Review

April 18, 2012, 8:15am

Holly Coulis’ Fruits and Florals at Cherry and Martin

Walking into Holly Coulis’ solo show at Cherry and Martin, I was surprised to see a majority of large, boldly imagined paintings of flowers, fruits, and vegetable still lifes interspersed with and handful of blurred, dulled landscapes. - Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor

April 13, 2012, 8:15am

Of This World: Tom Green at Curator’s Office

“Time is of the essence now.” Most of us will never fully grasp the weight of Tom Green’s words when he spoke to the Washington Post last December.

April 05, 2012, 8:15am

Sweet Water: Carl Baratta at Lloyd Dobler Gallery

Carl Baratta’s current solo show at Lloyd Dobler Gallery is a fresh blend of old and obscure references. His work is steeped in painting history, the kind that exists in the back corner of the basement section in the library. In his studio you will find printouts of old alchemy prints, Moghul miniatures, and lesser-known Fauvist paintings. Lately Baratta has been using a lot of egg tempera, watercolor, and gouache on panel. The surfaces are rich with layers upon layers of transparent colors that give the illusion of depth while also maintaining a graphic, or illustrative quality.

April 03, 2012, 8:25am

War, Peace, and Cleon Peterson at the Guerrero Gallery

At San Francisco’s Guerrero Gallery, Cleon Peterson’s “The Brinksman” brings viewers into a binary world.  It’s black and white.  It’s black and red.  It’s haves and have-nots.  It’s suitless and suits.  It’s men and women.  And it is completely without boundaries.

Classical statues intersperse a world that has been turned upside down.  People are slaughtered, hung from nooses, decapitated, and wounded throughout the exaggeratedly two-dimensionally flat world framed in Peterson’s paintings.  It is clear that when the “brinksman” are free and on the loose, no one else is.