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'Photoo' in Oakland:
No exhibition as small as "Photoo: The Subversion and Subvention
of Photography" at the Oakland Art Gallery could do justice to
the cross-fertilization of contemporary painting and photography. But
"Photoo" contains enough intriguing things to make one wish
for an extensive survey. The show's co-organizers, Pamela Wilson and
Nina Zurier, have included their own work, but no one who looks carefully
will take exception.
Wilson borrows images from news photographs and transcribes them in
deft but unfussy watercolor. Some, such as "Najaf," have obvious
topical reference. Others, such as "Truck" and "Mistake,"
might refer to violent mishaps more generally. In every case, Wilson's
pictures gain power from their subjects' distance from the largely quiescent
watercolor tradition.
Zurier takes deliberately "incorrect" photographs -- wildly
maladjusted in framing, exposure and color balance. She mounts them
on unframed aluminum panels. The resulting objects look like neither
photographs nor paintings, but planes of powdery color whose faintly
modulated surfaces give the eye just enough traction to detain the mind.
Roy Tomlinson's paintings happen to offer a startling contrast to
Arceneaux's work at the level where intention makes itself felt. Tomlinson
uses photographs as maps for painting: His not-quite-legible pictures
have titles such as "Ground Fire #2," "Clearing"
and "Home." But he works with a touch, a withholding of follow-through,
that inch by inch conveys his intent not to arrive at an image. The
resulting pictures evoke photography's infection of our memories as
a bleak malaise.
Francesca Pastine's work looks like something left over from a different
show, but it makes a striking impression, especially her "Football
Cutouts" (2005). In each of these she has printed a sports page
photo on Japanese inkjet paper, and with scissors or mat knife cut it
into a frilly stencil, the incisions intervening comically or critically
in the image.
From: "Sometimes We Wish For More, Sometimes Less", Saturday,
August 20th, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle
New Work: Edgar Arceneaux: Drawings and installations in mixed media.
Through Nov. 27. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St.,
San Francisco.
Photoo: The Subversion and Subvention of Photography: Photographic works
and paintings by six contemporary artists. Through Sept. 24. Oakland
Art Gallery, 199 Kahn's Alley, Oakland.
(510) 637-0395, . www.oaklandartgallery.org
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