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2 San Francisco galleries with new tomorrowsBy Kenneth BakerUpdated 10:52 am, Friday, October 3, 2014

“Luminary Phase” (2014) acrylic on panel by William Swanson. Photo: Unknown / Eleanor HarwoodGallery

About two years ago Ampersand InternationalArts, a Dogpatch mainstay of the SanFrancisco not-for-very-much-profit exhibitionscene, closed after the death of its founder andproprietor, Bruno Mauro.

Defying the recent contraction of the localgallery landscape, Ampersand has nowreopened on the initiative of Mauro’s eldest

daughter, Theodora.

The inaugural exhibition of the gallery’s second life honors Bruno Mauro’s memory in anobvious sense but also in an oblique one.

Displeased some time ago at seeing the name Ampersand popping up everywhere, Maurocontemplated changing the gallery’s name to something wildly individual, such as“Shoebox Orchestra.” Hence the title of the reopening show, representing seven artistsMauro championed.

The objects on view produce the sort of slow-burn surprise, often tinged with humor, thatregular visitors to Ampersand learned to anticipate.

Jeff Morris’ “Pair” (2014) offers sculptural equivalents of the dust devil symbols thatindicate fuming frustration when they appear above the heads of comic strip characters.

The two dangling components of the piece, one predominantly red, the other orange,consist of found bits of smashed auto taillights, ordered by size and strung onmonofilament that hangs from the ceiling. Even repurposed, these materials exude a whiffof road rage.

“Pair” evokes the scavenging spirit of the so-called Mission School and the redemptiveimpulse felt in the work of found-materials master Tony Feher.

Morris’ piece connects popular addiction to speed and a distant echo of Old Testament

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The ingenious simplicity of Morris’ piece makes it keep good company with Andy Vogt’swork, especially “Shadeshape 5” (2014). A leaning sculpture in salvaged wood, the work’scompletely lucid geometry seems to defy analysis, at least for a moment or two.

Lauren Davies’ small sculptures made of plaster, paint, pulverized glass and flockingmasquerade as mineral specimens, igniting the desire to heft them.

Davies’ idea of faking bits of the earth smilingly satirizes the traditional notion of “nature”— that is, the visible world — as art’s proper subject, linking it with current anxieties abouthuman artifice as a menace to life on its home planet.

Those anxieties find a very different sort of expression in Arngunnur Ýr’s landscapepaintings of her native Iceland. We who have never visited Iceland do not know howliterally to take the stylization of her portrayals, an uncertainty charged with realistic fearonly in our lifetimes.

Swanson in Tomorrowland: The work of Bay Area painter William Swanson looksnothing like that of the early 20th century artists who called themselves Futurists. But hehas frequently tried to awaken viewers’ presentiments of whatever future they may see thepresent portending. His new work at Eleanor Harwood’s does this more effectivelythan ever.

The long horizontal shape of “Luminary Phase” (2014) says “landscape,” which sets the eyeto decoding its details in those terms.

A flush of yellow at the lower left with spiky black shapes invading it reads as a fire-chokedforest, making every other yellow passage in the picture look aflame, even those occludedby non-signifying shapes.

Honeycombed bits of yellow, and orange, white and gray near the center suggest breakupin a digital image transmission, perhaps hinting that even the output of the painter’s mindhas acquired the syntax of digital media.

The profile of a pink-banded shape near the top brings to mind the profile of anaircraft wing

Elsewhere on the surface, crisp passages that appear abstract at a glance begin to look likebillboard-size outdoor screens or reflections in picture windows.

Swanson has a wonderful way with fine details that, once noticed, can remake our readingof an entire picture, looking suddenly like distant features of land or architecture or simplyhovering in scale-less abstraction.

Apocalyptic visions come easy in apocalypse-minded times such as ours, but Swansonstrives for a less obvious sort of drama. He wants to sublimate the uneasiness of historicalawareness into the tension between the beauty of a painting and the specters that anythought of the future may set to haunting.

Kenneth Baker is The Chronicle’s art critic. E-mail: kennethbaker@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @kennethbakersf

Shoebox Orchestra: Works in various media by seven contemporary artists. ThroughNov. 14. Ampersand International Arts, 1001 Tennessee St., S.F. ,www.ampersandinternationalarts.com.

William Swanson: Subsurface Continuum: Paintings. Through Nov. 1. EleanorHarwood Gallery, 1295 Alabama st., S.F. (415) 282-4248, www.eleanorharwood.com.

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2 San Francisco galleries with new tomorrows - SFGate

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