Hyperallergic Is JSTChillin’ in San Francisco This Weekend

Hyperallergic contributor Artie Vierkant is in San Francisco this weekend; here are some of his top picks for art events that are not to be missed.

If you happen to be in San Francisco this weekend, now is the time to head out and see some truly great exhibitions.  Friday through Sunday is packed with some very unique events.

Friday 16 April
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery – RGB Forever, Solo Exhibition by Parker Koo Ito

Parker Ito has been getting significant attention on the Internet and in galleries for his striking takes on Internet culture (and an artist statement that could very well define a generation of Internet artists).  From the gallery’s website:

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery is pleased to present RGB Forever, Parker Ito’s first solo exhibition. The title refers to RGB color space, an additive color mode viewed on all computer screens in which red, green and blue, combine to create over 16 million different colors. RGB is also Ito’s metaphor for new mindsets and attitudes about contemporary culture that have emerged out of the pervasiveness of the Internet. For Ito, the Internet is an abyss of readymade artifacts open for excavation, interpretation, and reclamation. In the Backroom Gallery, he will present painting and video works in which Internet ephemera salvaged from both high and low Web culture is translated into new forms.

One highlight of this show will be Ito’s painting “The Most Infamous Girl in the History of the Internet” (2010), the second in a series of paintings of JPEGs commissioned by the artist from art-outsourcing companies in Asia. “Most Infamous Girl” is an oil rendering of a JPEG that many people may be familiar with without even realizing it: one of the most widely-used stock photographs on the Internet, a photo of a smiling girl carrying a backpack — described by Ito as Warhol’s Marilyn for the Internet age.

Saturday 17 April
NOMA Gallery – AVATAR 4D, curated by Caitlin Denny and Parker Ito (as JSTChillin’)

Over the last year, Parker Ito and Caitlin Denny have run JSTChillin’, an Internet-based curatorial project seeking to collapse the boundaries between artist and curator.  The project instantiates its first exhibition in an IRL-gallery space this Saturday at NOMA Gallery (simultaneously presented at Reference Gallery in Richmond, VA), featuring performances and other works by:

Ann Hirsch, Ben Vickers, Brad Troemel & Lauren Christiansen (The Jogging), Bryan Morello, Chris Coy (Seecoy), Duncan Malashock, Elna Frederick, Guthrie Lonergan, Iain Ball, Jon Rafman, Justin Kemp, Michelle Ceja, Mitch Trale, Petra Cortright, Ryder Ripps, Zach Shipko, PWR PAPER, Brenna Murphy, Lindsay Lawson & Stewart Uoo, Caitlin Denny, Parker Ito.

Sunday 18 April
2nd Floor Projects – STILL AT LARGE STOP LAST SEEN AT MIRA MESA CHILIS STOP, Solo exhibition by Rich Bott (closing reception)

Rich Bott gained notoriety in the 1990s as one half of the video art duo Animal Charm (with Jim Fetterley), sampling and remixing mass media from television and VHS tapes into savvy, irreverent takes on popular culture and American consumerism.

In recent years, Bott has begun to make a name for himself as a solo artist. The works presented at 2nd Floor Projects come from several separate but related series, all possessing the same layered cultural critique that gave Animal Charm its lasting impression. For instance, “Mission Tan” (2010) is a large charcoal drawing (with a difference — the charcoal drawing is layered over a large-format digital print, lending an eerie noir realism) depicting an inherent irony: a popular tanning salon located in the heart of Southern California. In his Telegraphic Shake Down series, Bott presents a similar irony: a grouping of typed telegraph messages openly making reference to the Internet, iPods, and other staples of contemporary technology that seem deliberately out of place in Bott’s absurd constructions.