Tangent Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Hello all, Jessica here reporting live from San Francisco over the Memorial Day weekend. My holiday was spent touring around China Town, Alcatraz, riding cable cars, and more. While walking back to the Clift hotel after grabbing an espresso with my boyfriend, I accidently encountered beautiful 3D art from a gallery called Tangent Art on 373 Geary Street between Powell and Mason. Above are some of the pieces I was able to view from the gallery by the artist.

While unable to enter the gallery due to it closure on Mondays, I was able to get great view from the street. The piece to initially catch my attention had to be the 3D brown package painted on the left corner of the wall that seemed to be almost sticking out as if a gift for me. I was amazed by the way the painting wrapped around the edges over the frame creating fullness that made the objects appear floating on the wall.

The artist of the wrinkled packaging, Yrjo Edelmann hails from Helsinki, Finland. Born in 1941, he is known for painting realistic depictions of packets, napkins, old wrapping paper, and things alike even though he began as an illustrator. His style of art, known as Trompe l’oeil is a method in which the artist makes it difficult for the human eye to distinguish between a real object and a painting.

Yrjo Edelmann, in his paintings plays with color, shape, proportions, and shade, challenging our senses, blurring the lines between reality and the dream state. His play on value creates depth beyond anything I could ever hope to achieve in my own artwork and that it why something so simple as a wrinkled package was the main show stopper for me. Of course there was other beauty in the gallery. More complex items in a sense, yet nothing captured me as much as this one did.

A few of the other pieces that stood out were artworks of a boxes of candy by waiting to be picked by hungry hands by Peter Anton, a landscape far in the back of the gallery pointing outwards towards me by Warner Friedman and a sculpture by Carole Feuerman that appeared realistic to every last detail including the water droplets dotting the skin.

If you’re ever in downtown San Fran, feel free to drop by this gallery and prepared to gasp for air at the seemingly effortless beauty created by these artists.

Hello, this is Christian Ward corresponding on an immense drawing I recently encountered at the City College of San Fransisco. Well this drawing was actually a fresco by Diego Rivera as part of several post-depression era, public commissions Rivera received in North America.

Fresco painting is when a artist applies a layer of stucco to a wall and proceeds to paint onto the wet stucco before it dries. I imagine the process is very nerve racking and labor intensive. This particular mural is called the Pan American Unity Mural and is easily 25 feet tall by 400 feet long. Rivera completed the mural in 1939.

The whole piece is sort of time and culture scramble of different figures from a whole range of cultures and histories.  As we move through the piece we are transported into different compartments or sections of the mural where figures act out different histories and positions in life and culture. The figures and scenery are drawn in what is called the socialist realism manner. Figures are drawn blocky in a way and seem very serious and heroic as well a powerful but mundane. Mostly earth tones in shades of brown grey and ochre ground the scene. High lights pull you in and out of the different compartments that make up the composition in shades of azure and turquoise. I would say the work follows a cubist and surrealist style as the obvious shifts in perspective and insinuations put the viewers mind into Utopian fantasies.

Diego Rivera Experienced the leftist revolutions of Mexico from 1911 - 20 and obviously was inspired to inject his art with an air of social relevance. It is obvious from the actions of the figures in the mural where indigenous and modern laborers toil together in harmony. The piece becomes educational when Rivera paints in the founding fathers, Lenin and various pre-Colombian gods. The piece seems to announce what is possible if modernity and antiquity are reconciled.

Personally I was drawn in by the murals size and subject matter. I found the work educational and relevant in 2014. I can't help but feel that the same themes exist today: cooperation and what is possible if a true multicultural harmony was in place. Pan American Unity Mural seems to offer progress in the form of social evolution.

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