually turn to my mounting text bill for solace, seeking the meager assumption of social interaction represented in acronyms and shortened two syllable words. Now, as my last vestige of hope slowly chirps its dying cries, I feel the true solitude settle. I wait for the last meager bits of time to drift before I pick up my lonely cubicle and let it drift to a new resting place, the hollow one plus bedroom that I currently call home, to sit a discordant white counterpoint to a piano made of all black keys.

Here, the flavor of loneliness is changed, mellowing in flavor but increasing in fullness. The distractions are much more prevalent, at times even providing a salve for my open heart sores. The rare moments when I can be fully engulfed by my work seem to be even more torturous once I re-emerge into the scalding atmosphere of my one-man orbit. The subtle and subliminal feel of brush sloughing paint into the toothy surface of canvas is the only tether that ties me to a positive future, a line tied around my wrist that I follow blind folded through a minefield towards a promised yet unseen assurance of relief. Every now and then, I take a jaunt of the beaten path, and let go of this string, and end up having to reconstruct myself from the bloody mess created by a mental IED.

Clouds of spliff smoke help me locate the ghostly forms of my dissolute sanity. I exhale, grab a bit of pleasant thought, and stick it spackle-like to cover the garish rend in my confidence that always seems to spread new cracks across the windowpane of my dome-piece. Melodic sounds warp into grating symphonies of an existence grander than my own, where the basic needs of love are met and relished above food, shelter, water and sleep.

I can climb into the smoke stained insides of my rapidly more filthy truck, or lodge myself into a claustrophobic compartment of solitude inside the intestines of an iron worm, and crane-lift my loneliness into another location. I might set it down next to nodes of familiarity, drinking heavily with friends until my gregarious behavior bleeds into very real sadness, which is met by mild irritation and abstracted concern. Or, the wind can carry my capricious castle to an unfamiliar setting, where I realize that verbose inner monologue such as this does nothing to spark conversations with friendly and open strangers, leaving me tongue tied and trapped on a rampart of my own making, viewing the happy comings and goings of other people moving below my heightened state of agony. Here, I sit with a paper cup pressed against the drawbridge of my fortress hoping to decipher some kind of human connection through the muffled dialogue that leaks through the infinitesimal cracks in the encompassing stone and mortar.

So I sit, most days merely content to stare at the sky that hangs unattainable outside of my self made castle, casting masterpieces as pebbles into the endless depths of my doubt-filled pond. I walk the familiar grounds day after day, retracing steps that have barely been filled in by the nights dust. I often sit and stare at the alter that holds my seemingly un-attainable dreams, gently feeling the curves of un-nameable object beneath my minds-eye, objects that will never adopt a solid form beyond my amorphous imaginings. Other times I spend the afternoon sitting in the grayed, slanting light, looking at a past filled with endless companionship, passion, lust and love, graying tapestries being dissolved thread after thread as I run the painful fabric through my fingers again and again, seeking to find the real feelings through repeated futile perusal. But mostly, I just wander, not letting my gaze settle on any of the painfully beautiful part of this fortress I have entrapped myself in thought by thought, action by action, word by word.

But, recently, I have found a new idea. Collecting pieces of my past, and the connectivity of my future, I tinker. Casually tying this thought to that one, and finding ways to join this want to that past-fulfillment, I am building something. This something tics in time with my endlessly sounding watch, but with a more meaningful cadence. The murmur of individuals outside my fortress fade to an even buzz, and then into a gentle whine as I continue to work, and my idea takes shape. The flinty smell of calcium nitrate fills my nostrils, as long pieces of twine turn into wicks. My mind-bomb starts to take form. And soon, I will put that last memory into the last painful present piece, and escape my fortress of solitude. I will hold that explosive collection of pain, want, desire and void to my chest, feeling the last vital seconds tic in rhythm with my beating heart. And then in a great moment of explosive existence I will ascend into…

Mission: Comics and Art- Vim and Vigor

2010-08-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

Pulling up to Mission: Comics and Art, the surprisingly large and very comprehensive comic book and graphic novel Mecca of San Francisco, I was impressed by the draw that a talented group of emerging artists could bring to the bustling thoroughfares of the City. Rife with hip styles and broiling with conversation, the sidewalk outside of Mission: Comics and Art was filled with the family, friends and fans of the artist that made up Vim and Vigor, a group show of Bay Area emerging artists. Exploring the complex narratives of the urban environment and its developing cultures, this group of 13 artists opened a great show on the auspicious date of Friday the 13^th, 2010.

Squeezing through the crowd that packed the front door, the space opens up to color-filled shelves of new and classic graphic novels and comics. And, on every wall space, there was a display of inspired expression. The front annex of the space held new work by Adam Rosendahl. The articulately rendered “Ganesha Festival’’ exuded the figures and emotion of transcendental India that is expressed in much of Rosendahl’s works, with fine, spidery lines forming the figures of revelers merging into each other. The strongest piece out of his three displayed in the show, this work demonstrated Rosendahl’s increasing facility with figurative language, and a further developed ability to convey emotion through figurative abstraction.

In a similar mode of ink on paper, Joshua Pelletier created abstract narratives of the sub-conscious through the use of rapid mark making and alien figures that pulsated from four framed works. Rendered in a style reminiscent of Ralph Steadman, each work held an image placed over a hand-styled text of the titled, guiding the viewer’s interpretation of each work.

Mary Marxen took abstraction to the third dimension with her light box made up of three vibrant planes, each informing the others to create the sense of rapidly ingesting information while moving through the urban environment. Bike gears merged with fire-trucks and the blurring lines of color that made up the fine, stencil-like pattern of the foreground, overlaid upon a monochrome middle ground of abstraction and the geometric and succinctly primary colors of the background. This layered piece created an Op Art effect, adapted to the rapid and scattered narrative of the urban world.

Other artists took a slightly more direct route of painting images of the urban narrative. Sophie Yanow and Greta Aalborg-Volper seemed at home in the space, applying the graphic novel forms of frame and narrative to their individual perception of urban content. Yanow developed in monochromatic frames a narrative of a bike ride out of and returning to the city, describing the subliminal transformation of the mundane. These intimate and simple scenes combined to form a metaphor describing the rise out of the mire of city pollution to a transcendent plane, and the rapid and abrasive return to the urban experience afterwards. Aalborg-Volper took a more abstracted route in her piece “Love Struck’’ using a psychedelic narratives of shifting dependant relationships as a means to explore the formations of identity, love, and transformation. The vibrantly colored fantasy-landscapes provided an absorbing background for the artist’s unique and developed handling of figure-form.

Carla Fischer Schwartz displayed her adapt ability as a printer, with a complex, hand-tinted lithograph, entitled “Cosmology,’’ a subtly-hued mandala of modern urban stimulus. Fischer Schwartz also displayed a beautifully handled mass of organic shapes made up of beautiful washes and stains contained by fluid, crisp and concentric lines, exuding the feelings of cyclical growth and decay.

Krista Delosreyes brought an interesting level of wonderful grime to the show, capturing the dirty and impermanent experience that is so much a part of the urban sublime in her series entitled “This Is That Hood Shit, 1, 2, 3 and 4.’’ Flanked by Delosreys’ assemblage piece rendering the figure of vagrant propped drunkenly in the corner, this series of drawings on cardboard were rough, layered, and visceral displays of the urban experience, with snapshots of different urban languages being overlapped to convey the scattered yet cohesive nature of a big metropolitan area.

Just down the wall from Delosreyes’ work, a single piece of Mathew Zefeldt’s work, “Before It’s Too Late,’’ hung prominently on the wall, a vibrant contrast to the more subdued hues of much of the other work. Zefeldt’s maturing language of comic-book semiotics had undergone another progression. Forming a large abstracted mass of mark making, this form merged his more spread out compositions of line with his concisely controlled renderings of the death masks of antiquity that populated his previous work. This storm of visual language moved in and out of recognizable structures, pulsating with movement and stillness. This mostly monochromatic mass sat upon the vibrant background of primary color and grandiose gesture that has marked Zefeldt’s return to color.

Max Hield held down the photo front of the show, with his two abstracted photographic works hanging side by side in a psychedelic visual display of repeated fractal geometric patterns that were formed by his manipulated snapshots of the urban sublime built developed out of corporate architecture.

The show also highlighted a variety of sculptural perspectives, including the amazingly developed dioramas of Devin Miller. Miller’s assemblage-like scenes of death and rebirth were rendered out of found materials that were almost exclusively gathered during the artist’s everyday movements through space, making each different scene a collection of Miller’s tactile, visual and intellectual daily experiences. With materials ranging from dead minnows and taxidermy furs to sphagnum moss and brush, each frame-box created a scene that, put into context of the rest of the works, generated a complex and subtle narrative of psychological and physical exploration.

Working in a similar vein, Jory Bidart built a viewing box out of a dictionary filled with live succulents and organic matter. The dictionary’s cover was replaced with an acrylic sheet, housing the interior composition. The middle of the dictionary had been removed and replaced with a planting box holding individual living treasures, juxtaposing the syntax of a modern evolving language with the results of millennia of Darwinian progression, drawing parallels between organic an cultural evolution.

Bringing a more formal and classical form of three-dimensional exploration, Scott French juxtaposed the simple, geometric lines of a graceful candelabra with his organic layered welds in his piece “The 8^th Day’’. The square column of the form emerged from Scott’s trademark welds that grew like coral from the pedestal, consuming the column from which four elegant arms emerged seemingly at random to hold the melting wax candles.

Scott also used his organically layered welds to build a graceful shelf which supported little bottles of nostalgia assembled by Mary Marxen in their collaborative piece “Efforts of Recollection.’’ Paired with another of Marxen’s three dimensional stencil collages, this piece seemed to capture individual scenes culled from memory, distilled into fragmented images and choice organic elements.

Although varied and nearly overwhelming in number, Vim and Vigor was an impressive display of work. Coordinating so many different types of visual language into a relatively comprehensive show is no easy feat, especially for so many emerging artist who are hustling themselves and their work completely solo. This seems to be the power of such shows, taking each individual perspective and making them a part of a larger, very impressive whole. Such a collection of mature and complex visual experiences, especially when developed by such young artists are hard to find, and the show bursting from the walls of Mission: Comics and Art was truly full of Vim and Vigor.

RVCA Golden State: Stills

2010-08-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

RVCA on Haight Street in San Francisco is a beacon of all that is hip, a bastion of fashion and art, with a unique approach to both. On Saturday, August 7, RVCA opened up their back room gallery space for the first show among a series of three held in the RVCA Gallery entitled “Golden State,’’ running from August 7th, until January 28th. This first showing, entitled “Stills,’’ open from August 7th until was a collection of local photographers, exploring the contemporary urban experience that fuels the various movements and scenes of the West Coast. Set to the background of raucous punk rock vinyl pumping from a DJ, and later the cacophonous serenade of Apache, this show, running from 6-9 was a definite hot-spot of hip activity that has come to be a defining trait of San Francisco’s youthful scene.
A wide range of perspectives were expressed in the group show, covering grounds from traditional landscape photography to contemporary portraiture, and even extending into the abstract with various methods of pictorial collage. Although thematically varied and compositionally diverse, the show managed to maintain a cohesive representation of the youthful gaze cast upon a crazy world.
Among the varied representations of photographic style, portraiture abounded. Much of the portraiture expressed moments of captivating uniqueness, such as Travis Deuel’s “Coming up…,’’ which managed to artfully express feelings of uplifted relief and ecstatic isolation through the nude figure jetting upwards through a deep and saturated aquamarine setting of a dimly lit pools, with the rippling skin and rapidly escaping breath filling the crystal print with movement, vigor and life.
Matthew Bajda took a different approach to the art of portraiture, assembling a collection of 9 individual urban portraits, with figures caught both candidly engaged with their surrounding and actively reflecting the gaze of the viewer. The images of the old, young, disabled and disenfranchised built a critical mass of stimulus, highlighting the experience of the individual against the backdrop of the urban sublime. Each photo, individually framed and then assembled together into a square, came together as one of the most cohesive collections in the show.
Another portraiture standout in the show was the collected works of Nikki Green, with a series of digital C-prints that captured a range of emotive content. One of Green’s strongest works consisted of a triptych capturing the recent Oakland riots that followed the killing of Oscar Grant. Powerful images of authority dynamics and civil unrest executed in washed out and muted tones expressed the dramatic hopelessness of class struggle, and the success and failures of revolution and contention of explosively expressed 1st Amendment rights. Stashed among other compelling portraits where two pieces that changed the perspective, with large-format prints of the austere urban landscape of New Mexico, loaded textual expressions of past-era architectural nostalgia captured in faded tones against the saturated expanse of rich blue sky.
Nicholas Buron also explored loaded signifiers in the urban environment, with his singular and strong Inkjet print “Treasure Island #9.’’ Standing out among the more muted and nostalgic prints in the show, Buron’s image of the overlapping geometric lines formed from a boarded up window in a dilapidated window expressed in rich tones and strong contrast the potential beauty found in urban decay.
Hung just down the wall from Buron’s work was another take on geometric exploration. Aaron Farley moved beyond the standard definition of photography, entering into dialogues with both abstract and contemporary methods of photographic expression in the photo-collage prints on watercolor paper. The two pieces were fractured images cut into triangles and overlapped to provide a composition formed of color contrasts and obscured imagery, generating a Kaleidoscope perspective reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland meets the Wizard of OZ.
Sharing the medium of photo collage, but to an ultimately different aesthetic was Luis Farfan’s complex series of pieces that saluted the pop art of the seventies, geared toward the hipster generation, executed in a retro color palette that would make Warhol proud. In the series of images that made up “Nostalgicism Pt. 2,’’ compositions made of recognizable iconography rendered in the near monotone were mixed with geometric shapes executed in photo-overlays of bright pastels and solid primaries. With baiting imagery guiding the viewer through obscured iconography, this piece was a pinnacle of the new-age retro that has been championed by the new-millennium generation.
These notable works were merely a part of the compelling and contemporary works that made for a captivating exploration of the modern urban experience, highlighting emerging and seasoned talent in the realm of photography. Although occasionally dancing with the hipster clichés that have saturated the generation of counter-counter culture, post punk rock and Vice magazine, this show managed to bring a fresh perspective of contemporary urban photography, which is no small feat, especially in the bay area. RVCA is bringing a totally new and refreshing way to combine art and fashion, as well as championing counter-cultures and new creative voices that are emerging across California and the world. Although RVCA represents a large myriad of youth subcultures, fads and cliques, they managed to keep it real, while providing a show with consistent thematic element, while still having a little something for every part of our generation.

First US Chindogu Show at A. Aversano Galleria

2010-07-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Our world is drowning in the torrents of nick-knacks, gadgets and gizmos. A flood of consumer goods are sold to you on the bus on the way to work, in your home relaxing after the day, even on the in-flight magazines as you fly across the globe to get away from it all. They are intended to solve your every issue. From tough shirt stains to cutting onions, from slimming your bum to beefing you up, the solution can be found for three easy installments of way too much money.

Amid these torrential rains of useless consumer goods, Chindogu is a breath of fresh air.

Chindo-what? No, it is not some ancient mysticism leaked out of the Orient. Well, it’s not ancient anyway. To understand Chindogu, and to puzzle out how it found its way onto an art blog, you must first suspend your belief in a distinction between art and non-art objects. Hell, the high-art scene does it all the time, so by default you are that much more hip if you let go of this distinction.

Chindogu is a way to solve trivial problems through the development of unique, non-commercial products that are so specialized in their function, that they are nearly functionless. Described as un-useless objects by the creator of Chindogu, Kenji Kawakami, Chindogu is an exploration of material and concept, a way to remove function from form, and remove consumerism from art.

The A. Aversano Galleria in San Francisco’s North Beach district hosted the very first U.S. Chindogu show. The gallery was filled with Chindogu that were built over the last twenty years by Kenji Kawakami. Shipped here from Japan with the coordination of Isaac Saavedra, the President of the US Chindogu Society, these objects are individual brilliant little gestures of wit and wisdom, devoid of financial value or practical purpose. Objects like the waterproof shoe (consisting of a pair of high heels with attached mini-umbrellas), the cat-shoe dusters (little cat mittens with dry-mop heads on each foot), and the clothing rack backpack (just clip your wet laundry to the rack, strap it on your back, and go for a ride), provided joyous little nuggets of alternate perspectives, made for practicality without humorous intentions, but definitely provided plenty of laughs.

Chindogu is hard to fully define, which is why you really should just go see for yourself. It is similar to an art form, a mindset, and a philosophy, but is not exactly any of these either. Chindogu can be made by anyone who wishes to, but many things that are made that seem like Chindogu are not. There are many useless objects that have emerged over the last few years that are almost exactly like Chindogu being sold on markets, but are not true Chindogu. When making Chindogu, there are ten philosophical rules that are to be followed to make a Chindogu:

1. A Chindogu cannot be for real use

Fundamental to the spirit of Chindogu is that inventions claiming Chindogu status must be, from a practical point of view, (almost) completely useless. If you invent something which turns out to be so handy that you use it all the time, then you have failed to make a Chindogu. Try the Patent Office.

2. A Chindogu must exist

You're not allowed to use a Chindogu, but it must be made. You have to be able to hold it in your hand and think 'I can actually imagine someone using this. Almost.' In order to be useless, it must first be.

3. Inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy

Chindogu are man-made objects that have broken free from the chains of usefulness. They represent freedom of thought and action: the freedom to challenge the suffocating historical dominance of conservative utility; the freedom to be (almost) useless.

4. Chindogu are tools for everyday life

Chindogu are a form of nonverbal communication understandable to everyone, everywhere. Specialized or technical inventions, like a three handled sprocket loosener for drain pipes centered between two under the sink cabinet doors (the uselessness of which will only be appreciated by a plumber) do not count.

5. Chindogu are not for sale

Chindogu are not tradable commodities. If you accept money for one you surrender its purity. They must not even be sold as a joke.

6. Humor must not be the sole reason for creating a Chindogu

The creation of Chindogu is fundamentally a problem solving activity. Humor is simply the bi-product of finding an elaborate or unconventional solution to a problem that may not have been that pressing to begin with.

7. Chindogu is not propaganda

Chindogu are innocent. They are made to be useful, even though they cannot be used. They should not be created as a perverse or ironic comment on the sorry state of humankind.

8. Chindogu are never taboo

The Chindogu Society has established certain standards of social decency. Cheap sexual innuendo, humor of a vulgar nature, and sick or cruel jokes that debase the sanctity of living things are not acceptable.

9. Chindogu cannot be patented

Chindogu are offerings to the world, they are not therefore ideas to be copyrighted, patented, collected and owned. As the say in Spain, mi Chindogu es tu Chindogu.

10. Chindogu are without prejudice

Chindogu must never favor one race, religion or sex over another. Young and old, male and female, rich and poor - all should have a free and equal chance to enjoy each and every Chindogu.

This art form is totally new to the US, but has garnered attention throughout Japan and other parts of the world. Kawakami has made several books, including an English introductory book of Chindogu, and has a documentary film that is on display at A. Aversano Galleria. For more information on Chindogu, go to the US Chindogu Society’s Facebook. Also, look forward to the Chindogu Fashion Show at A. Aversano as well, coming this next Saturday. Until then, release yourself from your consumer constraints, and go breath free of charge at the First US Chindogu Show at A. Aversano Galleria.

A. Aversano Galleria Presents Decide Art Show

2010-07-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

The A. Aversano Galleria, tucked away in the North Beach district of San Francisco, is one of the few art galleries in the traditionally classical art district bringing new, innovative shows. Containing rapidly rotating art shows, ranging from contemporary painting and photography to new-age experimental film and audio installations, the four small walls hold a lot of potential.

Opening on Friday, July 2^nd, was the Decide show, displaying the contemporary painting works of four emerging New-Age artists, Adrian Rasmussen, Nick Anderson, Isaac Saavedra, and Angela Oswald. These four young artist brought a barrage of color, filling the gallery with an almost overwhelming amount of work, ranging in subject matter from native myths and psychedelic transcendence, to fantasy landscapes and abstract, conceptual forms.

Nick Anderson’s paintings are populated by colorful characters inspired by both the natural world and a creative imagination. Done in a mix of acrylic, oils and spray paint, these works told tales of inspiration possession and creative exploration.

Adrian Rasmussen’s works spread across the walls, with wide-open eyes engaging the viewer with psychically driven force, accompanied by deftly articulated sacred geometry and more free, whipping, dripping, roiling and straining organic forms, looking like amorphous tree-trunks cloned with inter-connected interstates and free-ways.

Angela Oswald’s works were more pastel, soft interpretations of the psychic landscape, with figurative and abstract forms co-existing on the blue and brown flowing planes. The smaller, more intimate works were an interesting feminine interpretation of the New Age aesthetic presented in the other works.

Isaac Saavedra’s work took a rather dramatic disjunction from the rest of the work presenting a more urban, harsh side of the contemporary perspective. Abstract and gestural marks were formed with both brush and stenciled industrial paints, with elements of figurative process contrasted with the purely abstract forms that animated the canvases.

Accompanying the work was the hip-hop, trance, club fusion music spun by DJ Inti, providing the perfect auditory counter-point to the near-overwhelming business of the work-filled gallery. And on a flat-screen set up in the display window was Lewis Baden, Atari master waiting for challengers to test his old school, 16 bit skills.

Although many contemporary spaces like this are beginning to pop up around the city these days, this gallery stands as a bastion of hipness among the more conservative gallery spaces in the area, a youthful breath of relief amid the stuffy, nigh upon bourgeois, tourist ridden art scene that riddles the streets of North Beach.

Corporate Thugs

2010-06-22T17:54:00.001-07:00

As I was sitting at a stoplight yesterday in the culturally confused suburb where I am currently laid up, I was gazing at the tattered promotional fliers sloppily taped on a light pole, flapping like grotesque remains of shed skin, outgrown weekly by the never-ending cycle of entertainers and the entertained. The layers of papers were stacked like and archeological dig, with different strata of decay showing through in sun-bleached pastels.

Sitting on top of all the accumulated debris, clean, glossy and new, was a promo for the newest generation of Hiphy noisemakers. The flier was highlighted by bold names in sans serif font, names ending in dogg with two Gs, and the two sacred letters of my creed, DJ, prefacing names of people who have never touch a disk of polyvinyl, much less rocked a party and lots of bodies. As my eyes stumbled over the clichés, I found the text announcing the headlining group at the top, boldly pronouncing the eminent performance of none other than “Corporate Thugs.’’

WTF!? Corporate Thugs? Since when have these two terms become synchronous in existence? I know Pac made a lot of money and Biggie wore Gucci suites, but NO one in the history of hip hop had the audacity, much less the desire, to call themselves corporate

To take a step back from a developing rant, and provide a little context, let me endeavor to explain why this irked me so. A quick consultation with Webster reveals that a corporation is “A company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity and recognized as such by law. (Webster.com)“ By law? Thugs being recognized by law? I know people who claim to be thugs who don’t even want to be recognized by their family, much less by law.

To delve deeper into this issue, the corporate world was the not-so-positive genesis of the modern interpretation of thugs. Corporations are the leading reason why huge conglomerations of poor form lawless districts of cities, because corporations, who build the franchises, leave the ghetto dis-enfranchised. Corporate greed leaves these communities so poor that individuals with immense potential instead are forced to entrap their communities in the cyclical existence of drugs and violence. And, to top it all off, corporations provide the products of thug consumption, namely drugs, fashion, weapons and booze, that enable this entire cycle.

To provide a more concrete, and less blaringly liberal and anti-capitalist example, I will turn to the Bronx, the birthplace of hip hop that the modern conceptions of thugs evolved from, circa the mid 70’s. Corporations, that had built their glass citadels in Manhattan, decided that they needed to provide to their well-paid employees with an easier way to commute to work, and avoid those more ’’unsavory,’’ a.k.a. colored, neighborhoods that stood between them and the dolla dolla bills (y’all!). Thus the Cross Bronx Expressway was born, the freeway system that cut the neighborhood of the Bronx and other outlying districts from the money capital of Manhattan. Literally, it was a physical display of segregation, tangibly separating the haves, a.k.a. corporations, and the have-nots, a.k.a. thugs.

Are these connections making sense? Corporations and thugs do not go hand in hand. Period.

Now to get back to the main rant. This corporate thug mentality is the whole reason why hip hop is on its last legs, with both legs taken off at the knees after getting trapped on the third rail while crossing over to the mainstream. When hip hop started, it was a means of liberation from the slums that were developed in part by corporations, and a means to develop a voice and a community outside of the corporate world. But, during the nineties, we somehow feel off the path, hip hop became rap music, and MCs became thugs.

Now I am in no way trying to know Pac, Dre, Snoop or Biggie, they all were talented lyricists and musicians, who had business savvy minds like Puffy and Shug Nite making million for, and more often from them because of the message and emotion conveyed by the music. But this new era of chingy, blinged out, party obsessed hiphy gangsters and crunk thugs sipping on sizzerup is NOT hip hop. If you calculate the different permutations, there is an extremely finite amount of ways to approach the glorified subjects of misogyny, belligerence, and violence. So sorry, but you Corporate Thugs out there, there is no way you can be original these days, much less O.G. in the music game. Nas, Dre, Outkast, Biggie, Pac, Snoop Mac Dre and a gang of others have already said what you are saying with way more style and intelligence. So the next time you hear someone claiming some gangsta shit in a recording, take the opportunity to quote some real thugs; as three Jewish white boys from Brooklyn, NY once said “Where your head at?’’

Mathew Zefeldt, 1st Year MFA

2010-06-22T17:51:00.000-07:00

Mathew Zefeldt is the artist’s artist, concerned with the quality of his work for the sake of his work, not the sake of success. He is prolific enough to justify pride, yet open and humble in a manner that can only elicit respect. After attending the UC Davis 1^st Year MFA show “Great Expectations,’’ (see “Great Expectations Show Review’’ last week) Zefeldt invited me to his studio to see the work he has produced over the last year. Having shared studio space with the tall, spectacle-bearing artist during our undergraduate education, I knew that I was going to se some stellar work, and a lot of it.

Even with this preparation, I was surprised. As Zefeldt let my companion and I into the warehouse that contains the UC Davis graduate studios, we observed the evidence of creative process, with every corner was filled with the lurking ghosts of past or discarded work. Upon entering Mathew’s personal studio, we were met by a neatly organized space, methodically established to allow and optimum working environment. Several paintings were hung on the large, bleach white walls, glowing with newly introduced color, a step away from the monochromatic path that Zefeldt has been traveling on for the last year. Stacked neatly on the wall were more canvases, all of them enormous and identically constructed, removing issues of orientation and formant, reducing the body of work into pure composition, contrast and form.

As Mathew moved each canvas with the ease provided by his lanky form, a storm of prolific production and experimentation emerged. Mathew has always been interested in the representation and decay of memory over time, which was expressed in the barrage of abstracted lines taken from child-hood comics, bits and pieces of superheroes and supervillans cascading across the surfaces of his canvases, bold non-representational lines that maintained the aura of an epic struggle. Embattled abstractions carried the viewer through each piece, juxtaposed against pure color and form objects, as well as other more representational elements.

Classical faces appeared midway through our journey of Zefeldt’s work, neo-impressionist renderings of classical sculptures, and later, the “death-masks’’ of antiquity, visual placeholders of the artist’s presence in the canvases landscape.

Near the end of the high-speed chase through Mathew’s sophisticated and evolving painterly-language, color begins to become more prominent, emerging in muted tones of greens and browns, in globular drips and raised forms, and then evolving into grandiose minimalist gestures, bold primaries accenting the subtleties of the monochrome.

At the end of all this, my head reeling from such a journey through another artistic world, I emerged with the sure knowledge that Mathew Zefeldt is the gull package, carrying the skill, prolific nature, and intellect that will make one of tomorrows great artists from today’s emerging masses.

Great Expectations: Review of the UC Davis 1st Year MFA Show

2010-06-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

When I first ambled into “Great Expectations,’’ UC Davis’ first year MFA show, I was met by an environment that is quite a far cry form Jane Austen’s English cottages and country gardens. Instead of overly loquacious gentlemen and demure ladies, a cacophony of sound, color and form filled the gallery tucked in the back of the UC Davis University club.

Bypassing the usual opening fare of crackers and brownies, I crossed over the threshold from the normal world into the world of concept and form. There, Manuel Rios’ piece “Menudo Amnesty Denied’’ caught my attention. Filling the first wall to the left of the entrance, the piece spread like the melted wings of Icarus, guiding me into the space. Painted wood panels projected off the wall, hovering over the screenprints and paint applied directly to the interior of the gallery, creating a two-dimensional painting that bled across the entire 15 or more feet of wall space. Collaged into the raised and resinous wood panels was traditional Hispanic food packaging. The red and orange wrappers swam amongst the muted orange and muddled greens and browns, echoing phantasms of Mexican-American food and the nostalgia of family dinners. The larger of Rios’ pieces, “ Menudo’’ dominated the front hallway with its strong presence and movement, accented by the delicate organic forms and bold dimensional gestures.

Across from “Menudo Amnesty Denied’’ was a five channel video installation called “Union Labor System Overload.’’ A performance of Paul Taylor and Benjamin Rosenthal, the five channels all switched sporadically through different views depicting the performers rapidly manipulating materials. Utilizing obsessive repetition of movement, a shape emerged that was only revealed in partial views of chaotically formed linear shapes and rigid material. The rapidly shifting perspectives combined with the disjointed and fast paced footage all accumulating a critical mass of process and labor, taking the viewer light-speed through the exhausting labor and material process, then leaving them drained and agitated, trying to recover after being spit out of the wall-mounted LCD screens.

Paul Taylor carried across the critical mass aesthetic in his second piece, entitled “Destructural Extrapolation #37F.’’ Bursting from the center of the ceiling, cascading entrails seeped from the inside of the unseen structural supports, seemingly caught in mid-fall after piercing the dry-wall carapace. The form of the twisting conduits and half-toppled two by four framing appeared as if the ceiling rejected its contents, and the near alive materials clawed and clamored their ways into a chaotic mass moving downwards and away from their containment in a ceiling prison.

Beyond the tangled forms of “Destructural Extrapolation #37F,’’ alight upon a square of pristine white existed the fantasy world of Lisa Cralle’s “Tuxedo Park’’. A collection of shapes referencing architectural forms were intermingled with rubber coated forms made of wire. These empty forms assumed the form of hats, trousers, and other Gatsby-esque articles that stood for the empty ghosts of by-gone commercial eras. The combination of the angular and formal shapes with the looser, whimsical forms created a fantasy-scape where proportions were switched and the desolate landscape begged to be filled by the viewers gaze.

Behind the landscape of “Tuxedo Park’’ was Great Expectations’ other video installation, this one created by Jen Cohen. Entitled “Happy Accidents,’’ flashes of home-video clips, news reels, and static burst across the wall from the three projectors, creating alternating moments of nostalgia and chaos. This disjointed imagery seemed to create the schizophrenic temporality that is the result of the post-modern world, each clip vying for superiority, successively overpowering the other clips only to be subdued by other segments of visual stimulus. Set to an amorphous sound track that emphasized the scattered, post-technology globalization imagery, the intermingled scenes blared a la sci-fi conspiracy theory brainwashes. All contained in a darkened room, this piece consumed the viewer, entering them womb-like into the eternally gestating visual stimulus pumping through the world of post-modern iconography.

After being born back into the light, I was again drawn into another world, this time a world of abstract form engaging in a seemingly epic struggle. Executed in visceral pastel forms on a larger-than-life canvas stretched directly on the wall, Matthew Taylor’s “Shangri-la-di-di-da’’ evoked feelings of contention, transcendence, and imminent confrontation. Organic shapes catapulted away from landmarks that dotted the fantasy-scape, flying above a mountainous archway, which existed as one of the only representational forms in the composition, fleeing a tank-like form that trundled toward the center of the piece from its placement in the lower left quadrant. A narrative seemed to appear from the quick brush strokes and dripping luminous shapes that inhabited the light-ocher hue that enfolded the scene. Taylor achieved a very poignant sense of intimacy considering the large surface, dragging empathy for organic shape from the viewer, a difficult endeavor to accomplish in abstract work.

Opposite Matthew Taylor’s abstract narrative hung 3 large pieces done by Mathew Zefeldt. The first piece, “It’s the Only Thing To Do’’ was done in all grey tones, following Zefeldt’s year long trend of monochromatic painting. The brushwork spoke in a language built purely of line, abstracted forms that echo comic book laden nostalgia. These marks coalesced into a cloud of mark making, hovering around a succinctly executed pillar placed in the room-like landscape, perched on a checkerboard floor.

The next piece, “Wheel of Fortune’’ began to incorporate bold color strokes, transitioning the monochrome into dripping accidents that breathed life and process into the painting. Hovering in the top corner was a tongue-in-cheek reference to a color wheel, highlighting the focus on primary colors, and Zefeldt’s deconstruction of all painting devices to their basic components. Diagonally across from the color wheel in the bottom left corner hovered a death mask, referencing Greco-Roman classical representations of form.

The final piece, “This Time, I'll Get It Right... (Sunset)’’ hung centered all alone on its own wall, blaringly colorful in comparison to the grey tones of the first work. This piece was split into three themes, the top a radiant display of primary colors, glancing like refracted sunlight towards the center of the piece, reminiscent of grandiose gothic stained glass. In the center swirled a mass of Zefeldt’s signature abstract markings, with a confidently and quickly realized sphere of tones floating on top of the undulating morass of line. Below all this, acting as a dramatic and emphasizing underline, dripped a giant 2-foot wide brush stroke that dragged colors harking back to an early computer photo chromatic palette across the entire width of the canvas, left to juicily drip, breaking the horizontal underline with organic vertical movement. Each piece stood as a new environment in which the viewer is drawn to engage with, but they all worked together, referencing different elements together to form an abstracted narrative through the progression of the work.

All of the work in the show represented a year of talented young artists being essentially left to their own creative devices for most of a year, and the results were telling. This collection of works was varied in its expression and medium, but each painted a vivid narrative of concept and form. All of the pieces led the viewer through an experience of the world ciphered through the eyes of the artist. Together, the pieces represented new and distinct evolutions of the creative sphere fulfilling and generating new, large, and truly great expectations.

Ron Carter Trio w/ Mulgrew Miller and Russell Malone at Yoshis Jazz Club in Oakland

2010-05-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

Jazz heads are quite a peculiar breed of music appreciators*. As I stood on the sidewalk in Jack London Square in Oakland last night, one foot casually propped on the wall of Yoshi’s Jazz Club, a veritable parade of this breed passed by. Both old and young, they shuffled past in their classically quaint or demure attire, a mix of more-shabby-than-chic style, to join the line that was steadily growing behind me. (Tip: Go get your tickets early for the shows at Yoshi’s, seating is first come, first serve, so your place in line is paramount.) All of the suckers for syncopation, including myself, waited more or less patiently as the Amtrak train ruined what was left of our hearings as it trolled near empty through the street in front of us. What could be worth such patience and auditory assault you ask? Well, of course the answer is nearly every show at Yoshi’s, but last night it was even more worth the wait, considering we were waiting to see the epic jazz legend Ron Carter. * What I affectionately refer to as music nerds, the fanatics of auditory compositions, among which I am included.

I was first introduced to the wall-corroding bass of Mr. Carter on A Tribe Called Quest’s album The Low End Theory (Verses from the Abstract), as well as dozens of other less official samplings on other hip-hop records. Such far-reaching, cross-genre work led me to get my fingers dusty looking for more of his records, and I have been a pretty big fan since. Not very surprising, considering he has appeared on something like 2,500 albums, including playing with Miles Davis’ second quintet. I mean this guy transcends legendary status folks.

So, obviously, the atmosphere at the later of the two shows for the evening was charged with excitement, the type of excitement that only occurs when a group of jazz dorks collect to see something legendary. It kind of feels like right before a lighting storm, where your hair stands on end, except with a lot more discussion about minor fifths and the like. As the doors opened, the line pushed into the beautiful Jazz Room in Yoshi’s with less aplomb than would be expected from some of those present, and then shuffled for seating. And, low and behold, being the second person in line, I soon found myself sitting at a front row table, albeit in a horribly uncomfortably seat, with a delicious Old-Fashioned Peach signature cocktail sweating onto a napkin in front of me, waiting for greatness to reveal himself.

Playing with Carter’s double bass, was Mulgrew Miller on the piano, along with Russell Malone on guitar, forming a classic jazz trio. Calling themselves the Golden Striker Trio, after their Blue Note album entitled The Golden Striker released in 2003, they definitely represent a formidable collection of musical skill and knowledge, so as the lights came up on stage, lightning clouds actually started forming overhead. (Not actually. Poetic license extends to writing as well folks, come on.)

Then onto the stage came the trio, and after a gracious bow, launched into their first number. All three maintained an individual presence and style, an impressive feat when a trio is built around such a legend. Miller can hold down a wide range of styles, rocking the more arrhythmic and discordant styles of post-Miles jazz alongside more classic swing grooves with no effort, just some wonderful facial expressions that come with the territory. As he moved fluidly from the groove into a solo on the first number, he showed his ample ability with rhythm, moving about as far away from the groove as possible before somehow pulling out of the rhythm nose-dive just in time to drop the proper chord change for the next groove. Waiting patiently for his return from space, Carter and Malone eased into the next section of the song right as Miller did without even a glance in his direction, true jazz style.

Malone, while no less an impressive musician than Miller, worked his portion of the tracks played last night with a more down-to-earth presence, playing rapid arpeggios through the progressions, completely straight faced as he swung out thirty-something notes with abandon. Adding a little hint of neo-soul to the mix, Miller would throw in some solid funk-based licks in the midst of his blazing strings, as well as coaxing musical notes out of parts of the guitar that no one ever knew could be played. Bottom line, Miller can shred.

Carter himself is a monolith of style, truly built for his instrument, not the other way around. The austere jazz legend stood as tall as his stand-up double bass, while his experienced hands slid, strung and pummeled the worn neck and strings of his charge, pulling a sound that feels like sap is sweetly sliding through your ears. His playing stood out even as he played a steady groove foundation for the other cats to layer their licks upon, meandering meaningfully through chord progressions and tempos with ease.

His syrupy sounds seemed to come from pure intuition as he communicated with his instrument, surely a communion that is like breathing after decades of playing. Just to add to his mystique, Carter cruised through nearly every groove with his eyes closed, literally.

One of the highlights of the night was when Malone and Miller stepped aside for the legend to shine at full luminosity, and Carter played free form through his own version of “You Are My Sunshine.’’ Here he was able to display his full range of genius, deconstructing and rebuilding the simple song into a composition that left you on the edge of your seat waiting for him to finish the progression. I do not trust my musical knowledge enough to say anything other than it was truly awe-inspiring.

The encore ended to a thunderous standing ovation right as receipts were signed and half-melted ice rattled in otherwise empty glasses, a far-too brief hour and a half after embarking upon the experience. As the crowd shifted out into the foyer after the show, eyes rimmed with tears of joy where wiped, the awestruck populace seemed to mirror my shell-shocked countenance, a condition that can only be brought upon by exposure to stellar live jazz. This show definitely reached my top-five jazz shows ever, and is also contending for some prime real estate on my best-show-ever list. So basically, if you get a chance to see Carter, do it now while you have the chance.

As we cruised over the 24 back home, I reflected on the show and had only regret. Yoshi’s needs some new damn chairs…

The Yoshis in Oakland is located at 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland CA.

For tickets: www.yoshis.com/reservations or 510-238-9200

Art of the DJ- Second Saturday: Beats off the Trail

2010-05-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there is value in following the pack when looking for something cool to do for an evening. Sometimes, all you need to do is stay on the beaten path, get with the program and go with the M.O.

This is not the case in the obnoxiously overcrowded Second Saturday Art Walk in the state’s capital. Having covered several of the Second Saturday events, and feeling like I ran a marathon in the process, I decided to keep it simple, and leave that stomped on path.
For this, I was rewarded.

I found myself at Havoc Urban Boutique, on 24th between I and J, at the hype-event for Sacramento’s own DJ Rated R’s Art of the DJ release party. Really what I had found was one of the coolest, hippest gems of Sacramento new-age urbanism. Yes, it was hip, with a whole room filled with fixed-gear paraphernalia, from fully built fixies, to the pre-requisite messenger bags and mainstreamed counter-culture apparel. But, the true magic was outside.

Set up behind his decks, DJ Rated R was decked out in one of the dopest old-school rigs I have seen in a long while. Spinning his fresh Run DMC tribute mix live (and I mean live), he was the perfection of both the old-school music and the old school style. His phat dookie gold chain swung in response to the rapid movements his hands were making on the cross-fader and record, while underneath his classic white Adidas baseball cap, his eyes were focused through huge spectacles that would make even DMC proud.

But, what impressed me most about Rated R’s performance was that despite making the transition to Serato (the digital DJing revolution that is putting vinyl on the endangered list) he still maintained eye contact with the records, not the screen, and pulled off some quick beat matching flips that could only be done by a DJ who cut his teeth on black ribbed polyvinyl.

Another fresh part of the event was that Sunny-The-Artist was turning the vinyl Rated R put to rest into sweet original art-works, airbrushing the Run DMC crew onto the retired records and giving them new life. Next to him was Kirk Parker, Sunny’s father, who was live printing posters for the event.

The combo of old-school meets new-school, represented in the freshness of the music, the art, and the style of this event not only impressed this hip-hop head with its classic leather-and-Kangol vibe, it also re-affirmed that Sacramento is a competing force in California’s battle for Independent hip-hop superiority.

Destroy and Rebuild Part III: Hip-Hop-The Anti-Ivory Tower

2010-04-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

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Hip-hop is a rather young cultural development, which means that there has been very little academic exploration into the societal ramifications of this culture. But, this is rapidly changing, with hip-hop academies, journals, and critiques beginning to emerge across the world at an exponential rate. Hip-hop is a veritable contemporary Renaissance, with a speed of evolution that far outstrips other artistic and cultural movements that have occurred in the last several decades. This movement is definitely far from dying, despite what Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones has to say, and is more than just a youthful fad that promotes ghetto-isms such as sex, drugs, and violence. Hip-hop is born out of the contemporary urban world, a logical progression in the cultural evolution of the globalized intellect. This is why hip-hop academia is so important, and why I am writing this right now.

Although many struggle to understand or connect with hip-hop and its vast demographic of beliefs, it is an important development in today’s world, a muti-various voice through which the populace can reflect on and react to the modern condition. Hip-hop has even moved out of the high-density urban environment, with graffiti appearing in backwaters, emcees emerging from suburban and rural areas, and breakdancing being laudably appreciated by every person on the planet who has a TV set. That is why I believe that the words and ideals of hip-hop artists have reason to be appreciated and applied. Because, the same time that hip-hop is being influenced by the world from which it emerged, it is influencing the emerging world in turn.

As seen in the past two parts of the Destroy and Rebuild trilogy, all four elements of hip-hop share common methods of synthesis. Emceeing, breakdancing, DJing, and graffiti all have formed out of disparate elements drawn from a variety of cultural and societal influences, and managed to form a powerful means of expression. This constantly evolving form of syncretism is accomplished through a variety of means, but one part of the hip-hop culture is critical to the rebuilding; community. Hip-hop is a culture of community, where you are nothing outside of your hood, cannot stand except beside your crew, and have no goals besides the progression of your block. No one person invented hip-hop, it took a community of innovative heads to develop early hip-hop, and the culture is kept alive and well by an ever expanding networking of innovators. Be it a local community that consists of your street, or a global community connected only by electronic and binary encodings, community is what keeps hip-hop alive.

I choose to stress the importance of community here rather than earlier in this diatribe because to take any value out of the concept of destroy and rebuild, in fact if we are to destroy and rebuild anything successfully, it must be done as a community. Each element of hip-hop has broken down an existing system to its basic foundations, be it the formation of a break or the structure of a letter. These basic foundations are solid building blocks that should have been supporting solid systems, beliefs, and infrastructures. But, individual egos and interests corroded the structures upon which they were built, leaving us with the physical, ethical, and intellectual slums which my generation has and the next will have to inherit. I by no means intend to imply that hip-hop has not let individual interests supercede those of a community. In fact, hip-hop has a splendid record of individuals leaving the rest of their tribe of origin disenfranchised. But, hip-hop also self-corrects, leaving behind faith in those that leave the community.

Our world is rife with crumbling towers, systems structured with inadequate mortar between each building block. Most current systems are built upon viable foundations, but their money-hungry facades corrupt their structural integrity. As a whole, the world is at risk of burning all bridges, leaving all of us left on a desolate island of our own making, surrounded by the rubble of our institutions and the ashes of our ideals. But, hip-hop has shown us one way to proceed, and that is to destroy and rebuild. If, using the elements of hip-hop as a guide, we can break down existing institutions into the original, valuable elements of their conception, we can look forward to rebuilding our world into a more solid and lasting metropolis. Drawing on the basic structures of morality, logic and justice that all nations were initially built upon, we can form a new world-view that is a cooperative amalgam that can deal with the new-born globalized world. Our world can’t fuck around and sit with each of us as a king on a throne while our ivory towers crumble. We have to chuck that shit out the window, tear down the walls with our bear hands, and begin rebuilding a community, an empire that can last forever.

One Love,

Peace,

ESK

Sacramento Second Saturday Art Walk: The March Marathon

2010-03-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

As I once again reflect on another Second Saturday spent roaming the streets of California’s Capital, I realize that this has become less of an art walk, and more of an art marathon. No matter how hard one tries, there is no way even the most ambitious art appreciator could see every art opening in the three hour time period one is given. But, be sure, I still am going to try my hardest.

This month I took a different approach than my usual beeline to mid-town, and decided to try and avoid some of the peak-hour chaos that mills around a six-block radius from 20th and J. Heading out to 65th Street, far from the impacted mid-town area, I started my night at the Fe Gallery, at 1100 65th St, close to the corner of 65th and Elvas Ave. But, the crowds even reached this far, with Sacramento’s usual vast demographic filling the Gallery’s unique show-meets-forge space. Towering over the rest of the work was the fantasy world Gnowledge, an intricate fantasyland that is the brainchild of Danny Scheible, one of Sacs quirky and creative emerging artists. Gnowledge was the impressive result of several evolving endurance/making pieces, expressed in a tree of shredded book pages. This was capped by leaves of brilliant fabric that alternately obscured and cast light on the complex and miniature city-scape made up of Scheible’s trademarked masking-tape cones and complexes, which seem to spring up in his wake wherever he goes. Spread out underneath the tree, other fine crafts in glass and metal either lay or shifted in kinetic freedom, extending into the back room where the smells and abusive sounds of a live blacksmithing demonstration suffuse the atmosphere.

Leaving behind a world of fantasy and metal, I slugged my borrowed Volvo across to Freeport, where the wonderful Folks at Sideshow Studios were relaxing during their Monster Under the Bed and Other Stories Told to Children show. The show, inspired by child-hood nightmares and imagination, was one of the few places one could see the type of character-inspired works that breathes a new generation of expression into Sacramento’s overwhelming lands-cape bound scene.

After chatting with the Sideshow crew, I prepared myself to face the beast, and pointed my white Swedish stallion toward the heart of midtown. I found myself cruising down 21st Street, when the brilliant works of Miguel Bounce Perez caught my eye, forcing me into the Sol Collective, at 2574 21st. After I found out I was crashing a party (my bad), I was introduced to Dominick Porras, the hip and driven caretaker of the Collective for the evening. After being awed at the amazing urban-culture inspired works of Perez, along with the grand mural-work of Dignidad Rebelde and the powerful, self-taught work of Carlos Willcuts, I was told that this was the closing night of their past show. Porras informed me that the Sol Collective prefers to have their openings every third Saturday to avoid being overlooked during the Second Saturday chaos. I must say, not a bad idea. I am definitely going to check out the Sol Collective this Saturday, where new work will be on display without the competition of every other gallery in Sactown forcing me away from this hip-ass place.

Finally, as I found myself having to dodge numerous B.U.I.s and the hordes of high school and college herds that filled the streets of mid-town, I decided to walk through the madness to reach one of my favorite up-scale galleries in Sac, b. sakata garo. Always filled with the shuffling gate of a myriad of individuals dotting the sliding scale of soberness, the exposed brick interior of the gallery at 923 20th Street housed a great show of Rodney Mott’s master clay and ceramic works, ranging from the functional to the aesthetic. But, what seemed to catch most of the loose gazes of the inebriated (or at least the one pair I can vouch for) was the abstract clay and ceramic mono-prints. These individual and distinct works on canvas were made of different values of clay and ceramic being pressed into the surface to form beautiful compositions. Expressed in beautiful, muted earth-tones, these works created a synchronous visual ambiance that roamed from cave-paintings to the contemporary. Definitely a show to check out, as always.

Next, on the recommendation of the swell people at Sideshow Studios, I made my way to the Shiny Nickle Art Gallery (S.N.A.G.), one of the multitudes of awesome off-the-map galleries around town. The pulsing vibes of live reggae reverberated down 21st street for a block as I approached, guiding me siren-like to the urban-culture grab bag supplied by S.N.A.G. The hip, urban oriented gallery contained an overwhelming array of works. From traditional-tattoo inspired paintings for a bill a pop, to the gritty graffiti photography of Mr. Dee, and finishing at the abstract discord emanating from the canvasses of Erik Bergeman, S.N.A.G. had it all. After visiting this spot for the first time, I am already anticipating next month’s show.

Finally, as my fuel was running low, and the night was rapidly advancing toward Sunday’s daylight savings-screwed morning, I decided to check out the much-hyped A Bitchin Art Space, where owner and curator Gale Hart had her own stellar work on display. With the rushing clatter of skateboards and the hollers of their riders stayed by the half-pipe at the entrance behind me, I was able to enter the gallery to mingle with other late-night stragglers trying to absorb the last drop of visual stimulus. Hart, spunky and armed with a strong gaze, stopped by to talk about the struggles of being an artist in a land where furlough Fridays and federal fuck-ups rule. Despite the bailed-out economy (pardon the skate pun) A Bitchin Art Space provided an awesome show. The paintings on the walls providing a splendid juxtaposition of clean, illustrative lines and instinctive and accidental mark making, while Hart’s quirky and urban metal furniture provided a fun break from wall-bound works.

After my last bit of schmoozing for the night, I scooted past the still-cruising skaters, and ambled back to my tired ride, to haul my tired-ass back home. All in all, not a bad night. After over 12 miles and six galleries in under three hours, I will leave the reader with one piece of advice for next time: Be prepared with some comfy kicks and set out early to maximize the ever-growing experience of Sacramento’s Second Saturday Art Walk.

Oh, and maybe consider some cross-training too.

A Bitter Harvest at the Royal NoneSuch Gallery, Oakland

2010-03-16T13:56:00.000-07:00

Filed among the boutiques on the Telegraph in the heart of Oakland’s Temescal District, the Royal NoneSuch Gallery is one of the gems of today’s art scene, where creativity is unbridled by white-walled gallery limitations, and where new, risky, alternative and interactive ideas go before anything that fits nicely inside the white-washed box. Named after Twain’s Huck Finn, the Royal NoneSuch says “Our mission is to create a space where community building and art based experiences are innovative, inclusive, and educational.’’ Bitter Harvest, the NoneSuch’s new show by Lauren Frances Adams that opened Friday, March 12^th, is a perfect example of these non-conventional shows that are the focus of the gallery’s attention.

Adams, who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, exposes her exploration into the world of Afghanistan’s opium culture directly on the wall of the gallery in vibrant hues of a predominately searing yellow. These disconnected yet dramatically narrative scenes are cast onto the walls with a hasty hand in pink and white, with instinctive and quick lines depicting the interaction of American militarism with the drug trade that permeates the Middle East. The simple quick contours and skewed perspectives sprout in patches across the walls, with the images of workers and soldiers standing amid fields of poppies. These scenes hug the wall of the space, referencing the elegant wall paper of the upper-class, while raising questions of imperialism, insurgency, and invasion.

The whole piece works nicely in the gallery space, with head-high poppies and skewed-perspective scenes extending the visual plane beyond the limitations of the small gallery. But, at times the hasty feel of the piece moves beyond the immediacy implied by a bold stroke, and towards the obfuscation of the emotions hewn into the images found in Adams’ other intricate and illustrative work. Despite this hurried feel and less intricate quality, the obscured and emotionless faces at times seem to reflect the political and social apathy that surrounds such a contentious field of study. Overall, Adams’ engages an ambitious and complex subject with a confidence bolstered by the bold and innovative foundations at the Royal Nonesuch Gallery.

Check out a whole month of innovative works at the Royal NoneSuch Gallery, 4231 Telegraph Ave., Oakland CA. For more information on this show and other’s check out the website, www.royalnonesuchgallery.com.

For more information on Lauren Frances Adams and her work, go to www.lfadams.com.

ESKing

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