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Robert Gutierrez / Jonathan
Tucker - San Francisco Bay Guardian - January 7, 2004 Through February 21, Gregory
Lind Gallery “terrainMonger” is an apt title for San Francisco
artist Robert Gutierrez’s exhibit at Gregory Lind Gallery. His paintings
are landscapes with bulbous forms that look fanciful and sometimes even
pretty, but sinister agents and malicious machinery are lurking just beneath
their surfaces. In one work, two human forms appear on opposite sides
of a tree, pushing in different directions. Only after a moment do we
realize that they are headless and that their necks are melded seamlessly into the trunk they’re
trying so hard to knock over, suggesting that they’re not only working
at cross-purposes but also against their own best interests. Gutierrez’s
other works don’t often include people, but he returns again and
again to similarly stark, even apocalyptic, themes. Objects that ought
to be separate and discrete are connected with pipes or nerves or tubes,
and landscape elements such as buildings or hills are actually hiding
guns and tanks. Gutierrez shares the gallery space with Jonathan Tucker,
a New York artist who titles his latest group of works “Casting Stones.”
He refers to his pieces as paintings, but they’re really sculptures,
fully three-dimensional in form and personality. Each one is a unique
concoction of colorful stringlike forms, rocks of different hues and textures,
and bright clumps of goop. They are vaguely reminiscent of rock gardens,
but there’s nothing minimal or muted or refined about them; instead
they are almost schizophrenic and riotous. Landscape, the
largest work in this show, stretches along the wall at a length of almost
seven or eight feet. Others cling to the corners of the gallery like exotic
tropical fungi. Their complex, handcrafted surfaces simultaneously beg
to be touched and warn you to keep your distance, like poisonous insects
whose bright, attractive colors actually serve to deter predators. Tues.- Sat., 10:30 a.m.- 5:30
p.m., 49 Geary, fifth floor, S.F. (415) 296-9661. |
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