Gallery Fridays, Santa Fe

In 1976-78 while the rest of us were watching Saturday Night Fever and listening to Stayin’ Alive, some hard-at-work California painters were closing in on the relationship between surface and illusion, form and anti-matter, and the gravity of floating apparent objects inside a frame that could just as easily turn edgeless for its breaking limitations. CLOSING JULY 31 is  a show of 1970s California Painting at David Richard Contemporary, in which, yes, cool and hard-edge abstractions live alongside early Judy Chicago fizzes that speak to her experiments in parks with colored fireworks and ephemeral smoke;  Craig Kauffmann expressionism; and indeed some political agitprop like in the canvas titled, Vietnam. 130 Lincoln Avenue in Santa Fe. Featured image: Ed Moses, Char-Kol, 1978

Paul Shapiro, Galactic 13, acrylic on canvas, 2008-11

OPENING July 29 at GF Contemporary,707 Canyon, is a show of Paul Shapiro paintings. Paul, as I’m sure he won’t mind my saying, can be a fairly cantankerous guy; his paintings are as serious as he is, but lately, with a mineral-esque surface that seeks out of a seething form in the painting some identification with what could be considered its essence. Painting is always concerned with effects to the extent that it can often remind of the Oscar Wilde phrase that people who don’t believe in appearances are superficial. Paul’s painting is complex and asks you to take time to really look at it, and into it, and discern the difference.

Tete de Veau vintage needle case

Tete de Veau, the artist’s collective, is closing. Today from 5-9 at 1412 Second Street is a chance to shop the final days and hours of their studio for: faux fur, doodads, fabric, ideas, and just the chance to mingle with the creator-fashionistas in the waning of their current collective incarnation. They’re not waning individually, just taking their vintage needle cases into new machine dreams, to totally mix a metaphor.