Saturday, April 7, 2012

Empires and Images

On Thursday, I went with a Meetup group to the art galleries (small but numerous) at the 49 Geary, focusing on the 4th and 5th floors. The art was modern, which meant most of it did not move me, but two galleries caught my attention and my favor.

The Robert Koch Gallery was exhibiting an exhibit called "Photos of Fallen Empires," created by the Israeli photographer Shai Kremer. The Middle East has seen so many empires and kingdoms rise and fall that the detritus from their structures is abundant whenever the next empire did not reuse the materials. The juxtaposition of Iron Age ruins and Israeli military bases raises some questions about the permanency of the current State of Israel.

The other exhibit I liked was in the Gregory Lind Gallery. "Remainders" is an exhibit of Leigh Wells' work in collage. I had never considered that collage could be aggressively three-dimensional: the image of "collage" in my head has always been an image composed of two-dimensional paper. I asked Ms Wells if there were a theme to the exhibit; she said there was not, but that she had listened to the materials and shaped the displays accordingly. I found that interesting, since that is not the way my mind works. I feel the need to impose some degree of order on whatever academic materials I am examining.

I considered buying a copying of Fred Lyon's San Francisco Then, but decided I need to investigate further before buying.

Afterwards, the group went to Pomodoro Pizza, but I'll save those comments for YELP.

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