"Crown" by Fan Lee Warren

The new show for Togonon Gallery will be Fan Lee Warren, a Bay Area Artist who is addressing the issues of technology, economy and art.
This body of work examines the reality of looking backward and being in the present at the same time.

Conviction and Emotion: The Art of Luis Gutierrez from the 1970s to Now

Luis Gutierrez

May 03 – Jun 11

by Allegra Fortunati

Educated in the United States and Mexico, Luis Gutierrez is touted as a Mexican-American artist. Nevertheless, his art is not hindered by the hyphenated tribalism of identity politics of the past few decades. His work includes no Virgins of Guadalupe, no bleeding hearts or other Mexican symbols; instead, it is dominated by abstraction and assemblage. According to the artist, he looks toward New York as a model of artistic value, but the high-quality expression of his art just might make Gutierrez an overlooked Bay Area treasure.

Despite the title of this exhibition, his earliest piece in the show is from 1967, a thickly impastoed, brilliantly colored work of oil on board titled Red Abstraction. (Disclaimer: I am a sucker for impasto.) Inspired by Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Cornell, he constructs his assemblage pieces from small objects collected over a lifetime. The resulting compilations of Americana are an anthropologist’s dream. Of particular note is Panic Button (1985–2010). Begun in 1985 and only completed last year after Gutierrez cleaned out his studio, it is an intricate, untiring, and nostalgic work filled with, among other things, hardwood and plastic rulers; toys; colored pencils; seed packets and advertisements; and images of the artist, a dough-boy, Mickey Mouse, and an Aborigine.

His more recent assemblages are much simpler, but no less powerful. Where is My America? (2010) hints at the political passion underlying some of Gutierrez’ other artworks. It is a wooden box, attached to a twenty-by-twenty-four-inch board,

Panic Button, 1985-2010; assemblage, 30 x 36 in. Courtesy of Togonon Gallery, San Francisco.

covered by hard plastic and stuffed with an American flag. Over the flag, a large red weathervane arrow points down, surely a comment on America’s moral, political, and financial decline.

Gutierrez often works in series, and one of the most poignant of them in this exhibition includes his works on Hurricane Katrina. All acrylic on heavy paperboard, the series seems to start with New Orleans #1 (2007), an ordered abstraction done in colors repeated throughout: light gray, black, orange, turquoise, and dark greens, blues, and yellows. A stand-out, Katrina #1 (2007) is a cracked, light gray whirlpool of chaos over a predominately black background, suggesting the ordered city of New Orleans descending into the catastrophe of Katrina.

Conviction and Emotion: The Art of Luis Gutierrez from the 1970s to Now is on view at Togonon Gallery, in San Francisco, through June 11, 2011.

Allegra Fortunati holds graduate degrees in Political Science and Art History. She lives and works in San Francisco as a freelance writer for several publications, both local and national.

Assemblage

http://www.artpractical.com/shotgun_review/conviction_and_emotion_the_art_of_luis_gutierrez/

Togonon Gallery had the pleasure of introducing New York-based photographer Dean Dempsey at the opening reception last week.  The exhibition featured photographs from his two series, Artifice and Fragmentations, which were provocative, challenging, and unfamiliar.  Thursday night was filled with lots of high energy and enthusiasm for the artist’s first solo show at the gallery.  Here is a glimpse of the successful turnout at Dean’s opening:

Exhibition: Friday, July 19 to August 19
Opening Reception: July 21

Italian-born, Tokyo-based photographer Leonardo Pellegatta showcases his recent works. He explains: “I have always been interested in the way our memory is tied to the landscape we occupy-both habitually and only briefly, when we are moving through in-between places”.  Pellegatta has exhibited in Paris, Switzerland, Milan and Tokyo.

I had the pleasure of introducing long-time artist, Suzy Barnard to the guests of Togonon Gallery’s reception for the artist and her latest work in the exhibition “Atmospheres and Undercurrents”. She spoke of her focus upon this subject matter, which is one of the oldest classical subjects in painting other than archeological and portraiture. She also revealed that she does not use brushes but palette knives and other similar instruments to layer and scrape the surface in a process that is simultaneously additive and reductive.

Within days of this opening, collectors have claimed several of the paintings. Art critic Kenneth Baker met me at the gallery to view the show as he has viewed her work before and is diligent about following artists that interest him from year to year to evaluated and enjoy their development.

-Rafael Musni

My studio work area is covered in a patina of greyish blue paint, from years of handling colors to do with a water and sky. I scrape and drag oil paint around with tools purchased from the hardware store: mud knives, used for mudding and taping sheetrock.  I used to use brushes, and tried to find the largest sizes I could get my hands on, in order to make broad, uninterrupted sweeps across the panels, but discovered that it was much more efficient to use these flexible blades. Initially, it was a way to simply get the paint on in large areas before swooping the brush across.  I soon found that these tools created effects that brushes were not capable of.  When I am mixing colors, manipulating paint, smearing it around, simultaneously putting it on and taking it off, building up layers, scraping them back down, I am in my element. It’s physical and very messy, and I have to dress from head to toe in paint be-smirched garments.

I look out of my window at Pier 70′s Noonan Building, and scan the water.  There may be many ships out there on any given day, but it’s only when the light and weather are aligned to make them resonate as possible paintings, then I get busy with my camera and document before they shift and the moment is gone. If I’m very lucky, I have a few hours of bliss while the ship stays still, the light stays just right, and I’m poised and ready to paint!  Within moments, though, everything can transform into a completely different scene, simply by the movement of some clouds.  Sometimes I am in a frenzy trying to capture a sequence of amazing changes all at once.  That’s when things become very hectic and messy, and I’m in heaven!  When the view isn’t calling to me, I have a treasure trove of photographs to refer to, which help me remember and conjure up bygone “ah-ha” moments.