“For many of us, freeways are a means to get from point A to point B, quickly. We don’t often consider the structure of the thing we’re zooming across (or by) unless we find ourselves stopped on it, wandering under it, or contemplating either its construction or demolition.

But Berlin-based artist Gwenaël Rattke has crafted an entire show around the shape and function of freeways, drawing inspiration from his experiences in Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin and Mexico City. The exhibition, his sixth at San Francisco’s Romer Young Gallery, has the delightfully compound title of Stadtautobahnmeditationen, which translates literally as “City Highway Meditations.”

“Pamela Jorden’s show Forest is full of diptychs, but not the kind of diptychs we’re used to. We’d typically picture two rectangular canvases of equal size hung snugly beside each other, like San Francisco houses and their zero lot lines. Or, in an art historical context, an altarpiece with two hinged sides. But in truth, “diptych” simply means “a work made up of two matching parts.” And in Jorden’s hands, how they those parts match—or fit together—is by no means typical.”

“In Amanda Curreri’s “Terra Tools: Blocks, Clocks, Rocks & Blades” (through July 17 at Romer Young), the artist presents a series of quilted works and two jackets. While living in Cincinnati—she was formerly based in the Bay Area, now in Albuquerque—Curreri culled through the Ohio Lesbian Archives, where she was introduced to “Dinah,” a local lesbian newsletter (1975–97). With many works featuring fabric printed with illustrations from “Dinah,” Curreri fuses elements from lesbian histories that speak to the resourcefulness of craft and her community.”

“It’s hard to keep from crushing on someone who doesn’t reveal their whole self. Each painting practices a kind of formal restraint, limiting itself to a family of hues. The colors in her paintings, while rich, don’t overwhelm the subtlety of each composition. These are off-colors, further muted by sitting alongside other shapes just a shade or two different from themselves.”

“Of course, Ferguson, based in Brooklyn, doesn’t spend her time riding Muni buses or waiting for the N-Judah (ahem). But the graphics that surely inspired Landor—Op art, Bay Area psychedelia—are, in turn, some of Ferguson’s reference points. Applying her patterns to a variety of media and with a joyful selection of colors, she tests their potency and effect. The results are mildly, wonderfully hypnotic.”

"While its name conjures images of roving canines, the only wild things you’re likely to find in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood are the gang of intrepid young art dealers who have set up shop in the formerly forgotten bayside section of the city." (read more)

ELISE FERGUSON

Maria Porges reviews Citron
art ltd. Magazine, Jan/Feb 2017
v. 11 no. 1

"In her second solo show at Romer Young Gallery, Elise Ferguson continues her exploration of Op-esque architectural abstractions rendered in a magnetically attractive palette of soft, rich colors balanced with blacks, grays and creams. Made using a process that is as sculptural as it is painterly, these 21st century ‘portable frescoes’ offer very different viewing experiences from a distance and from close up." (read more)

SHARA HUGHES

Dodie Kazanjian
VOGUE, September 2016
How Small-Scale Paintings Become
the Art World's Big New Trend


"Shara Hughes, who was born in Atlanta, is a 35-year-old graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. She paints in a small, windowless studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A visit there reveals a room chock-full of colorful, wildly idiosyncratic fantasy landscapes. She’s wearing overalls and a white T-shirt and has several discreet tattoos—a sun and moon on her right wrist and a 3-D red cube on her left forearm." (read more)

"Many of the highlights of the fair are installations, which include... a floor consuming piece by Ryan Wallace with Romer Young Gallery of San Francisco..." (read more)

"Echoing the materiality of Robert Rauschenberg and the restraint of Frank Stella, Wallace's "LD50" remixes art history to make something new. As views meander by three large scale paintings, they also walk across the work-treading tiles of the same tape, vinyl, plaster and debris that are recombined in the hanging works.”
(read more)

"A heavy dose of recycling: Consider this trash transformed. New York artist Ryan Wallace has scavenged construction materials, plaster, concrete, tape, tarp, vinyl and powdered metal to make new paintings, sculptures and a site-specific installation for his first solo exhibit at Romer Young Gallery, “Ryan Wallace: LD50.” (read more)

"In his first solo show at Romer Young Gallery, New York artist Ryan Wallace has filled the space with junk. Wallace has accumulated a hoard of construction materials - Hydrocal, plaster, Plexiglas, lead, enamel, tape, and more—into his new sculptures, paintings, and a sitespecific installation for LD50. Swinging freely yet comfortably between the poles of chaos and order, composed and unintentional, Wallace’s process seems intuitive." (read more)