REVIEWS
(LA in SF) Julie Weitz at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, November 2021
By Amy Mutza and Ariel Zaccheo
It’s August in Northern California, and four megafires have collectively burned 1,100,000 acres across the region. The alien quality of diffuse, yellow light and the choke of smoke-laden air feels familiar now, a reminder of seasons changing and the earth burning. As we adapt to these conditions and search for solutions, we must reckon with the certainty that California’s intensifying climate is fueled in part by the exploitative colonialist mindset of land ownership over stewardship. Julie Weitz explores this terrain in a solo exhibition titled GOLEM: A Call to Action, outlining a responsible land practice.
Design by Time at Museum of Craft and Design
Atherton Living, January 2021
In our recent reality of fluctuating lockdown and quarantine conditions, time seems to move at a variable pace. Days, weeks, and months pendulate between rapidity and a slow crawl, depending on the conditions at hand. The designers and artists featured in the Museum of Craft and Design’s upcoming exhibition Design by Time, on view from January 23 - April 25, 2021, all investigate time as a central element in their work; but don’t expect a gallery of ticking clocks and hourglasses.
(L.A. in S.F.)
Stimulus at Guerrero Gallery
Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, August 2020
For many galleries and art spaces already struggling to adapt to rent spikes in San Francisco, the indefinite closure of non-essential businesses due to Covid-19 guaranteed some level of catastrophe. Guerrero Gallery, which opened in 2010, is no stranger to adapting to adverse circumstances. On April 28, with economic pressures mounting amidst a global pandemic, Guerrero Gallery announced the closure of that space, citing the “current circumstances.” Despite the closure, the gallery opened a virtual exhibition just a month later. The title of the show, Stimulus, exudes a cheeky self-awareness—both of the apathy of virtual exhibitions within a fraught cultural moment and of the failure and feebleness of governmental attempts to jumpstart a frozen economy.
Linda Gass: and then this happened.. at the Museum of Craft and Design
Fiber Art Network, January 2020
Nature rarely follows a straight path. Over the last century, human intervention has straightened rivers, constructed dams, developed marshland into profitable real estate and exacerbated the conditions for massive wildfires. Human alterations to the landscape follow congruous patterns and shift in right angles, leaving the land parceled into a patchwork of squares, resembling a quilt when viewed from above.
Lewd at joy gallery
Daily Serving, January 2016
Like the best hedonistic pleasure palaces, JOY Gallery is a bit off the beaten path. Located in San Francisco’s Bayview District, the space is inconspicuous except for glowing red lights and a small hand-painted sign in the window that reads “LEWD! an Art Show.” Comprising sixteen artists, half of them women, Lewd celebrates the illicit and lascivious. The exhibition’s success owes to the varied interpretations of its theme; some pieces are overtly sexual, with big visual puns packing shock value, while others elicit a more modest eroticism. Many works in the exhibition have a vintage aesthetic, as if nostalgic for a bygone era of pinups and burlesque.
Art Work: Office Space at YBCA
Personal Blog, January 2016
Office Space, an exhibition curated by Ceci Moss at YBCA in San Francisco, features artists responding to the immaterial labor force of the 21st century. Examining offices as a site of politics, these artists dissect contemporary work forces. I work at a museum, and feel tied to this subject in two directions, one from working in an office, and two, from working in an office where my main task is to organize and maintain exhibitions of art.
Proximities 1: What time is it there? at Asian Art Museum
Daily Serving, July 2013
Entering the gallery that houses What Time Is It There?, the first installment of the three-part exhibition Proximities, is like emerging for air after diving into a deep pool. The gallery is sandwiched between the Korean and Japanese portions of the immersive ocean of the Asian Art Museum’s permanent collection, which spans at least six thousand years. Dripping from the resonances of the bottomless expanse of complicated histories represented by the collection of art and artifacts, the exhibition offers a refreshing interstice, a moment to sit and consider contemporary perspectives amidst preceding ones.
In Review: Hang|Over
Studio 110, June 2014
For one week in the middle of May, the Bay Area becomes an electrified fugue for the visual arts. A cacophony of artists, art lovers, collectors, gallerists, writers, art historians and more bounce through end-of-year exhibitions and art fairs. The most recent swell of MFA graduates across the Bay Area fray their last remaining nerves to showcase their best work, the work that earned them a degree, work that kept them up most nights over the course of their two years of study.