A bar, beer garden and event space in the heart of Oakland.
Mutual Friends is a group show curated by Oakland-based artist Jocelyn Tsaih, featuring work from California-based artists. The show is inspired by the tight-knit art community in the Bay Area and how everybody seems to be connected through friends and friends of friends.
Alice Lee
Andy Busc
Hana Ward
Meg Fransee
Jocelyn Tsaih
John-Patrick Thomas
Paul Windle
Sarah Bowser
Drink & Draw & Dance Closing Reception: February 22nd, 7-10PM
Part of Oakland First Friday/Oakland Art Murmur
Mutual Friends is a group show curated by Oakland-based artist Jocelyn Tsaih, featuring work from California-based artists. The show is inspired by the tight-knit art community in the Bay Area and how everybody seems to be connected through friends and friends of friends.
Alice Lee
Andy Busc
Hana Ward
Meg Fransee
Jocelyn Tsaih
John-Patrick Thomas
Paul Windle
Sarah Bowser
Opening night: February 7, 6-10PM
Part of Oakland First Friday/Oakland Art Murmur
This January, Classic Cars West Gallery is honored to host the prison abolitionist collective ABO Comix for their first ever art show featuring the work of over 50 queer artists in prison.
Following the release of their third anthology in December 2019, ABO Comix will share original art, comics and sketches gathered over the past two years, with an opening reception on January 3rd during the First Fridays & Oakland Art Murmur street festival.
At the opening reception, Anti-Repression Music will perform songs penned by jailhouse lyricists, with letter-writing workshops and a raffle for some of ABO’s prized publications throughout the night.
The closing reception on January 18th will offer more prison abolition resources and workshops, and the chance to support ABO Collective’s growing network of artists. All works will be for sale, with 100% of ABO’s profits going back to support the artists.
https://www.joshuanissenking.com/
First Friday Opening of Nissen King’s solo show entitled “Rainbow Serpent”
OAKLAND, CA: “Rainbow Serpent” is a new body of work that interrogates the perception of color. We perceive color as it is because of the refraction of light. Pigment is created by introducing the compounds necessary to refract that specific spectrum back at the viewer. A plant is only green because the plant cannot absorb the green spectrum of light. Extend this chromatic fact to humans, and we realize we are all reflections of light seeing reflections of each other.
The interplay of presence, absence and interdependence of light and matter will guide King’s installation. 3D glasses with prisms for lenses will enhance and extend this perception exercise into another dimension. Viewers can trace a rainbow serpent flowing quixotically through each piece, complicating the hard duality of dark and light to reveal the subtle paradoxes of giving importance to a color without considering its context. Rainbow Serpent is a reminder of the reflection and refraction that shapes our optical experience, as well as the interconnectedness of the entities we meet on our journey through the visible world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Joshua Nissen King is a Bay Area painter. King studied Fine Art painting, drawing, and printmaking, with an emphasis in education at California State University, San Francisco. In exploring the detritus of our artificial world in relation to nature, his new work abandons figurative or realist formalities in favor of free mark-making alongside shapes and colors to create abstract tangles that retain a connection to familiar objects. Working primarily with oil paint, aerosol, masking techniques and acrylic underpainting, King approaches the substrate without sketching, with gestural underpainting and a free-form accumulation of marks. King has participated in programs such as the California Summer School of the Arts, and Oxbow, Napa Valley and has received such awards as the Martin Wong scholarship of the arts and the Mondavi Foundation Grant.
ABOUT THE VENUE: Classic Cars West is a boutique vintage car showroom and contemporary art gallery located in the heart of Oakland’s thriving Uptown arts neighborhood, focusing on local and emerging artists working in a range of mediums.
www.classiccarswestbeergarden.com
Hours: Wed-Thurs 12-9, Sat 11-10, Sun 11-3
