STATE OF THE ARTS
Garry
Knox Bennett at Transmission Gallery, 770 West Grand Avenue,
Oakland, www.thetransmissiongallery.com. Oakland’s master of witty and immaculately
fabricated art furniture (including hippie-era Art Nouveau-ish roach clips)
returns to the East Bay gallery scene, twelve years after his 2005 Oakland
Museum show at the large lobby at 555 12th Street. Details on the
show are sketchy at the moment, and might includes lights and lamps, but
however things evolve, the show, which might include chairs, desks, clocks and
tables, will be amazing, delightful, and a testament to old-school
craftsmanship, freewheeling imagination and irrepressible humor. Bennett: “Some
people call me an artist. It’s flattering, but I’m not. I have friends that are
artists, but I’m a damn good furniture maker.” Reception Friday, December 1,
6-9pm. December 1 - January 20.
About
Abstraction: Bay Area Women Painters at Bedford Gallery, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek. www.bedfordgallery.org.
The recent regressive turn in American politics points up the fact that the social
progress many of us foolishly took for granted was never safe from attack. It’s
no surprise, either, that women artists are still under-represented; some
change has taken place since the 1970s, but too little, and too late. Still,
shows like this one, focusing on local living artists who happen to be
abstractionists—and women, Reg!—are valuable in keeping things moving forward.
The seventeen painters are Lorene Anderson, Eva Bovenzi, Donna Brookman,
Heather Day, Amy Ellingson, Linda Geary, Rebekah Goldstein, Danielle Lawrence,
Naomie Kremer, Michelle Mansour, Alicia McCarthy, Mel Prest, Cornelia Schulz,
Ema Sintamarian, Michele Theberge, and Canan Tolon. September 24 - December 17.
August Muth: Tactile Radiance at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, 480 23rd Street, Oakland, www.chandracerritocontemporary.com. Muth is a Santa-Fe-based artist who has been working with holograms, those three-dimensional projections (now familiar from Star Wars and other movies) for thirty years. He creates his own works (with a proprietary emulsion) as well as assisting other artists; the James Turrell holograms shown recently at Pace Gallery in Palo Alto are collaborations, I presume. Muth’s holograms convey not desperate appeals to Jedi knights, but geometric forms floating in color fields, hovering almost tangibly in the viewer’s space. Muth considers light to be a tactile medium, and these holograms are not illusions, but “photonic truth.... Through my work, I strive to record with precision the perceptible light-space-time phenomena. As these three elements intertwine, a three-dimensional topography of pure light is formed, revealing a window into the elusive realms of the light-space-time paradox. Luminous veils of light invite the viewer into a multi-dimensional journey.... Light is the faithful archivist of time.” First Friday reception, September 1, 6-8pm. August 4 - September 28.
