“Press Play: Remain Creative“
Malik Seneferu
Gearbox Gallery
770 W. Grand Ave.
Oakland
Through Jan. 6, 2024
African mask paintings stare down family portraits, a wall of small sculptures arranged like a clock, which in turn speak to a narrow wall bordering the windows. This wall holds depictions of three children — George Junius Stinney Jr., Emmett Till, and Latasha Harlan — all gone, all just 14 years old.
Their depictions are part of the “Forever 14 Series,” a dozen of 44 works by featured guest artist Malik Seneferu. His exhibit, Press Play: Remain Creative, arranged by guest curator Karen Seneferu, occupies the entirety of the front gallery at Gearbox. His decisive strokes in bright acrylics offer a welcoming beckon from a rainy gray afternoon on a grimy corner of Grand Avenue.
His pieces span over two decades of artistry, with his “Childhood Dreams” series beginning in 1998 and a number of pieces as recent as 2022. Most of the pieces, aside from the sculptures, are acrylic on canvas, with clear personal style and evolution visible, color choice and a slowly developing signature as a strong through line.
The details of the eponymous report cards in “Report Card,” along with the playful colors of childhood in the ’80s and ’90s, are cheery and sweet, full of nostalgia.
Linda Ellinwood’s “Weird Fruit” and “Familiar Fruit” immediately spoke to me, their supernatural forms contorted and warped beyond reality while remaining firmly within this realm. Built of wooden buoys, found twigs, and other tree bits such as eucalyptus “gumnuts” and unknown spiky and rounded pods, respectively, these small sculptures are forged to create a cute alternative to “natural” as we know it. Bonsai built of dead twigs and mismatched genuses, unadorned adornment.
Abstract and yet tangible, these fruits were my favorite.
Overall, though, despite my having spent far more time examining Senedferu’s work, the pieces I liked best were all squished neatly into three tiny mini-exhibits at the back of the gallery, and all came from member artists at the gallery. These included Harry Clewans’ “A Moment 43 Years” and Jamie Treacy’s “Where the Hillside Fell Away,” a trippy water nature scene. With its dappled light and warm, near-neon hues, gecko-coded branches and suminagashi-esque watery stones that sweep through the center of the piece, gurgling, Treacy’s painting has a pleasing palette and comforting softness.
Clewans’ work is rich in layers despite its flat print, deeply textured fabrics, flesh, stone, and bark in muted but impactful taupes and greens and purples and grays presenting a moment of frozen movement, vitality.
At Ellinwood’s suggestion I climbed the stairs to the neighboring Transmission Gallery before leaving, but stopped, arrested, midway up at the sight of John Casey’s “Big Eyes,” a continuation of his pleasantly absurd installations around the area. Even framed by painter’s tape and bisected by the window, the giant orbs called out.
Transmission’s space, larger feeling than their downstairs neighbor, houses the work of many artists in a variety of media beyond Casey’s painting. But that’s for another day.
Current show is on display through Jan. 6, 2024, with an artist and curator talk that afternoon at 2 p.m. The gallery is open Thursday-Saturday 12 – 5 p.m.
