Art Seen

By Patricia B. Dwyer

8/16-10/8: “Prints and Designs, 1965 - Present” by John Van Hamersveld
.T.F.R. Gallery, Encinitas, tfrgallery.com
Through his 1960s movie and concert posters, John Van Hamersveld captured the era’s radical intersection of rock ‘n’ roll and drug culture.

8/31-9/21: “Fast Thoughts for Short Attention Spans” by Joshua Callaghan, John Kilduff and J. Nolan
SPACE 4 ART, East Village, sdspace4art.org
Three Southern California artists (who will perform live during their show’s opening night) collaborated to create this exhibition of how today’s fast-paced minds have birthed subversions like sexting and fast food.

9/5-10/6: “Thuppathome” by Matthew Land, Invisible God and Acamonchi
Park Gallery, University Heights, facebook.com/parkgallery
Street artists Invisible God, Acamonchi and Matthew Land display their paintings, screen prints and mixed media pieces in this super awesome (hint: say the title of the show out loud, as if you had a lithp) showcase.

9/7-9/19: “The Show” by Zard One
VISUAL, Normal Heights, visualshopsd.com
Zard One has been spraying paint onto San Diego walls since the 1980s. These days, he sticks to purist graffiti ideals with his “wildstyle” work (those awesome hip-hop-inspired, unintelligible words seen spray-painted near freeways and the like), but also tampers with new wave “graffuturism” pieces that take graffiti to new, abstract levels.

9/11-10/5: “You and I, and the Worlds Between Us” by the PRISMA Artist Collective
Art Hatch, Escondido, arthatch.org
A select group of the 30 traditional and digital painters who comprise the PRISMA Artist Collective will show their work at this exhibition that blurs the lines between the two media.

9/13-10/13: “Anium” by Charles Bergquist
Subtext Gallery, Little Italy, subtextgallery.com
By combining design, photography, film, motion graphics and 3D renderings, San Diego artist Charles Bergquist creates vivid, abstract works that look like wisps of neon smoke extending into ethereal settings.

9/21-10/2: Bret Barrett
VISUAL, Normal Heights, visualshopsd.com
Lowbrow/pop-surrealist art was born in Southern California in the late 1990s, and Barrett has been on the train since Day One, creating art about time travel, insects and aliens, all encased in light-hearted imagery. Barrett also plays with moving “kinetic” sculptures and sometimes adds moving pieces to his paintings.

9/21-1/12: Scripps on Prospect: Evolution of Villa and Cottage
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, mcasd.org
In a nostalgic exploration of architecture and local history, the Museum of Modern Art San Diego in La Jolla and the La Jolla Historical Society examine the histories of their respective buildings. Both structures were built in the early 1900s and have collected incredible stories spanning from when they were Scripps family residences to the cultural centers they are today.

9/21-1/12: “Sea of Cortez” by Dana Montlack
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, mcasd.org
Inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Log from Sea of Cortez, this photographer spent time at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography to photograph oceanic specimens, onto which she overlaps her own images to creating a new form of taxonomy.

9/24-2/1: “Struck by Modernism” by C. Carl Jennings
Mingei International Museum, Balboa Park, mingei.org
A pioneer of the artistic blacksmith movement of the 1970s, C. Carl Jennings has received little recognition for his modern mastery of the archaic, labor-intensive craft of ironworking.