Raaf and Skin, by Kenneth Baker, SF Chronicle
2007
Raaf and "Skin" at Limn: Chicago artist Sabrina Raaf presents at Limn a series of elegant, panoramic color photographs of interiors.
Unfortunately, she punctuates them with people, and the occasional pale but inscrutable burst of energy -- or is it shattering glass? -- that enact an imaginary drama of quotidian life with gravity in abeyance.
The pictures offer an almost cinematic sense of extension in time, but their stage-management detracts from their pictorial power. A vertical panorama seems to stretch from ceiling to floor to ceiling, unbalancing the viewer far more effectively by visual means than by the incursion of a human hand near the top, apparently meant to read as ominous.
Raaf clearly has attained a sort of expertise, but it does not lie in crafting fictive content for her pictures.
Limn also has a group show of unusual interest titled "Beneath the Skin." It introduces the appealing work of London painter Klari Reis, who takes the abstract field toward medical and visceral reference, as does Jaq Chartier, who bases her silken pictures on the patterns of gel electrophoresis.
The show includes a slightly larger-than-life head by Nathaniel Price densely studded with strike-anywhere matches, their tips facing outward. It also contains a Laura Splan video whose apparent content changes both simply and startlingly moment by moment, as well as fabric pieces in which Splan toys cleverly with intimate comforts and anxieties.
Most daring, though, are Leigh Anne Lester's gold-framed embroideries commemorating family members' afflictions, from ovarian cancer to stroke and heart disease. Grotesquely funny and full of unforced psychological complexity.
Unfortunately, she punctuates them with people, and the occasional pale but inscrutable burst of energy -- or is it shattering glass? -- that enact an imaginary drama of quotidian life with gravity in abeyance.
The pictures offer an almost cinematic sense of extension in time, but their stage-management detracts from their pictorial power. A vertical panorama seems to stretch from ceiling to floor to ceiling, unbalancing the viewer far more effectively by visual means than by the incursion of a human hand near the top, apparently meant to read as ominous.
Raaf clearly has attained a sort of expertise, but it does not lie in crafting fictive content for her pictures.
Limn also has a group show of unusual interest titled "Beneath the Skin." It introduces the appealing work of London painter Klari Reis, who takes the abstract field toward medical and visceral reference, as does Jaq Chartier, who bases her silken pictures on the patterns of gel electrophoresis.
The show includes a slightly larger-than-life head by Nathaniel Price densely studded with strike-anywhere matches, their tips facing outward. It also contains a Laura Splan video whose apparent content changes both simply and startlingly moment by moment, as well as fabric pieces in which Splan toys cleverly with intimate comforts and anxieties.
Most daring, though, are Leigh Anne Lester's gold-framed embroideries commemorating family members' afflictions, from ovarian cancer to stroke and heart disease. Grotesquely funny and full of unforced psychological complexity.
