“Beyond Plastic” was a group show of artists (Julie Allen, Benicia Gantner, Connie Harris, Julia Latané, Robert Strati and Jil Weinstock) working with plastic and its dérivés such as latex, vinyl, rubber and tape. Their work addressed issues of beauty, consumption, preservation, and space. From wedding cakes made of balloons to giant folds of stretched clear tape, these artists use mass produced materials to create one-of-a-kind objects blurring the lines between natural and fake beauty.

Sid Garrison has pushed the boundaries of colored pencil for sometime now. His drawings are a collective of marks, overlays and smudges while colors and shapes find comfort with one another. Using curiosity and an incremental approach of accumulated marks, Garrison seeks to discern and strengthen the drawing’s internal balance with gradual permutations of space, depth and suggested movement.

Since the early nineties, Jil Weinstock has chosen rubber as the medium to which she at times has added garments, zippers, pins, or pearls. Rubber is an irresistible medium for Weinstock to work with as it can take many different qualities.

“Lines & Curves” was a multi media group exhibition presenting the work of several artists working in different mediums but all concerned with line – the essential building block of drawings, paintings, architecture and sculpture. The artists all use the line as a basic element of geometry although the tools they employ range from software art to charcoal.

Greene defines herself as “an artist using paint” and not as a “painter”. Starting with the simplest representation - a mark out of a tube she uses a ruler and graph paper to build relationships, charts and systems, which she then removes, isolating the results. With different paint for different reactions, she proceeds as though conducting an investigation, to see how far she can push the medium.

There are no people in Weng’s compositions and deliberately so, as the narration of the painting is focused on the TV screen. Weng often asks what is this power of the TV that is casting a spell over the masses. For him, it is not a political ideology, but simply political.

Ren Ming’s landscapes defy traditions of Chinese art. Using mixed mediums - ink and pigments - he explores the realms of visual language. His work hovers between a traditional Zen art form and Western art of the twentieth Century. His art is a constant conversation between image and form, brushwork and calligraphy. By rejecting particular academic styles, Ming Ren is free to contemplate the literal interpretation of nature and abstraction with its internal emotive interpretations.

Yang Yongliang is a young artist from Shanghai who studied traditional Chinese art such as shui mo painting and calligraphy from his early age. Yang Yongliang cleverly recreated "Cun", the main representation of Chinese Shanshui paintings by using a camera, the contemporary visual device, to express his creativity for the subjects he is concerned with. He combined the traditional Chinese paintings with the modern Shanghai city life and the details of current urban culture.

Jaq Chartier's work is an ongoing exploration of accidents, trials and investigations. Known for creating abstract paintings with actual meaning, Chartier’s work is a blend of science and technology. Often referred to as DNA samples, her paintings are tests and chemical reactions between oils, acrylics and commercial sealants. Over the years, Chartier has kept cataloging the experiments. The earlier work was often inscribed with the records of the process directly onto the surface.

Lynn Criswell’s work has been about making sense of the past, reconciling it with the present, and recognizing where the notion of choice has been illusory, particularly for women. Her hammered sheet lead paintings focus on gender stereotyping and childhood. Images of descriptive fragmented text and human figures float on the wooden veneer surface like dramatic tableaux. A single word and a child’s expression -whether a smile or a scream – compete for the viewer’s attention.

Zhang Xianyong is part of a new wave of young photographers emerging from China. Inspired by both traditional story telling such as the Chinese Opera and contemporary images of the West, Zhang Xianyong’s photographs are carefully staged tableaux. His work is fresh and humorous, reflecting the dilemma of finding a place inside modern China that has one foot in the past and another in the inevitable globalization of the present.

Supernatural, San Francisco 2014

Gallery 35, San Francisco

Galloway’s work is looking at nature, and letting it drive our creative impulse. His photographs are inextricably linked to the plants and forests from which they came. Clarity of visual representation is a key concern in emphasizing the primary physical reality which exist long before we come to see them as beautiful or valuable. These large-scale works are able to present these materials life size, in a format that begins to reference the the magnitude of the forest floor.

The work in this series references the “Land of Peach Blossom”, a dominant symbol in Chinese culture. First appearing in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it represents the ideal when the literati were to reside in seclusion in order to escape reality. Centuries later, Yang Yongliang suggests in these works that people are still searching for this peace of mind. As modern China pursues a breakneck pace of development based on a culture of materialism, it has displaced its sense of spirituality.

This series entitled "Intermittent Mapping" is part of Moment’s Constellation Series. It references planets, cells, comets, atoms, stars, and earth and ocean surfaces. “I think of these paintings as a kind of mapping in which matter is depicted in a constant state of flux across the space/time continuum.” Interstellar photography and aerial views of the earth are of particular interest to the artist.

Lin Tianmiao

Feuz’s lacquer paintings are a radical experimentation with materials. The subjects represented in his paintings are primarily justified by the possibilities they offer him in terms of pictorial potential. Indeed, there are no specific guidelines, over than a constant fragile equilibrium of forms and colors, light and darkness which could, at any moment, be destroyed. Once Feuz has reached a momentum with the mixed mediums, these paintings are synonymous of a world of wonderful

The themes of architecture, shelter and/or home have been central to Duarte's work. His travels around the world are often his inspiration for exploring the social inequalities and the realities of globalization.Duarte’s trip to Brazil inspired him to combine materials and techniques that involve natural as well as Home Depot disposable materials.

For nearly twenty years, The Gao Brothers have been exploring the profound changes faced by China. Through photography, they literally direct our gaze to the impact of urbanization and globalization and their cultural and spiritual impact on contemporary Chinese society. They are also enormously influenced by the history of the Cultural Revolution. Despite still strong censorship, the Gao Brothers continue to engage their audience in examining modes and myths.