Dance With The Dark
Works by J. Brian @ BOOK/SHOP
485 9th St.
Oakland
May 3, 2024
Four oversized canvases on display at Book/Shop both dwarfed their cozy surroundings while simultaneously broadening, deepening the space. Intense colors swirled and faltered, dropping off into a cream oatmeal backdrop.
My first impressions, however, were scented by the man seated on the floor at the front of the room, two city employees leaning above him, another outside on the wide brick sidewalk. It was First Friday in Old Oakland, and everyone was out. Those of us stuffed into the small storefront were here to see four new paintings by local artist J. Brian before heading out for the remainder of our nights.
I find this shop delightful. It is chock full without being crowded (with products that is, but on this evening there were perhaps 20 folks and the space felt TIGHT), with odds and ends like these unnecessary but adorable books of bookmarks, and used books with a heavy focus on the arts.
On this night, the art hung on the walls, both the new works by J. Brian and more permanent pieces for the shop. Limited edition poster prints of details of his pieces filled a table at the forefront on sale for $125. There were books on art and artists. The painter in the house chatted with admirers, while some French-sounding (or am I making that up based on a conversation I eavesdropped on?) jazzy instrumentals lightly coated the room from above.
The series of paintings is entitled “Dance With The Dark.” That left me wondering, as to my eye all four canvases breathe more light than dark, with thick borders of raw canvas, one with only dark words sprawled across it. In the abstract pieces, there is dark paint employed, but wriggling below and between the bright pinks and yellows in one, terracotta, eggshell, army green, in another.
To the best of my ability, the words, scrawled in what appears to be oil pastel, skipping playfully across the hobby, bubbled surface, read “les choses/ les plus cherer/ que la vie/ [l] a offer sont/ absolument gratuites,” translating roughly to “the most expensive things in life are free.” I cannot put together this phrase with the other works, but given their location, free entreè into a shop full of things you’d like to buy seems fitting enough, and if that free thing you hold dear is hope, then yes, a deep flirtation with darkness may well be pulsing right below the surface. And all of these surfaces, textured, rough, layered, uneven, with thick smears of paint (what kind? Acrylics? Oils? Who knows!) and drips, splatters, streaks, are kinetic, but I cannot follow where their movement is going.
Down below, a sketchily-covered book of poetry backed by a babe with a dandelion eye points to Warhol. I passed him over for a glossy Alexander Calder number perched on a chair. After a good rifling through, in search of the spaceship-shaped red sheet metal number of his that has long called New Haven home and the stunning jewelry he is less well known for, I came up short. But now, in search of the name of that piece, Gallows and Lollipops, I learned that I‘ve been confusing it for Alexander Liberman’s On High, a different and rounded but also shocking red steel sheet metal sculpture in a another public plaza blocks away, as has been cemented (welded?) in my mind for who knows how long. So thank you BOOK/SHOP for that.
Before heading out I picked up “A Garden of Herbs” from the $5 book bin by the door. The inscription, dated 11 – 22-61, read:
IF LOVE WERE LIFE ALONE
THEN LOVE TO YOU I GIVE
FOR GIVING THUS MY DARLING,
GIVES ME THE NEED TO LIVE.
I cannot imagine this was intentional to the opening, but that’s some expensive free shit right there.
I strongly wish there had been more information about the pieces, more explanation, more details, process, prices, anything! We were there to take in the works, so why hold back what might improve that experience? But BOOK/SHOP’s offerings are a treat, so go browse some beautiful and old ass books and look at local art up close and personal. These works are clearly just that. Would you hang your dirty laundry (coated and hardened paint brushes) with no words to back them up out for all to see? I thought not, so the least we can do is look closely when someone is willing to share theirs.
