Robert Minervini, “Crystal Palace”, 2019. Image courtesy of Local Language.

November 1 to December 28– Robert Minervini: Crystal Place at Local Language: The exhibition is an investigation into our relationship to objects, landscape, and the act of looking. The viewer is presented with window-like displays of silhouetted still-life objects camouflaged into an idyllic landscape. The relationship between foreground and background is obscured in the imagery: flatness and illusionistic space slip in and out of focus as one grapples with the distinction between inside and outside, and as distance and proximity vie for position and prominence. Crystal Palace exhibits two distinct series of artworks. One series is comprised of printing and painting on linen, introducing digital elements to recent works by the artist. The other series utilizes CNC-cut aluminum components arranged to bring the aluminum shapes and printed forms of the paintings into shallow relief. Both series conjure themes of displacement and reflection on nature while simultaneously exploring the tension between digital and analogue. Local Language is located at 477 25th Street in Oakland. 

Opening Reception: Friday, November 1, 6-10pm

Eamon Ore-Giron, “Infinite Regress LXXIII”, 2019. Image courtesy of Friends Indeed Gallery.

November 2 to December 13– Outrunning the Race at Friends Indeed Gallery: This group show, featuring artists Tauba Auerbach and Hiro Kone, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Donna Haraway, Michael Jang, David Kasprzak, Nion McEvoy Jr., Eamon Ore-Giron, Gala Porras-Kim, Jesse Schlesinger, Gabriel Sierra, Bradley Ward, and David Weiss, contemplates the limitations of consciousness. Outrunning the Race muses over a dog howling in protest to the limits of its own consciousness. The show equalizes, if not privileges, flora and fauna over airs and ego, takes a closer look at the supernatural in nature, and considers the threshold of mind, and the longing to escape our bodies and morph into forms of otherness. The exhibition conceives of nature’s worth, exuberant beauty, simple complexity, and its flourishing without human intervention. Friends Indeed Gallery is located at 716 Sacramento Street in San Francisco.

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2, 1-3pm

Keith Secola, “Wounds Many”, 2019. Image courtesy of The San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries.

Ongoing to December 13– Keith Secola, Wounds Many: Portraits of the Northern Ute at The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery: Keith Secola centers his practice on illuminating a deep dive into his family lineage, and also showcasing members of the Northern Ute community. Excavating and discovering, his work balances contemporary life, art strategies and techniques with historical documentation and traditional creative practices through the merging of printmaking, archival photography, illustrations, and murals sourced from Native American life. In this exhibition, Secola screen prints images from his family archive onto collaged and deconstructed American history books, which reinserts and layers Native identities on top of dominant narratives created by non-indigenous writers. By highlighting his ancestors, Secola uses his personal narrative to bring to the fore a discussion of complex and difficult subject matters like oppression, assimilation, and the loss of culture. The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.

Chris Russell, “Higher Ground”, 2019. Image courtesy of Eleanor Harwood Gallery.

November 2 to December 14– Wild Flowers: Chris Russell at Eleanor Harwood Gallery: Starting from experiences outside, Russell’s large landscape paintings are done within his studio, building up through gestural layers of oil paint. The work flows from realism to mysticism, as he plays with the medium and incorporates studio time with observation outside. The show reflects Russell’s exploration of and bewilderment by the wild beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Eleanor Harwood Gallery is located at 1275 Minnesota Street.

Artist Talk: Saturday, November 2, 2pm

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2, 6-8pm

Pamela Joden, “Falling, Flowing, Still”, 2019. Image courtesy of Romer Young Gallery.

November 2 to December 14– Falling, Flowing, Still: Pamela Jorden at Romer Young Gallery: Jorden’s newest paintings gesture towards landscape, movement, and time. Neutral brown linen, reminiscent of the color of the sandy soil of Southern California, serves as a ground for layered washes, spills, and fades that recall atmospheric conditions. Particles of pigment disperse across this ground like the sediment in alluvial flows, leaving behind a textured history of movement. Through pouring oil washes over pools of acrylic paint, Jorden records her bodily relationship with the painting process. The paintings are indexical markers of what has been stretched, pulled, turned, and absorbed. The work abandons the standard rectangle as well as the brushstroke to allow a less predictable outcome. Each diptych becomes a harmonic-friction of two shapes pushed together, creating a center line that is at once literal and implied. Fluid and organic, the result is a reassembly of a dynamic landscape of shifting focus conveying the immediacy of granular detail and the vastness of geologic time. Romer Young Gallery is located at 1240 22nd Street in San Francisco.

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2, 2-5pm

Leonardo Drew, “Number 74S”, 2019. Image courtesy of Anthony Meier Fine Arts.

Ongoing to November 22– Leonardo Drew at Anthony Meier Fine Arts: In a departure from his expressive wood sculptures, Brooklyn-based artist Leonardo Drew presents a body of work made entirely of cotton. A nod to his monumental sculptures of the early 1990s, the four works that comprise the exhibition exemplify his lasting commitment to the grid-like form while showcasing his adeptness in a varying range of scales. In a not-so-subtle reference, Drew has returned to cotton – historically the product of America’s slavery past – at a time when our nation is once again negotiating the implications and reality of racism past and present. Anthony Meier Fine Arts is located at 1969 California Street in San Francisco.

Artist Reception: Wednesday, November 6, 5-7pm

Barbara Jones-Hogu, “Unite”, 1971. Image courtesy of the deYoung Museum.

November 9 to March 15– Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 at the de Young museum: This internationally acclaimed exhibition, organized by Tate Modern, celebrates art made by Black artists during two pivotal decades when issues of race and identity dominated and defined both public and private discourse. The de Young’s presentation includes a focus on Bay Area artists whose work promoted personal and cultural pride, collective solidarity and empowerment, and political and social activism. The de Young museum is located in Golden Gate Park at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in San Francisco.

(left) Sherwin Rio, “TRUE TEMPER (DEAD WEIGHT)”, 2017. (right) Michael Arcega, “Lexical Borrowing: Saw Horse by the Sea Shore – Understanding Manifest Destiny”, 2015. Images courtesy of SJSU Department of Art and Art History.

November 12 to February 21– BoundarySpan at San José State University’s Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery:  In a time of increasing divisiveness, separation, polarization, and fortified walls, artists can serve critical roles in building indirect associations, nurturing connections, and reminding us of the importance of considering a multitude of perspectives. BoundarySpan is a group exhibition displaying works by artists Michael Arcega, Jimin Lee, Paula Levine, Sherwin Rio, and Desiree Rios. Through an exploration of physical and conceptual boundaries and how those relate to power dynamics, the flow of capital, societal divisiveness, and Othering, these artists use their intellectual capacity, social connections, and personal histories to reduce the degree of human separation. SJSU’s Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery is located at 1 Washington Square in San José.

Opening Reception: Tuesday, November 12, 6-7:30pm

Artist Presentations: 

Sherwin Rio: Tuesday, November 12, 5-6pm

Michael Arcega: Tuesday, November 19, 5-6pm

View from last years event. Image courtesy of SFAI.

Sunday, November 16, 1 to 6pm– SFAI Concentrate + Student Art Sale at San Francisco Art Institute: This annual festival and art sale is a daylong event that celebrates artists and community. SFAI is transformed into an all-campus art sale by current undergraduate and graduate student artists. Come for diverse offerings in art, enlivening conversation, local food and drink, and celebrating emerging artists. The event is open to all and features work for sale by 100+ student-artists. The student art sale offers work in a variety of media including painting, drawing, collage, photography, printmaking, editioned works, crafts, sculpture, mixed media and more. San Francisco Art Institute is located at 800 Chestnut Street in San Francisco.

Stephanie Syjuco, “Dodge and Burn (Visible Storage)”, 2019. Image courtesy of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

Wednesday, November 20, 7pm– Artist Lecture: Stephanie Syjuco at Mills College Art Museum’s Danforth Lecture Hall: Stephanie Syjuco creates large-scale spectacles of collected cultural objects, cumulative archives, and temporary vending installations, often with an active public component that invites viewers to directly participate as producers or distributors. Using critical wit and collaborative co-creation, her projects leverage open-source systems, shareware logic, and flows of capital, in order to investigate issues of economies and empire. Mills College Art Museum is located at 5000 MacArthur Blvd in Oakland.