Contemporary art thrives in dynamic city life, so the tone of this
group show at Chandra Cerrito Gallery is unsurprisingly downtown
(or, perhaps, considering the gallery location, uptown): traffic,
high-rises, construction, deserted spaces, and the semiological,
semi-illogical collage of street life. Urban Matrix is an
eclectic show that doesn’t exceed the sum of its parts and, in
addition, is curiously devoid of any human presence. But the work of
artists Steve Bird, Kathryn Kenworth, Daniel
Nevers, Robert Tomlinson, and Tyson Kent Washburn is
innovative, well-crafted, and worth viewing.
Bird’s panoramic pre-9/11 photograph “NYC/WTC” is the largest piece
in the show, forming a tent-size cylinder that one enters through a
small doorway. Taken from the top of the World Trade Center 2, it
presents a breathtaking vista of Manhattan’s skyline, the East River,
the bridges, the side of the North Tower, and, of course, part of the
roof of the South Tower. (Incidentally, its rampart bears the
signatures of funambulist Philippe Petit with the August 4, 1974, date
of his high-wire stroll, the subject of a recent documentary film, and
of “human fly” George Willig, who climbed up its side on May 25, 1977.)
It’s a melancholy subject now, but the photograph remains nevertheless
exhilarating, and, for the acrophobic, challenging to behold. Kenworth
takes a more intimate and conceptual view of modern life with her
realistic renderings of recycling-outfitted pickup trucks set against
blank backgrounds, a cartoonishly proportioned cardboard model
(statue?) of one of these trucks, and a model of clustered cardboard
boxes full of recycling-ready cardboard. Nevers plays with construction
materials: his wall of stacked cinder blocks, “Cinderfella,” with its
door cutout, is held together by nylon straps, pitifully inadequate in
an earthquake, and perhaps a reminder of human pratfalls (whether or
not its title refers to Jerry Lewis’s eponymous film); “Fallacy (Well
Hung),” a knotted plastic tube from which concrete oozes, is absolutely
clear about its anatomical referents, with perhaps a nod to Bruce
Nauman’s “Bound to Fail” crossed arms. Tomlinson prints black-and-white
photographs of abstract patterns, some of which resemble hieroglyphics,
with photogram elements added during exposure; he then paints squiggly
shapes on them, creating a curious hybrid space between flatness and
depth: Cubist graffiti. Washburn takes black-and-white photographs of
Peninsula walls, fences, and empty parking lots — “the manmade
wilderness;” composition and lighting infuse these austere subjects
with mystery and beauty. Urban Matrix runs through March 28 at
Chandra Cerrito Gallery (25 Grand Ave., Oakland). ChandraCerrito.com/ccc or
415-577-7537.
