BERKELEY, California — Berkeley’s unusually large population of giant Bonsai-like trees has caught my attention since moving from Brooklyn. Why are they here and what do they mean?
Continue Reading →Ben Valentine
Hailing from Indiana, Ben Valentine moved to Brooklyn a year and a half ago. Now working for Tara Donovan and Allan McCollum, interning for Creative Time and Hyperallergic, Ben has immersed himself in the contemporary art world. Ben is interested in public art, the internet's potential and in learning how to write and think about art without becoming a snob.
All articles by Ben Valentine
Ben Valentine
BERKELEY, California — When I visited The Compound Gallery and Studios in North Oakland, it was the first time I felt like I was back in Brooklyn’s art scene since I moved to California. The multipurpose space was very active and full of art projects, ranging from a residency program, to different gallery spaces and artists in the studio actively creating. This exciting arena, like those alternative spaces in Gowanus or Bushwick, is a place I will definitely be frequenting.
Continue Reading →
BERKELEY, California — Artists Julius von Bismark and Julien Charriere have teamed up to create a hilarious installation first in Venice and now in Copenhagen entitled, “Some Pigeons Are More Equal than Others” (2012). The performative work exists on multiple levels: a hanging sculpture (pictured below) captures and holds the pigeons on a conveyor belt, then airbrushes the birds in a rainbow of iridescent colors only to release them back into the city. The colorful and playful piece takes place at different platforms and settings ranged around the cities in lands in.
Continue Reading →
Currently on view at the Oakland Museum of California is The 1968 Exhibit, which focuses on the culture of that unforgettable year. Organized by the Minnesota History Center, the Atlanta History Center, the Chicago History Museum, and the Oakland Museum, this expansive show explores the tumultuous year whose highlights include human space travel, the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the rise of the Black Panthers, the Beatles, and hippie culture, the first wide use of plastics, and many other things.
Continue Reading →
Just north of UC Berkeley’s campus, hidden away in a small patch of woods, is the Berkeley Art Center, currently showing the exhibition Local Treasures: Bay Area Ceramics. Wanting to know more about the Bay Area’s art scene — craft included — I felt compelled to visit. The beautiful, small building has quiet grounds sprinkled with larger ceramic works. The current show includes eleven artists working in clay, with pieces ranging from simple functional pots to complex installations. The exhibition is an eclectic grouping of artists who most likely wouldn’t be shown together if not for the local theme.
Continue Reading →
BERKELEY, California — Ratio 3 gallery’s new show of work by Lutz Bacher is a must see. The large, skylight-lit, raw gallery space is perfect for Bacher’s captivating installation of audio, visual, and sculptural work. Upon entering the gallery one immediately focuses on the small black spheres scattered about the floor. After a hesitant test, the black orbs turn out to be squishy balls. Along the walls are framed black and white astronomy prints cut out from a book. As one weaves their way through the balls (or in my case, kicked my way until I was asked to avoid touching the work) the visual connection between the galactic formations and the floor installation was obvious.
Continue Reading →
SAN FRANCISCO — Lyndi Sales’s show Apperception at Toomey Tourell Fine Art is a beautiful study in intricate complexity and light. Despite its prettiness, the work has an undertone of desperation; the artist started the series after being diagnosed with an astigmatism, a defect in the eye’s curvature that causes a distortion in images, commonly referred to as “ghosting.”
Continue Reading →
BERKELEY, California — Keeping Time is a large group exhibition at Kala Gallery documenting and exploring creative ways of expressing or marking time from the obvious to the poetic. Although the science of keeping time has fascinated many for centuries, the intensely subjective nature of experiential time was felt in this rather chaotic exhibition.
Continue Reading →
Although photographs have always been altered, new tools and the pervasiveness of images have made a skeptical viewer. Still, photography’s power holds strong.
Continue Reading →
I don’t actively seek out photographs and films documenting Detroit’s decay. Detroit ruin porn could be cast as a useful reminder that no city is invincible, but in recent years the sheer quantity of photographs coming out of Detroit hasn’t felt remotely empowering. The images of the destruction are sad and offer no sense of a desire to change the problem, or suggestions for how that could even be done. However, I wanted to give the new documentary Detropia, made by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, the creators of the bone-chilling documentary Jesus Camp, a chance. I figured if anyone could investigate and show a Detroit outsider what it means to be in Detroit, it would be them.
Continue Reading →
