under review

I just went to see the Scott Williams and Chris Ballantyne exhibits at the SF Art Institute. I'm reviewing them for Artweek. The shows are really awards shows. Williams (whose show is much larger) won the 2005 Adaline Kent Award and Ballantyne won the Tournesol Award, sponsored by the Headlands Center for the Arts. Both showed quite interesting work. Lately I find myself thinking a lot about the potential relationship between SF's "Mission school" painting movement and the "dirt style" art work popular primarily on the East Coast. (In a way, this is like asking where graffiti tags and html tags rendezous!) Scott Williams's Mission work, then, really drove the point home--especially a painting, on a bulletin board, that sort of reflected the screen of an early BBS.