" Sabrina Raaf" and "Beneath te Skin" SFBG
2007
"Sabrina Raaf" and "Beneath te Skin" San Francisco bay Guardian by Staci Martin
Strange yet oddly banal, Sabrina Raaf's panoramic manipulated photo series "Test People," in which human guinea pigs carry out antigravity experiments, could also double as real estate porn. The minidramas, on display at Limn Gallery, come from some rip in the time-space continuum in which people float over shiny hardwood floors (Alone Again, 2004) or leap across a kitchen ceiling as mad objects hurl sparks from the linoleum (Wanna Play Toy, 2006). These swanky lofts must have been built on the same metaphysical plane as the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker — a mood of secrets and new truths romps throughout. In the sparsely furnished Living Room (2006), the viewer gradually notices that the action is quietly taking place behind an empty midcentury modern bookcase, the back of a woman visible as she dangles in midair. Why clutter an exquisite flat with worldly goods when one discovers a new talent for levitation?
In the other half of Limn, "Beneath the Skin" showcases pieces by five artists working on the theme of the body, medicine, and the anxieties of body ownership.
One wall holds Laura Splan's 2002 Vigilante series of psychedelic-colored latch-hook-rug discs: microscope views of viruses and bacteria are blown up, ready to adorn toilet seats and bathroom floors. The boldly colored layers of dots in Klari Reis's paintings come together like cells, forming crazy tissues or simulating an acid trip. Jaq Chartier's mixed-media paintings are candy-shop renditions of gel electrophoresis images and autoradiographs of DNA specimens, and Nathaniel Price's cherry Jell-O–colored resin entity Walking Shadow stomps armless and headless — a solidified flow of blood appears to be seconds from falling into the shape of a puddle. Among Leigh Anne Lester's embroidered portraits of organs in distress, Family Portrait Series (2004), is Stroke: June 1985, a smattering of red embroidery thread balls gathered like a flower on the neatly sewn, cream-colored cerebellum of a brain.
Strange yet oddly banal, Sabrina Raaf's panoramic manipulated photo series "Test People," in which human guinea pigs carry out antigravity experiments, could also double as real estate porn. The minidramas, on display at Limn Gallery, come from some rip in the time-space continuum in which people float over shiny hardwood floors (Alone Again, 2004) or leap across a kitchen ceiling as mad objects hurl sparks from the linoleum (Wanna Play Toy, 2006). These swanky lofts must have been built on the same metaphysical plane as the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker — a mood of secrets and new truths romps throughout. In the sparsely furnished Living Room (2006), the viewer gradually notices that the action is quietly taking place behind an empty midcentury modern bookcase, the back of a woman visible as she dangles in midair. Why clutter an exquisite flat with worldly goods when one discovers a new talent for levitation?
In the other half of Limn, "Beneath the Skin" showcases pieces by five artists working on the theme of the body, medicine, and the anxieties of body ownership.
One wall holds Laura Splan's 2002 Vigilante series of psychedelic-colored latch-hook-rug discs: microscope views of viruses and bacteria are blown up, ready to adorn toilet seats and bathroom floors. The boldly colored layers of dots in Klari Reis's paintings come together like cells, forming crazy tissues or simulating an acid trip. Jaq Chartier's mixed-media paintings are candy-shop renditions of gel electrophoresis images and autoradiographs of DNA specimens, and Nathaniel Price's cherry Jell-O–colored resin entity Walking Shadow stomps armless and headless — a solidified flow of blood appears to be seconds from falling into the shape of a puddle. Among Leigh Anne Lester's embroidered portraits of organs in distress, Family Portrait Series (2004), is Stroke: June 1985, a smattering of red embroidery thread balls gathered like a flower on the neatly sewn, cream-colored cerebellum of a brain.
