The Rise of the Second City: East Bay Curators Reclaim Style of the City Ho
By Petra Bibeau
The Rise of the Second City: East Bay Curators Reclaim Style of the City Ho By Petra Bibeau
Eric Groff, …And Whitey’s Still On The Moon (DETAIL), 2004, photo: P. Dahl
After decades of shadow dwelling, the East Bay emerges to ignite the Bay Area art scene like never before. With "Curate This", hosted by the Richmond Art Center through November 5th, organizers invited curators of six East Bay alternative art spaces to design mini exhibitions showcasing the emerging arts and art spaces of the East Bay. Make no mistake, this is not San Francisco but a glance into the large underground network of artists in the East Bay, most notably in the city of Oakland.
The East Bay art scene, firm in its status as anti-garde, has used the historical negative to its advantage, developing its own style independent of mainstream art trends. Considering its semi-anonymity, the East Bay exploded as a breeding ground for independent curators working out of abandoned West Oakland warehouses or defunct storefronts in the downtown as well as artists drawing inspiration from Oakland’s street culture and historic rebelliousness. New galleries began to surge: 21 Grand, Ego Park, Liminal and Mama Buzz Caf� quickly became synonymous with the underground art district along side the established Cricket Engine and Berkeley based Epic Arts. Possibly the most important exhibition to grace the Bay Area this year, "Curate This" gives a heads up to a larger arts community, beyond the Golden State, of things to come from the Oakland Bay Area.
As a curatorial proposal "Curate This" is undeniably creative, absolutely necessary and provides an extensive introduction to the curators, artists and art of one South Berkeley (Epic Arts) and five Oakland based (Cricket Engine, Liminal, Ego Park, Mama Buzz Caf� and 21 Grand) alternative art spaces that have taken the reins in developing a niche and voice for the East Bay art scene. The exhibition uncovers some of the brightest emerging artists in the East Bay who have created their own art center within the city borders. More exciting: all are non-profit and co-exist to work as part of a larger community effort.
Embodied in the art and style displayed in "Curate This" is a strong sense of pride for Oakland as both a major west coast city as well as a neighborhood. However, the envisioning of the city and its artistic future is more complex than personal: the art seems married to the mission of raising the city, going well beyond aesthetics. Working with discarded trash, community redevelopment, the decrying of the second city status and the redesigning of the positive in civic minded activism, the art is action bound and highly energized.
"Curate This" is completely over stimulating: from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, the RAC packs a hard punch at space efficiency. The art is fresh and honest, gritty and demanding, homebred and refreshingly original in the most organic sense. Four remarkable artists to watch and no less admire: Justin Artifice (2), Kevin Slagle and Erik Groff stand out as superstars of form, space and commune. The distinct style of Artifice, Slagle and Groff are immediate indicators of the brilliant pioneering that can deliver the East Bay out of its disproportionate status in the international art world.
Justin Artifice, chosen to represent 21 Grand per curator Darren Jenkins, is actually two artists that share the namesake and the mission of developing artistic cultural depictions over boarded up or abandoned buildings in order to elevate the city’s depreciated sections that have been left to crime and devastation. Geoff Dorn and Tim Martinez excel as savvy guides to the city via public art installations placed in the landscape. It is no surprise that Justin Artifice has received notoriety for their practice in Oakland: the art is atypically awesome, known primarily to the Oakland art community, and not necessarily expected by the greater audience beyond the immediate region from a ‘conservative’ art center such as the SF Bay Area.
Artifice’s Sunrise Over Oakland and 20 Foot Boxes work well to set the course for an exhibition highlighting the city’s culture. Sunrise Over Oakland, a massive wall installation depicting the industrious port of Oakland against a backdrop of hot orange and neon green city skyline, and 20 Foot Boxes, small scale models of shipping containers displaying the moniker "Justin Artifice," act as a symbolic part of the city’s past converging with a fresh vein of Oakland culture. If the essence of the neighborhood known as Oakland is what Artifice is after, they capture it brilliantly without distorting the unique nature of the daily. The familiar are more than versatile: for Oaklanders it is the narrative affect of the landscape and industry, for outsiders it is a great starting point to the cityhood of Oakland and its proud representatives.
Erik Groff can easily be called a master of space. Representing curator Devin Satterfield’s Liminal, one of the few warehouse-turned-art-space calling West Oakland home, Groff delivers more intimacy and escapade with cardboard and various recycled materials than ever thought possible in such a small area with the mixed media installation "…And Whitey’s Still On The Moon". With an obvious eye for design and statement, Groff constructs a grand image of a cityscape built like a leaning tower, bordering on chaos and overkill from floor to ceiling while amazingly maintaining the still of a city caught only in an image, perhaps a postcard. While the cityscape doubles as a stage for Groff’s multidisciplinary art of , (painting and sculpture pieces grace the ledges of the installation), the opposite side of the installation omits any restriction and almost force-feeds a voyeuristically appealing, abandoned back alley scene upon the viewer.
Groff captures an investigative humanity, leaving the viewer to seek and find among the goods which include graffiti, doctored political flyers, scattered leaves, an occupied clothesline and a trash can containing a steering wheel among other discarded remnants. But the main feature is how Groff creates a space that owns so much of the personal, as in Groff’s signature style, that the viewer receives ‘visitor only’ status. It’s possible the heavy transitional stages in Groff’s work may stem from his practice of installing public art in less than hospitable public spaces, spaces his website refers to as "disputed territories". The insightful and thoughtful action that becomes part of the spaces is very apparent and reads as an invitation to a most personal dwelling space. Un-assumed presence and temporary installment make Groff’s work fleeting and time dependent, acting out its purpose to forgo stability for the hostile reality of the transitory nature found in urban life.
Ego Park curator Kevin Slagle’s installation "The Bus Driver’s Funeral" is breathtaking. A mature design that tries to maintain reservation, Slagle’s style is on par with a neo-minimalist tendency. "The Bus Driver’s Funeral" consists of wooden boards in various sizes and colors with nails, cracked paint and weather distortions left in tact aligned to create an angular barrier. Though very reminiscent of Donald Judd, Slagle’s independent method is non conformist, gritty and casts a solemn strike at the ‘hipness’ of the art world without throwing a fit. Slagle’s art is cool, clean, without argument and retains a compelling style. While notably the most traditional of the art shown, Slagle’s unique style comes across as developed, intentional and strong.
The recent attention to the East Bay art scene in many ways reissues the city of Oakland as a major art center, very different from San Francisco. It is a fair assessment: the art of the East Bay lacks competition, is less conservative, and holds tightly to a regionalism typically disapproved of in art world. Similar to underground art centers in DC and pre-gentrified Brooklyn, Oakland has deep roots and neighborhood style that defies pretense for a hand-to-mouth reality that makes for diverse, wild art with staying power.
