A bar, beer garden and event space in the heart of Oakland.
Freak Comix Presents:
the second annual FREAKSHOW
a comics celebration
featuring artists from the past 9 anthologies!
Opening Reception: March 6, 6-10
Closing Reception & Comics Festival: March 28th, 6-10PM
featuring 10+ vendors and *live* comics readings!
🙂 food from Popoca & full bar 🙂
Golgatha
Dani Robison
July 6-27, 2019
Opening Reception July 6th, 6-10PM featuring surreal harpist Sabine Silver, Infinite Neck & DJ Aria
Golgatha is a presentation of three works examining dysphoria and mental illness: Golgatha, Glass Body II, and Firmament. Innovative stained glass techniques are centralized and used to twist Judeo-Christian framings of sublimity, martyrdom, and suffering. Attempts are made to heal from repeated experiences of spiritual abuse and rejection. Smashed liquor bottles, saliva, underwear, shredded plastic, pins, needles, assorted detritus of personal historical significance assist in the process. What does it mean when I feel the urge to sacrifice/extinguish myself? How would I even begin to locate my extant parts?
About the Artist: Dani Robison has been doing unusual things with stained glass for the past eight years. In 2010 she earned degrees in printmaking and music from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. She recently released her third compositional suite with the ensemble Sapphire Lung titled Chamber Slime, and curated an original speculative holiday: Diluvianalia. Robison has disseminated over one thousand fine talismans across the globe as part of an everlasting project titled Disseminating Talismans Forever.
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
Opening Night of Joshua Nissen King‘s “Rainbow Serpent”
Part of Oakland Art Murmur & Oakland First Fridays
Music by Fault Radio
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