Month: April 2019

Mario Ayala’ Give a Dog a Bad Name and Hang Him Start Date: Saturday 5/11/2019 — End Date: Saturday 6/22/2019 Admission:Free Ever Gold [Projects] is pleased to present Give a Dog a Bad Name and Hang Him, the gallery’s second solo exhibition with Los Angeles based artist Mario Ayala. Featuring airbrushed paintings on canvas, works on paper, sculptures, and a video installation, this new body of work employs a type of figurative language in which elements coordinate and contradict themselves narratively and spatially. Ayala applies this figurative language to social histories, exploring representations of brownness and Latinx identity within the field of painting, and in the way visual representations are able to echo a discursive reality. Ayala’s paintings combine sensibilities, connecting disparate images and aesthetic gestures. Ayala credits his father as his primary influence, as he grew up watching him work on cars and motorcycles, and receiving ballpoint pen drawings from him as gifts when he returned home from work as a truck driver. Attending car shows and swap meets in Los Angeles, Ayala was exposed to a variety of painting techniques that are distinct from traditional art world methods: car painting and airbrushing are the artist’s earliest and most poignant references for creative expression. Ayala utilizes these familiar techniques and images in ways that are distinct from their original applications—as a simplified example, Ayala utilizes auto-body painting techniques designed to emphasize or reinforce the physical structure of a car in ways that distort and transform his subjects, or applies the techniques to objects that do not typically garner this kind of elevating treatment. Although arguably not breaking news, it seems reasonable to reinforce here: Latinx creative endeavors—in music, visual art, tattooing, car culture, and many other areas—permeate popular culture in the U.S. more and more thoroughly, both autonomously and through widespread cultural appropriation. Ayala’s work can be seen as a kind of reclamation with twists, as it embraces iconic images and stylistic gestures while suggesting that these structures are much larger and more dynamic than a common pop cultural representation might convey. Ayala is similarly interested in visual representations of translation and the slippages that can occur with language. In a painting titled Insurance Claim, a sad old dog is seen busting through a steering wheel with text reading “GUYCO” instead of “GEICO,” making reference to the complexity of translation and to Los Angeles’s particular bootleg culture in which counterfeit items attain validation in their own right, both as reasonable stand-ins for authentic items and as mashups that harness the impact of high end branding in the creation of new hybrid forms. In the gallery’s back room, Ayala presents a video installation titled Casa Padre, which references the name of the shelter for unaccompanied and separated immigrant minors in custody of the U.S. Office of Refugee and Resettlement in Brownsville, Texas. Casa Padre consists of an instructional video on how to put together a fence on your property accompanied by a Riz Ortolani-composed piece made for Paolo Cavara’s film Mondo Cane (translates to “Dog World”), punctuated with propagandistic interjections of strategies to demolish the constructs indicated by the instructional video. The room is transformed to mimic the appearance of the detention center, and sculptures serve as functional seating for viewers of Ayala’s video work. The painted sculptures are modelled after “time out chairs”—furniture designed for misbehaving children, often painted with characters or phrases—but Ayala has built them to a larger scale and ornamented their surfaces in a similar manner to the paintings on view. Ayala deconstructs and expands common perceptions of his chosen categories of images and aesthetics, offering enough of the original material to represent the traditions from which these forms originate while recasting images and techniques in new roles. Hybridizing images and uniting the incongruous, Ayala builds a visual language capable of mirroring the physical and social transformations of the landscape; Ayala’s compositions are only as strange and layered as the world we live in. In his new video installation and sculptural works, Ayala continues to develop this visual language in new terrain. Please contact info@evergoldprojects.com with any inquiries. Mario Ayala (b. 1991, Los Angeles, California) is an artist, working primarily in painting but also in sculpture. Ayala graduated from The San Francisco Art Institute in 2014, where he received the Yale Norfolk fellowship in 2012. He was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014. Recent exhibitions include Gold Standard at Ever Gold [Projects] (San Francisco, 2019); AUT Of Body at Loyal Gallery, Stockholm (solo, 2018); Sun Sprawl at Club Pro Los Angeles (2018); Pen Pal at Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco (solo, 2017); Seasoned And Embarrassed Like A Wet Dog at SADE, Los Angeles (solo, 2017); Welcome To The Left Coast at The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco (2016); Summer Group Show at Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco (2016); The House Of Special Purpose at 99¢ Plus Gallery, Brooklyn (2016); Something Completely Different at City Limits, Oakland (2014); 5 Year Anniversary at Ever Gold Gallery, San Francisco (2014); Locals Only at RVSF, San Francisco (2014); and Give + Take at Adobe Books, San Francisco (2013). Ayala lives and works in Los Angeles. Location: 1275 Minnesota Street, Suite 105 San Francisco Contact: Andrew McClintock info@evergoldprojects.com URL: https://evergoldprojects.com/exhibition/mario-ayala-solo-exhibiton-november-10-december-20/

Compost + The Carbon Farming Connection Start Date: Saturday 4/13/2019 — End Date: Saturday 4/13/2019 Admission:$10 in advance and $12 at the door The Plant Exchange presents ‘Compost + The Carbon Farming Connection – Sustainable Urban Gardening Speaker Series’ on Saturday, April 13th from 2pm-4pm at 4500 Lincoln Avenue. Tickets are $10 in advance or $12 at the door. Visit http://theplantexchange.com/sustainable-urban-gardening-speaker-series/ to purchase tickets. Tommy Fenster, from StopWaste, will speak on how to use compost along with other gardening practices to turn gardens into bay friendly landscapes and mini-carbon farms. Topics to include: *Climate Change and Carbon Sequestration *What is Carbon Farming/Climate Smart Gardening *The Five Principles of Climate Smart Gardening *Climate Smart Gardens = More Resilient Landscapes *Climate Smart Gardening and Biodiversity *How to Turn Your Lawn into a Climate Smart Garden *Questions and Discussion Tommy Fenster is a staff member of StopWaste. StopWaste is a public agency whose mission is to reduce the waste stream, create markets for recycled products and increase energy efficiency in Alameda County by providing tools at home, at work and at school. Tommy has been working at StopWaste since 2013. At StopWaste, Tommy works to educate Alameda County residents on ways to use compost and mulch (recycled products!) along with other management practices to create climate resilient, bay friendly landscapes. In addition to his work at StopWaste, Tommy is a graduate student in Biology at Cal State East Bay working on quantifying the differences between conventional and regenerative agricultural systems. For more information or to volunteer email us at connect@theplantexchange.com. Location: 4500 Lincoln Avenue Oakland Contact: Odette Pollar connect@theplantexchange.com URL: http://theplantexchange.com/sustainable-urban-gardening-speaker-series/

NEW Art Kiosk Installation by Katharine Umsted Comes to Downtown Redwood City Start Date: Saturday 4/13/2019 — End Date: Sunday 5/12/2019 Admission:Free The Redwood City Improvement Association invites the community to experience the new Art Kiosk Installation titled “Long View” by Katharine Umsted opening on Saturday, April 13th at 4 p.m. in one of Downtown Redwood City’s Courthouse Square Kiosks. The opening reception will unveil the latest interactive art exhibit that the community can engage with as part of the rotating art installation project. “Long View” will transform the Art Kiosk into a visual representation of Redwood City’s ever-evolving commitment to preserving the nature that surrounds the city – symbolizing the community’s robust activities that allow residents and visitors to experience light and nature outdoors. “Long View” will be on display through May 12. In partnership with Fung Collaboratives, the rotating Art Kiosk Installations will continue throughout 2019 with different featured artists in an effort to enhance the community’s fine art scene for residents and visitors. Location: 2200 Broadway St. 94063 Redwood City Contact: Redwood City Improvement Association info@visitRWC.com URL: http://visitrwc.org/

College of Marin Presents ‘Symbiotic Earth’ Movie Screening Start Date: Friday 4/26/2019 — End Date: Friday 4/26/2019 Admission:Free Hello from the Environmental Action Club at College of Marin! We are so excited to be showing an extremely inspiring movie called ‘Symbiotic Earth’ to all who would like to come. We will be providing free food and drink from Marin Pizza, raffling sustainable products from our proud sponsors, and having a discussion with UC Berkeley Professor and film contributor Fritjof Capra. We hope to have people from the community and students joining together at the college for this week as we celebrate our planet. Entry is free with your RSVP! If you have any questions please email us at EACCOM415@gmail.com. Location: 835 College Ave. Kentfield Contact: Lily Cohen estar400@gmail.com URL: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/symbiotic-earth-screening-tickets-59615069277

April Fundraiser Plant Sale Start Date: Saturday 4/13/2019 — End Date: Saturday 4/13/2019 Admission:Free Admission Join us for our next Fundraiser Plant Sale* on Saturday, April 13th from 9:30am-1:30pm. W H A T: Indoor and outdoor plants and trees, succulents, gardening tools, mulch, and more. Inventory changes daily. Check back for more details. W H E R E: 4500 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland, CA 94602 Have questions? Interested in volunteering? Email us at connect@theplantexchange.com. *All proceeds benefit our mission to promote sustainability, resource sharing, and community building. Location: 4500 Lincoln Avenue Oakland Contact: Odette Pollar connect@theplantexchange.com URL: http://theplantexchange.com/april-plant-sale/

MAYA STOVALL: UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP (GENERAL THEORY OF HISTORICAL MATERIALIST CRITIQUE REMIX) Start Date: Friday 4/5/2019 — End Date: Friday 4/5/2019 Admission:0 In this performance lecture with a live audio score by Todd Stovall, Maya Stovall considers the distinct works on view in Under New Ownership. Demonstrating how and where a research method and an artistic practice can meet, the artists show together how knowledge can be produced via the studio, the street, the interview, and the encounter. Writing too figures here as a central tool, and so Stovall punctuates the event with passages from her forthcoming Liquor Store Theatre book, as well as from a book project co-authored with her brother Josef Cadwell. Cadwell’s meditations range widely across theory and practice, including Stovall’s own, and reference an inside view of the U.S. prison system. Maya Stovall’s Under New Ownership is on view through May 05. Stovall works across the disciplines of performance and dance, moving and still image, installation, and text. She explores the big questions of human existence, creating works that “vividly juxtapose art and life” (The New York Times). Equally an artist and an anthropologist, she holds a Ph.D. in anthropology; a book based on her dissertation, Liquor Store Theatre: Ethnography & Contemporary Art in Detroit, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in spring 2020. This performance lecture occurs as part of SFAI’s Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series (VAS), a public forum for engagement and dialogue with major figures in international contemporary art and culture. Through lectures, screenings, and performances, the series creates intimate connections between SFAI, artists, and the public. Location: 2 Marina Blvd San Francisco Contact: Kat Trataris ktrataris@sfai.edu URL: https://sfai.edu/events-calendar/detail/maya-stovall-under-new-ownership-general-theory-of-historica

EMORY DOUGLAS + THE POSTER SYNDICATE Start Date: Thursday 4/4/2019 — End Date: Thursday 4/4/2019 Admission:0 Emory Douglas + The Poster Syndicate 11am–12pm Talk by Emory Douglas 12–1pm Printing by The Poster Syndicate Emory Douglas was born May 24th, 1943 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has been a resident of the San Francisco California Bay Area since 1951. Douglas attended City College of San Francisco where he majored in commercial art. He was politically involved as Revolutionary Artist and then Minister of Culture for the Black Panther party, from February, 1967 until the Early 1980’s. Douglas’s art and design concepts were always seen on the front and back pages of the Black Panther Newspaper, reflecting the politics of the Black Panther Party and the concerns of the community. The San Francisco Poster Syndicate grew out of the crisis around higher education. We create and screen print original images, continuing the rich history of posters as a form of political messaging. We print the posters “live” at political actions, exhibitions, and on the street, giving away the work for free in order to target a variety of current social and economic justice issues. The Poster Syndicate is here to bring art and design to many different people’s movements in hopes that their message can be heard and seen more loudly. Location: 800 chestnut street San Francisco Contact: Kat Trataris ktrataris@sfai.edu URL: https://sfai.edu/events-calendar/detail/emory-douglas-the-poster-syndicate

Los Altos Rotary Fine Art in the Park Start Date: Saturday 5/18/2019 — End Date: Sunday 5/19/2019 Admission:FREE Join us for the 44th Annual Rotary Club of Los Altos “Fine Art in the Park’ May 18-19. Located under the Redwoods of Lincoln Park, downtown Los Altos (Foothill Exp & Main St.) Art show starts immediately after the Kiwanis Pet Parade on Saturday and continues till Sunday 5:30pm. Fine Art in the Park is considered one of the most prestigious and beautiful open-air art shows in California. Enjoy quality craftwork from 150+ onsite artists. Festivities include live music: jazz, blues, rock, along with a variety of food, beer, wine and fun! All proceeds go to our local community. Free shuttled parking at Los Altos High School and Gardner-Bullis. Location: 199 University Avenue Los Altos Contact: Kendra Gjerseth losaltosrotary@gmail.com URL: http://rotaryartshow.com