Push Studio

Last night I attended «Various», the Push Studio opening reception, at the invitation of an old friend. It was a pretty cool event, with works by six different local artists, including my new friend Erik Otto and the SF fixture Ursula Xante Young. More on that in just a moment.
The gallery itself is on an unassuming block of Folsom. You enter through a long hardwood-​floored hallway into the main gallery space, which is essentially one large room, though I think it’s set up to be divided in half into two rooms if necessary. The ceiling is super tall which gives the place an airy ambiance; it probably feels larger than it actually is, a feeling enhanced by the whitewashed walls and light hardwood floors. This particular show featured a lot of different styles — there were paintings and prints both very large and very small, as well as some mixed media, and I thought they all presented well in the space. Erik had even done some painting on the wall around his pieces, which is a level of involvement (on the part of the space) that I always appreciate in these sorts of things — which is to say that this gallery struck me as being very friendly towards its art.
As for the particular artists, I actually really liked everyone that was showing. Erik’s work was some of the more abstract but his mixed media stuff really anchored it well, both philosophically and physically, in the space. Tommy Noshitsky’s photographic prints were fucking awesome and I would love to own a few; they embody a certain California/​San Francisco aesthetic that I recognize all the more, not being a native son. Ursula Xante Young’s paintings are well known for a reason and were a welcome addition. Krescent Carasso’s massive paintings are executed with a level of technical skill I found absolutely engrossing. Downtimer’s stuff is all done in a certain street art aesthetic and I have a sneaking suspicion he and I have similarly wired brains, since the patterns he produces in his work exhibit a striking similarity to my high school notebook doodles. And as it turns out, Derrick Boyd made probably my favorite piece at the show, a massive, beautiful painting of a peacock that I desperately want to own. That’s worth going to see on its own.
In all, I really enjoyed the space and the show, I liked getting to meet several of the artists and the woman running the gallery, and I would happily return to see future installations.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to get back to work so some day I can have enough money to buy art with.