Written By: Colin Hussey, Fall 1999
Can two radically different spaces house the same artists? Owen Geronimo of Vision + Visuals ArtGroup proves it possible. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, appropriately located in the Financial District, has a comfy home on the 12th floor of an Art Deco highrise sandwiched at 235 Montgomery Street. No one would ever mistake the SFCC for a cutting-edge gallery in a rundown Tenderloin walk-up, yet it displays the work of four artists whose work is also showing at Studio Z in the ‘Loin.
With its shiny, brass logo of the Golden Gate Bridge, its blonde wood paneling and innocuous wall-to-wall carpeting, the SFCC’s interior calmly bespeaks mercantile collegiality. Somehow, Owen Geronimo of Vision + Visuals managed to select paintings by Courtney Booker, Laila Carlsen, Mike Meneses and David Regan that feel at home in the corporate setting without compromising artistic integrity. (Additionally, there is a photograph by Noah Gunnell and an etching by Laurie Sheridan, who are not exhibiting work at Studio Z.)
Getting off the elevator, you approach a large reception desk, similarly paneled at the rest of the room. To your left as you enter the suite is a Courtney Booker’s portrait of a woman. Materializing out of thick brushstrokes, the subject gazes pensively at the floor in what a appears to be a candlelit setting. The background is an eye-catching indigo, and to further heighten her portrait, Booker adds a halo of light amber glaze, applied in quick horizontal streaks across the subject.
Facing the Booker portrait and to the right of the reception desk is an up-close autumn leaf by David Regan. Its warm, amber color goes especially well with the wood paneled wall on which it hangs. The leaf itself is precisely rendered while the background is a study in shades of amber with patches of green and other natural colors.
Kitty corner to the leaf and facing the receptionist is another portrait, this one by Laila Carlsen. The subject is a somber young woman in head/shoulder view. She looks over her shoulder at something to the viewers right. Although her pallet consists of dull greys, blues and dark earth tones and her brushstrokes are very smooth and subtle, the painting still has an immediacy and life to it suggestive of Vermeer.
Noah Gunnell’s sepia-tinted photograph of a group of Cuban children occupies a windowed atrium that splits off to two conference rooms, located to the right of the receptionist as you enter. The closest children in the picture, two boys, are out of focus and giggling at something other than the camera’s eye. It’s the third child, a girl with a bowl haircut, which gets the lens’ focus. She gazes directly into the camera with a Mona Lisa smile.
Two more pieces grace the hallway to the left of the reception area. Laurie Sheridan’s surreal etching is of an ovoid figure held up by a rounded, angelic figure. There’s all manner of cuneiform inscribed on the egg figure, while its “stand” has a sheen of dull metal.
The figures are in greys while the background is a light amber. It goes well with the grey and amber carpet in that particular section of the office.
Finally, further down the hall near the copier is a 4x4 foot canvas by Mike Meneses, a brightly colored abstract study of circles and lines. The predominant color is a day-glo green with circles of white and yellow, some ringed with bright reds, oranges and blues. The circular patterns are laid such to cheerily evoke a flower bed. It would have been far more jarring to have the piece hanging in the wood veneered atrium, but it works very well on the whitewashed drywall further inside the establishment.
The work will remain on display at the Chamber of Commerce until June 30th. Like the Studio Z and the 66BALMY exhibits, this one is well conceived and shows that talented up-and-comers can render work that fits a variety of settings without compromising artistic integrity. A word of advise to the SFCC regarding the pieces they’re currently housing: Buy.
