VISUAL ARTS REVIEWS
French Curves Bared at R.B. Stevenson Gallery
Using a bright 1960s flower power palette, Ricardo Xavier paints floral designs with meticulous care in his current exhibition entitled “Kinetic Contrasts” at La Jolla’s R.B. Stevenson Gallery. Xavier creates his ornate canvases by using draftpersons’ French curves and meticulous silk screening technique. The newest paintings’ color and designs have evolved in both their power and complexity…
Read MoreA “Gem” of a show at the Bowers Museum
A review of “Gems of the Medici” now on view at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. The exhibition features carved gems, medallions, and gold amassed by the Medici—Renaissance Italy’s most famous and powerful family. The exhibition features important ancient cameos from the Hellenistic and Roman eras along with spectacular gems made during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
Read MoreBrief Picture: Exhibitions at R.B. Stevenson, Scott White, & Quint Galleries
New painting exhibitions at three La Jolla galleries are within easy walking distance from a single parking spot on Girard Avenue. R.B. Stevenson Gallery features a group show, Scott White Contemporary Art has a solo-show by San Diego artist Gail Roberts, and another solo-show at Quint Gallery features works by L.A.-based artist Mara De Luca.
Read MoreA Time Warp of “Camp”: De Lucchi, Piranesi, & Factum Arte at SDMA
“Piranesi, Rome, and the Arts of Design” is very much like “The Rocky Horror Show.” Like the musical’s pivotal gender bending mad genius character Frank ‘N’ Furter who continuously alters his persona, Giambattista Piranesi (1720-1778) was also a mad genius who perpetually had to alter his persona from architect to printer and an influential designer of the Rococo and Neoclassical periods to finally become an architectural historian.
Read MoreBeing Alone: Paintings by James Chronister at Lux
Being alone while lost in a forest or feeling tiny in a vast space is a natural cause for melancholic apprehension. Not being in control, not being the master of the situation, being at the mercy of nature―or worse, being at the mercy of God himself―falls into the artistic tradition called the “Romantic Sublime.” The master…
Read MoreMCASD’s “Lifelike” Exhibition is Fun for All
A drip of black paint that is, in reality, made from an actual black diamond, several cardboard boxes that are not really made of cardboard, and a loud film of a downpour of rain that actually features no actual rain are all included in the exhibition “Lifelike” now on display at the Museum of Contemporary…
Read More