Say goodbye to new refined energy

Closing Celebration Saturday evening 7-10pm 

Cold Boy’s Fire/Digital Physical

Bryan Morello and Augustus Thompson

Curated by Antonia Marsh

www.bryanmorello.com

www.augustusthompson.com

The 2013 Adobe Books Blitz is underway!

The 2013 Adobe Books Blitz is underway!

There are only 6 days left to contribute to the Adobe Indiegogo campaign: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-adobe-books.  

If we don't raise this money, Adobe books will close its doors.  It's that simple.  Please help!

But hey! Why not acquire a beautiful, original work of art while also donating to the cause?

A major facet of our fundraising effort is taking the form of The Great Adobe Ebay Auction which went LIVE today at 3pm. The current auction round will only last for 48 hours, so visit this link asap to browse and bid:http://myworld.ebay.com/adobebooks. All proceeds go to the fundraising effort. 

We've just added artwork listing by some amazing artists: Mitzi Pederson, Randy Colosky, Castle Face Records, Kelly Lynn Jones, Vogtsmith, Jesse Schlesinger, Alena Rudolph, Chris Corales, and Colter Jacobsen. Stayed tun ed for more to be added soon!

Also, check out this great event coming up on Monday to benefit the shop! Donate at least $20 through this Indiegogo link and gain entry to a truly amazing benefit concert on Monday, March 11th at Public Works, including sets by The Dodos, Adam Stevens, Andy Cabic, and more! 

Please note that this is a sliding scale admission price - it's a benefit, so the more you can contribute, the better for Adobe! 

Thanks, SFWeekly!

Email Katie with any questions: morgankatie@gmail.com.

Forthcoming

Cold Boy’s Fire / Digital Physical

Adobe Books Back Room Gallery

March 13 – 31 2013

Opening Tuesday March 12^th 7-10pm

Closing Celebration Saturday March 30^th 7-10pm

This exhibition will bring together the work of Augustus Thompson (b.1985) and Bryan Morello (b.1988) for the first time. Examining new methods of self-portraiture, the works included constitute traces or secretions from projects past that, exhibited anew, conjure new narratives and meaning through mode of display and juxtaposition.
In LA-based Thompson’s latest installation, the artist takes on the role of organizer and collagist of cultural information in order to initiate a dialogue about the self. Building an archival self-portrait by appropriating images from various sources including social media feeds, music videos and texts, the artist layers printed works upon one another to form a floor-based collage.

For Digital Physical, Thompson returns selected prints to the wall of the gallery, where they can be understood autonomously and in conversation with Morello’s own self-study. Compositions where Chicago rapper Chief Keef’s Instagram ‘selfies’ meet aerial shots of the Grand Canyon taken from airplane windows, are superimposed on images of the artist’s studio, construction sites and consumer objects the artist finds desirable to create semi-abstract compositions. The result is a personal image stream that seems to represent an attempt to come to terms with the speed at which image streams themselves undulate and flow, and affect our contemporaneous visual landscape.

San Francisco native Morello will create a new wall-based sculpture for Cold Boy’s Fire, based on a monologue the artist wrote for and performed at alternative mobile exhibition space ALTAR last month.

The installation at Adobe Books Back Room Gallery will comprise sections of text from the script of the performance integrated into a stage-like sculpture. Investigating different temporalities of absorbing poetry, words written for recital return to their textual genesis and invite a new kind of contemplation from the viewer.

This exhibition is guest curated by Antonia Marsh, a writer and independent curator from London, currently completing a Masters in Curatorial Practice in California College of the Arts, San Francisco.

http://augustusthompson.com/

http://www.bryanmorello.com/

--

Raphael Villet and Sean Vranizan
Opening Saturday April 5, 2013 

All the Help You Can Get

addendum

"When you first see a new picture you are very careful because you may be staring at van Gogh's ear." Rene Ricard 

Carletta Sue Kay sings

photos Michelle Guintu

November 2011

Keep It Cherried, a two-person exhibition featuring artists Michelle Guintu and Joe Roberts. The show marked these San Francisco artists’ first exhibition at the Backroom Gallery, brought together based on their shared impulse to create through their own obsessions. Based on inherently introverted personal infatuations, the artists presented painting, drawing, and low-budget assemblage. 

Making something out of nothing is a prime artistic act. Neither harbor pretensions about their work or the impetus that pushes them to create. 

Michelle Guintu combines facets of cultural identification and transcendent personal expression, without polish or refinement. Everyday cultural detritus (R. Kelly, McDonalds, Sonic The Hedgehog, canon of Abstraction) realize new potentials in their transformations. The collusion of the discarded distills a Lynchian consciousness, rendering a surreal and nightmarish craft.

“Joe Roberts is a stoney-eyed, scrapped out genius and he’s done art for some of my favorite records in recent memory besides. I can’t exactly say he throws wild parties, yet somehow I’m always at his house when they happen. He’s not allowed inside any bar that I’ve ever tried to meet him at. Yet somehow he’s like the giggly heart of it all, speaking out of the side of his mouth like “you need to be IN on this shit”, like somehow halfway through a pudding-pack he just figured out the connection between Hanna-Barbera and the JFK assassination.” —Matt Jones

Organized by Daniella Fernandez Murphy xo

Friday the 13th

FOUR DIMENSIONAL _____ IN 4D 
REDUX

Hunger, hunger, sister Anne, leave me if you can

VALLEY
Bay Area off-ness: artist Shalo P offered up a dense array of lowlands that lie inside.
An ensemble of surprisingly supple relationships (and ultimately an ode to Sister Spread.)