SFArts Monthly

Christian L. Frock recommends Oppobrium on SF Arts Monthly!

TOBAN NICHOLS

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery presents "Oppobrium" the solo exhibition and public debut of a recent book project by artist Toban Nichols.

Opprobrium is an appropriation and deconstruction of “Vogue’s Book of Etiquette and Good Manners” published by Conde Nast Publications, 1969. Taking apart the post-war book of manners, Nichols scanned and recompiled a seemingly exact copy of the original text. Using Optical Character Recognition, a computer program that creates an electronic translation of images of printed text, an algorithm was designed to translate and recontextualize the volume by replacing every fourth word of the manuscript with the word pussy. Bound in pink cloth boards with gilt lettering on the spine, Nichols’ deconstructed version provides a fascinating glimpse into antiquated notions of etiquette.

Accompanying the deconstructed tome, Nichols' produced an instructional video that provides a psychological, political and aesthetic reflection on gendered realities, whether self-created and/or a product of socialization. Nichols dissects, inverts and reconverts the civilizing process as well as the televisual display of femininity manufactured by our media dominated culture. As a resuult, Opprobrium is not only a provocation of the meaningless restrictions on social behavior, but also calls into question how these realities affect the ways we perceive ourselves.


Showing at Adobe Books for the first time, Toban Nichols is a deconstructivist artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been seen internationally in SCOPE New York, SCOPE Basel, the Digital Fringe Festival in Melbourne, Australia, Les Territoires in Montreal, Canada, as well as the Seattle Art Museum. After earning a Bachelors degree in painting, Nichols moved West to study New Media at the San Francisco Art Institute where he received his MFA in Digital Media and Videography. Toban Nichols was granted a residency with the Experimental Television Center in New York and awarded the Juror’s Pick at the ArtHouse Film Festival in 2009 for his video BATTLESTATIONS!! His work was recently exhibited at David Cunningham Projects (San Francisco) and at the San Francisco Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center.

Please join Adobe Books for the opening reception for "Oppobrium" on Friday, 11 December, 2009, 7:00-9pm.

Exhibition Dates: Friday, 11 December to 10 January, 2010
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Press:
Toban Nichols in the SF Bay Guardian.
Toban Nichols on Bay Area events site SFist.
Toban Nichols on Flavorpill's San Francisco events page.

Toban Nichols in the SF Bay Guardian

A Crimson Hexagon

Intermission IV and Adobe Books Parlor present:

A Crimson Hexagon
a collaborative theatrical production honoring the spirit of Jorge Luis Borges

Saturday, December 12, 7:30PM
Donation or buy a book

A Crimson Hexagon, based on Borges' short story, The Library of Babel, invites the tragic imagination to twirl, dive and tunnel while searching for the rumored beginning of ends.

Dance choreographed and performed by The Rooftop Dance Collective, with original music by Dirty Snacks Ensemble, narration by Daniel Worley, photography by Patrick Roth, and with producer and director of dance, Samantha Stone.

Curated by Mimi Moncier

MARYA KROGSTAD & RASHIN FAHANDEJ

Adobe Books Parlor presents:

Nuevo Invierno, re/generation
an installation by Marya Krogstad & Rashin Fahandej

December 13, 2009 - January 14, 2010
Reception: Friday, January 8, 7:00-9:00 PM*
*Musical performance by oddTet at 8:30 PM

Marya Krogstad uses formal structures, sculptural components, and texts to build new references and associations. Rashin Fahandej's installation brings a variety of medium together in order to create a space for contemplation; a place for re/defining our definitions of self and others. A space for re/generation.

Laura Boles Faw and Nancy de Y. Elkus

Please join us for the opening of Between the Sheets in the Adobe Books Parlor on Saturday, November 21, 2009 6-8pm

Between the Sheets is an evolving installation by Laura Boles Faw and Nancy de Y. Elkus in the storefront windows of Adobe Books from November 15 to December 11, 2009. Each artist occupies one of the two storefront windows and responds to several texts she has chosen for artistic, historic and psychological significance. The chosen texts serve as the departure point for the artists to visualize the ever-expansive imagination. It is the text itself, the printed word, that makes the sentence, the story, the essay. In the end, the texts become aggressively, sculpturally transformed, mimicking the wanderings of the individual creative mind.

Press!

KQED visual art blogger, Molly Samuel reviews Tara Foley's exhibition at Adobe Books here

Nice photos and words about Tara's show on Fecal Face!

SFist editor, Brock Keeling announces Toban Nichols' upcoming exhibitions, including Adobe Books next month here.

Flavorpill contributor Michael DeLong announces Toban Nichols' upcoming Adobe Books show Oppobrium on Flavorpill's San Francisco events page.

Tara Foley exhibition photos

Opening: Tara Foley

Either in a Million Years or Until the Bitter End
Works by Tara Foley

November 3 - December 1, 2009
Opening Reception: Tuesday, November 3rd, 6-10pm

Either in a Million Years or Until the Bitter End is a collection of drawings about memory, both personal and collective. These works are depictions of important moments that blur the line between imagination and memory. How do we remember? What does an important memory look like? How does a memory change over time? For Tara Foley, these important moments have become cathedrals, castles, monuments, patterns, body parts and mountain ranges.

Tara Foley is a San Francisco-based artist who has exhibited locally and nationally. Recently she has had solo exhibitions at local galleries Fecal Face Dot Gallery and Triple Base and created murals for 111 Minna, Sycamore Alley, and New Langton Arts. She currently works as Artists in Education Program Manager at Southern Exposure.

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JUST ADDED!

Live music from 8 - 10pm with fiddlers Jill Kjompedahl and Hal Hughes and singer-songwriter Mason Lindahl

Mimi Moncier

Inside/Out is the second of five InterMissions that are created and curated by Mimi Moncier as part of the Adobe Books Parlor. Inside/Out will be a continuous series of performances within and around the window areas of the bookstore that will attempt to challenge our cultural notions of display, exhibition and social activity. Thematically, each will refer to the production of space as an ongoing and ever-changing activity within which we are all participating. Inside/Out specifically examines issues of public and private space.

Friday, October 16, 2009 5:00-10:00pm
Saturday, October 17, 2009 4:30-10:00pm*
* Closing party, artist talk and Terri Cohn's burning of stories

SEE BELOW FOR SCHEDULE

Inside/Out Schedule of Events

Friday, October 16th 5:00-10:00pm
WINDOW LEFT
5:00-5:30: Susan Rippberger, Slip
5:40-6:10: Mary V. Marsh, right sides facing
6:20-7:20: Hava Liberman, *like*
7:40-9:10: Emily Dippo/Kim Cook, Bio Box, Suit Construction
9:10-10:10: Cathy Fairbanks, ap-ART-ment Exhibit B

WINDOW RIGHT
5:00-6:00: Alan Lewis, 1/2 Way Home
6:10-7:40: Tony Bellaver, Trekker
7:50-8:20: Jesse Eric Schmidt mirroring
8:40-9:00: Happy Doll, Learning Merce
9:10-10:10: ap-ART-ment Exhibit B

Saturday, October 17th 4:30-10:00pm
WINDOW LEFT
4:30-5:30: Krisztina Lazar, Gilding the Lily
6:00-7:00: Lit Quake, Happy Doll meditating
7:00-7:45: Linda Trunzo, homoboy
7:55-8:55: maude.a.loo tags.along & shy baby collins
night-night, love you, sweet dreams, sleep fast
9:00-10:00:Reece Carter, Grooming

WINDOW RIGHT
4:30-5:30: Kathryn Williamson, Back Fall Front
6:00-7:00: Lit Quake, Krisztina meditating
7:00-8:20: Peter Max Lawrence, Working Out
8:30-10:00: Terri Cohn, Tell me a Secret Story

Christina Corfield and Ruth Hodgins

October 18th – November 13th, 2009

Opening Reception
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
7pm – 9pm

Ruth Hodgins received her BA from the Glasgow School of Art and her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including The Atrium Gallery in Glasgow and Phyllis Wattis Theater at The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. Her work will be on view in upcoming shows at Pehrspace Gallery in Los Angeles and Platform 3 in Munich, Germany.

Christina Corfield also received her BA from the Glasgow School of Art and is currently completing her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited and curated exhibitions both in Europe and the US and was most recently included in "Introductions 2009" at Root Division in San Francisco. Her work will also be featured in the Pittsburgh based publication "Unicorn Mountain".

Revealing the delicacy of objects | San Francisco Examiner

Revealing the delicacy of objects | San Francisco Examiner

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THE PARLOR

Adobe Books Parlor & The Pistils
A collaborative project by 10 local artists

Alexis Arnold
Christina Corfield
Nancy de Y Elkus
Rashin Fahandej
Laura Boles Faw
Cathy Fairbanks
Ruth Hodgins
Marya Krogstad
Mimi Moncier
Lauren Ross

Curated by Devon Bella

August 2009 - February 2010

Adobe Books presents the new exhibition series Adobe Books Parlor in the bookstore's front windows on 16th Street in the Mission District. The Pistils are the first group of artists to inhabit the window space with rotating window installations by different members each month. The exhibitions are free and open to the public with monthly scheduled opening events.

Current Project 2: Parlor
19 September - 16 October
Artists: Lauren Ross and selected works from The Pistils

The Parlor project is a salon style exhibition where the storefronts
will invite the public to sit, read, and converse. The first use of
the spelling parlor (c.1225), deriving from the Old French word parler
(to speak), referenced windows through which confessions were made.
The Parlor will rejuvenate the history of specialized rooms for
conversation, as well as reveal the chaotic nature of misunderstanding
worlds coexisting in the same space.

Image: Installation view of Unbound by Mimi Moncier, August 2009