Written By John Cha/ DeusExMachina76
An event at SPACE on Polk St. in San Francisco brought a fashion show as the kinetic, organic feature and background for Owen Geronimo’s newest canvas manifestations of his mind’s eye. Unlike the more Rococo functions that abound in the new San Francisco fashion scene that mimic the extravagance of New York, LA, and Europe, this event was far more art show than catwalk. Yet, the scene was replete with a motley crew of both high class patrons in de rigueur city clothes as well as gritty SOMA/Mission artists in their de rigueur hipster and non-conformist regalia. This event certainly took a fresh if somewhat ominous and avant garde turn.
The first floor of the hybrid dive-bar and upscale art gallery seemed to frame Owen’s pieces as if the two were meant for each other. The notions of “Inferno” struck me first as what would happen if Joan Miro went through a hellish emotional crisis under Jackson Pollock’s frenetic tutelage as its roiling motions and contrasting colors infer a lack of inner peace. Then, as the art hangers turned Owen’s second piece, “Ode To Pollock,” my suspicions of this influence was confirmed. Drawing from the controlled fury of dynamic color that resembles what would be an ocean of many colors of paint crashing into a rocky shore, this piece lit the stairwell, giving foreshadows of what was to come. Indeed, Alex Von Bromssen’s photography in the stairwell itself opened to her fashions co-produced by Del Geronimo. Their intent was to pierce the calm surface ice of your psyche and aplomb its dark depths, never leaving you with warm fuzzies, but with something more akin to a strangely pleasant electric shock.
Artists such as Alicia Derbin referred to depersonalization and dissolution of self through lust and fleshpot, Kathleen Figueroa to a gaudy, pink-glitter adorned, morbid homage to Dali, and Owen Cook to the destruction of Babylon. All the while, the intimate yet glam aura of rock music from The Engine is Red, and DJ Del Geronimo permeated the space between soul, flesh, fabric, and concrete. The red velvet drapes did not forewarn of the Faustian bargain that Alex Von Bromssen would bring between the lithe girls and women, who come straight out of the pages of a magazine, and the crowd. While leaning towards freak art, she managed to present something elegant and tantalizingly beautiful, if not dark and once again that word, “ominous.” After being given their fantasy cuts of fabric to wear, they were expected to hold faux blades towards each other with murderous pleasure. That the models never sunk the false blades into each other, but only made an effigy of sacrifice at the altar of beauty and youth did not prevent the crowd from entering the darkest places of their souls. Indeed, it could have come off as kitsch and camp, but instead it presented itself as a neo-gothic creation as only San Francisco in 2009 would have it.
Owen Geronimo is an accomplished artist and photographer in his own right. He's also an art curator, representing numerous international artists for the past ten years. He is the founder of San Francisco Fashion And Merchants Alliance Inc., SFFAMA, in short. Contact him, via email: owengeronimo@gmail.com or add him via LinkedIn and Twitter.
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