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
***
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.

***

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

BOOKISH

An artistic exploration into the phenomenon of the book

Patricia Augsburger
Jennifer Brandon
Sonya Derman
Katie Herzog
Arthur Huang
Jennie Ottinger
Nat Russell
Orion Shepherd
Sonny Smith
Michael Swaine
Nicolas Torres
Scot Velardo

Curated by Devon Bella

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery presents Bookish, the inaugural exhibition celebrating the Backroom Gallery’s recent renovation and exciting transformation. To mark this special occasion, and to call attention to the position of the gallery within the context of the famed Adobe Bookshop, the exhibition will feature a range of artistic practices that share the book as an object of inquiry. Through various media including sculpture, painting, photography and social practice, each artist will animate varying questions based on our relationships to books.

Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 22, 2009

September 22 - October 25, 2009
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
11AM-10PM daily
(415) 864-3936

Image: Taped, Jennifer Brandon, 2009

ADOBE BOOKS PARLOR & THE PISTILS

A collaborative project by 10 local artists
Curated by Devon Bella

Dates: August 2009 - February 2010
Location: Adobe Books
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 864-3936
adobebooksbackroom@gmail.com

Opening: See below schedule of project dates

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.

The Pistils’ collaborative project will showcase an assemblage of artistic practices and invoke Adobe Books’ storefront as a locus of collective authorship. This dynamic group of artists will respond to the context of the bookstore and engage with Adobe Books’ ties to the local community. The installations will continuously change and transform during the course of six months and will range across sculpture, installation, performance, and social practice.

Dating from 1364, the word parlor was used to mean a sitting room for private conversation. Contemporary understandings of the word parlor all imply visiting and contextualize dialogue in various forms. Considering these interpretations, the Adobe Books Parlor serves as the relative space between the street and the bookstore where artistic activity will redefine the visual systems through which ideas circulate.

The Adobe Books Parlor is part of a long-term curatorial project that will commission artists to explore how the bookstore locates itself within the constant flux of the 16th Street environment. The series seeks to animate the intersections between private and public narratives, and among Adobe Books’ social and commercial spheres. The Pistils are Alexis Arnold, Christina Corfield, Nancy de Y Elkus, Rashin Fahandej, Laura Boles Faw, Cathy Fairbanks, Ruth Hodgins, Marya Krogstad, Mimi Moncier, and Lauren Ross.

The Adobe Books Parlor is curated by Devon Bella.

Schedule of Events, The Pistils

Project 1: Tableau Vivant
August 26 - September 17
Collaborative Project with Photographer Pamela Belknap
Backdrop by Alexis Arnold and Cathy Fairbanks
For the inaugural project, The Pistils have created a representative photograph of the working group in a tableau vivant based on the painting About a Girl (2005) by artist Mamma Andersson. This image was chosen for its characterization of a union of women that appear to have come together for a common interest. It emanates the spirit of closeness and focus that is intended with the collaborative efforts of The Pistils during this project. (See picture above).

InterMission I : Unbound
August 26 - September 17
Artist: Mimi Moncier
InterMissions are a series of short, intermittent events within and around the window areas that will challenge our notions of display, exhibition and social activity, the first of which is Unbound. Thematically, each will refer to the production of space as an ongoing and ever-changing activity within which we are all participating.

Project 2: Parlor
September 19 - October 16
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. This salon will rejuvenate the history of specialized rooms for reception, as well as beguile the visitor with the bookstore’s complex terrain of social engagement and independent activity.

InterMission II: Inside Out
October 17
Artist: Mimi Moncier

Project 3: Heart of a Dog
October 18 - November 13
Artists: Christina Corfield and Ruth Hodgins
For this project, the artists are interested in the notions of metamorphosis and the visualizations created when captivated by an astounding piece of literature. The 1925 Russian novel, Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov, will be used to visually play out personal interpretations of a tale where transformation and alteration are intertwined as part of the narrative.

InterMission III: YouTopia
November 14
Artist: Mimi Moncier

Project 4: A Book and Its Cover
November 15 - December 11
Artists: Laura Boles Faw and Nancy deY Elkus
Concerned with the amorphous barriers of knowledge, the two window spaces of Adobe will use reflection and limited vision to highlight both surface and interior perceptions. “Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” ~Jessamyn West

InterMission IV: Tableau Vivant
December 12
Artist: Mimi Moncier

Project 5: Nuevo Invierno
December 13 – January 14
Artists: Marya Krogstad and Rashin Fahandej
For this remarkable commercial and community interface, a sculptural tableau will be created featuring books, texts, poetry, and input from the local community.

InterMission V: Capsule
January 15
Artist: Mimi Moncier

Project 6: The Gaming Commission
January 16 - February 13
Artists: Alexis Arnold and Cathy Fairbanks
Historically a parlor is a location for gaming, entertainment, and the reception of guests. The Gaming Commission will employ the Adobe Books Parlor storefronts to just such an end through the installation of a salon putting green and a pedal-powered tandem-bicycle reading station.

Photo credit: Pamela Belknap

pale hoarse record release

Friday, August 21, 2009
8pm
Free and open to the public

Closing Reception for Sustained Decay

Join us on Sunday, August 16, 2009 on the final day of the exhibition and toast the upcoming renovation of the Backroom Gallery!

4:00 - 6:00 PM

SUSTAINED DECAY

ANDY VOGT & JOSHUA CHURCHILL
Sustained Decay
an Installation in the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Curated by Devon Bella

Exhibition dates: July 16 – August 16, 2009

For the exhibition, Sustained Decay, artists Andy Vogt and Joshua Churchill intervene in the upcoming renovation and recent expansion of the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. Renewal comes to a momentary halt, where both Vogt and Churchill reflect on the site's architecture and environment, sustaining the tension between progress and decay. Their respective practices have been integrated directly into the gallery space and its emerging boundaries, evoking an understanding of the time and history the Backroom Gallery continues to endure.

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 864-3936

Churchill and Vogt in the Backroom by Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle

Sustained Decay - Andy Vogt & Joshua Churchill by Gareth Spor of Taide & Design Magazine

A Requiem, A Dream (Part One) by Eric Heiman on the SFMoMA Openspace blog
A Requiem, A Dream (Part Two) by Eric Heiman on the SFMoMA Openspace blog

ANDY VOGT & JOSHUA CHURCHILL

ANDY VOGT & JOSHUA CHURCHILL
Sustained Decay
an Installation in the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Curated by Devon Bella

Exhibition dates: July 16 – August 16, 2009
Opening reception in participation with the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival
Friday, July 17, 7:00-10:00 PM

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 864-3936

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery announces many exciting transformations and upcoming events at Adobe Books, including the very recent expansion of the Backroom Gallery.

Join us on Friday, July 17, 2009 as Adobe Books in collaboration with the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival present...

Sustained Decay, an installation by Andy Vogt and Joshua Churchill in the Backroom Gallery

For the exhibition, Sustained Decay, artists Andy Vogt and Joshua Churchill intervene in the upcoming renovation and recent expansion of the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. Renewal comes to a momentary halt, where both Vogt and Churchill reflect on the site's architecture and environment, sustaining the tension between progress and decay. Their respective practices have been integrated directly into the gallery space and its emerging boundaries, evoking an understanding of the time and history the Backroom Gallery continues to endure.


Subversive Cursive, readings by Leigh Gallagher, Chaim Bertman, and Gravity Goldberg and Music by Jessica Pratt at 8:00PM

SFWEEKLY Review by Hiya Swanhuyser

$1 Sidewalk Book Sale

Art by Kyle Knobel

Vietnamese sandwiches by Le Banh Mi at 1PM

Please stand by

...while the Backroom Gallery experiences reconstruction. In the meantime, please visit us during one of our upcoming events!

Sidewalk Sale at Adobe Books
Saturday, July 11, 11am-5pm
Inventory priced as low as $1

Store-wide Sale
Everything in store 25% off
July 11 - July 31, 2009


ADOBE BOOKS and MISSION CREEK MUSIC FESTIVAL PRESENT...

Friday, July 17, 2009

An installation in the Backroom Gallery
Andy Vogt and Joshua Churchill
Opening Reception 7-10pm

Subversive Cursive
Readings by Leigh Gallagher, Chaim Bertman, and Gravity Goldberg
Music by Jessica Pratt
8:00pm

Friday, July 24, 2009
Softserve
Shimomitsu

8:00pm - 9:30pm

Softserve www.myspace.com/softservespecial
SHIMOMITSU www.myspace.com/shimomitsu

First Exposures Zine Release Party

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery is pleased to support SF Camerawork's First Exposures, the mentoring program that provides free weekly photography classes for under-served youth.

This Spring the students of First Exposures explored the world of alternative publishing and visual storytelling by creating their own 'zines. Join us to celebrate and view the 25 different original 'zines on display.

Friday, June 5, 2009
5:00 - 7:00 PM

http://www.sfcamerawork.org/education/first_exposures/index.php

Calling all Friends of Adobe Books!

On Monday, June 1st Adobe Books will be cleaning up the store from 8am to 8pm. The store is seeking a few willing and able friends to help clean, sort, organize, pack, unload, recycle, and throw-out. Lunch and snacks will be provided.

If you're interested in helping out please email Devon at adobebooksbackroom@gmail.com and let us know what your availability is that day.

Upcoming: Griffin McPartland

Easy on the I's
Griffin McPartland
Opening reception on Thursday, 30 April 2009 7 - 10pm
with live performance by Coconut

Oakland-based artist Griffin McPartland has been curating, publishing, and making art in the Bay Area since 1992. As half of the publishing team of the celebrated Hot and Cold project zine, Griffin has shown at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; The Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, Lump Gallery, North Carolina, and Cell Project Space, London.

In his first solo show at Adobe Books and the Backroom Gallery, McPartland uses balloons as a vehicle of communication. Collected through day to day observations, McPartland's writings
transform pop culture, mundane human occurrences and social trends into a satirical language. Fleeting thoughts are given residence in a series of balloons creating a visual banter between the artist and the observer.

Upcoming shows include Glen Horowitz, North Hampton, New York and Bear Ridgeway Exhibitions, San Francisco.

Curated by Maggie Otero

30 April to 30 May, 2009
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Everyday 11am to midnight

Works from The Mask of Civilization

Garth Thompson-Vieira
through April 25th
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
everyday 11am to midnight

Images Courtesy of ArtBusiness.com
www.artbusiness.com

THANK YOU!

Dear Friends of Adobe Books,

On behalf of Andrew McKinley, the staff of Adobe Books and myself, thank you for supporting Adobe Books' 20th Anniversary Auction. Everyone's participation was fundamentally an investment in Adobe Books for the future and we sincerely appreciate the help to guarantee the continuation of the store's role in the community. The event was a success and would not have been possible without all of the artists, install crew, auctioneers, volunteers and friends of the store.

With some of the funds raised we hope to clean up the store, make some repairs to the shop and gallery, and strengthen our ability to support artists, musicians and writers. In fact, we hope to incorporate more artist projects in the store such as limited edition bookmarks and making a shelf dedicated to books chosen by local artists and friends of the store.

Special thanks to Tartine, BiRite Grocery, Dori Latman, Four Barrel, Le Banh Mi and the lovely staff at SoEx. Thank you to Brianna and the very special volunteers who helped make the night a success!

Sincerely,
Devon Bella, Curator
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery

Adobe Books 20th Anniversary Art Auction

Adobe Books 20th Anniversary Art Auction
Saturday, March 28, 2009
at Southern Exposure 14th Street gallery
417 14th Street at Valencia
San Francisco, CA 94103
3:00 - 8:00 pm
One day only
Free Admission
Online Preview (in progress):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adobebooksauction09

Participating artists include Airyka Rockefeller, Ajit Chauhan, Alena Rudolph, Alicia McCarthy, Alissa Anderson, Amy Jo Diaz, Andrew Schoultz, Barry McGee, Brion Nuda Rosch, Bryson Gill, Chris Baird, Chris Corales, Chris Duncan, Christine Shields, Clare Rojas, Colter Jacobsen, Dave King, Dave Schubert, Devendra Banhart, Emily Prince, Future Farmers: Amy Franceschini & Michael Swaine, Jay Nelson, Jeff Canham, Jennie Smith, Joe Byrnes, Johanna St Clair, John Dwyer, Joshua Churchill, Jovi Schnell, Kal Spelletich, Kathryn Spence, Klea McKenna, Kyle Field, Kyle Knobel, Kyle Ranson, Leslie Shows, Liz Walsh, Matt Furie, Matt Gonzalez, Misa Inaoka, Naoki Onodera, Nathan Stapley, Orion Shepherd, Rachel Corry, Rachel Kaye, Ryan Coffey, Ryder Cooley, Sahar Khoury, Scott Williams, Shaun O'Dell, Sonya Derman, Tara Foley
Will Yackulic, Yukako Ezoe Onodera

Silent auction ends at 6pm
Live auction from 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Cash, check, Visa/MC accepted

Vietnamese sandwiches by Le Bahn Mi at 5:30pm
The Café by Dori Latman serving coffee and tea all day

Special Thanks to Southern Exposure, BiRite Grocery, Gregory Lind, and Triple Base Gallery for their support.

Check back for updates...

Garth Thompson-Vieira

The Mask of Civilization
Sutures Schisms and Decay

New work by Garth Thompson-Vieira

Steeped in the visual language of anarchist ideologies and the barbaric sound of the macabre, Garth Thompson-Vieira’s new work transforms the Backroom Gallery into a repository of nightmarish scenes from over 30 works of collage. Articulated by automatist techniques, Thompson-Vieira’s practice extracts representational forms from the cut-outs from early 20th-century French illustration books and the grisly patterns of overpainting. Military battalions transform into pillars of war, lurid portraits ooze with terror, and as a result, the haunting imagery reveals what lies beneath the mask of civilization.

Garth Thompson-Vieira is a 2005 graduate at the San Francisco Art Institute and currently lives and works in New York. Adobe Books is proud to present The Mask of Civilization: Sutures, Schisms and Decay as the body of work calls attention to the unseen surrenders of progress and innovation as well as the store’s own veiled mutations and traces of decay.

Music performance by SHREDDING at 9:00pm

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Opening Reception on Thursday, 26 March, 2009 8:00-10:00pm
Exhibition dates 26 March - 25 April, 2009

Upcoming Music at Adobe Books

Music at Adobe Books on Friday, 20 March
Hélène Renaut, Chloe Makes Music, and The Woodlands 8:00pm

Orion Shepherd in SFWeekly

I Was a Green Beret

Exhibition of new work by Orion Shepherd
19 February - 21 March, 2009

Opening Reception 19 February, 7 - 10pm
Music by Dimples and Golden West Service

I Was a Green Beret draws attention to the book world around us and painstakingly coaxes it into being through the miniature style of painting. Orion Shepherd’s paintings are an achievement of trompe l’oeil and the portrayal of dimension, yet his greatest output is the depiction of the 60s era at the peak of popular imagination. While his current study of books and magazines condense the cover onto the page, they also capture the magnitude and complexity of the media culture from which they originate.

Showing for the first time at Adobe Books, Orion Shepherd creates a focal point for the fascination and compulsion of the United States Army Special Forces and the clandestine operations of the Green Beret. Functioning as a provocation of the Green Beret, the exhibition pairs the dramatic device with other print media saturations through a pastiche of book cover designs. As a result, Shepherd’s new body of work not only rekindles the history the codex and its decorative uses, but more significantly, reveals miniaturization as both a mode of virtuosity and haunting social process of identity formation as demonstrated by the Orwellian dystopia in 1984, the guiding hand of National Geographic and The Right Stuff’s ethos of patriotism.

Orion Shepherd was born in 1984 and grew up in Martinez, California. He received his Bachelor degree in Fine Arts from California College of the Arts (CCA) in 2006. Shepherd currently lives and works in San Francisco. Adobe Books is pleased to present Orion Shepherd's solo exhibition alongside the gallery's history of showcasing local emerging artists. I Was a Green Beret is especially exciting for Adobe Books as many of its own paperbacks inspired Shepherd's new body of work.

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3166 16th St. San Francisco, CA 94103
11am - midnight everyday

$free

Music at Adobe Books

boyz IV men
religious girls
tuesday, february 24, 2009
8:30 pm
$free

adobe books
3166 16th Street
san francisco, ca 94103

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Sam McPheeters, George Chen, Deana Uribe

An evening of readings and stand up comedy
Friday, February 20th, 2009
8-10 pm
$5 donation, all ages

Adobe Books
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Sam McPheeters was born in Ohio in 1969, and raised in upstate New York. He is the former lead singer of Born Against and Wrangler Brutes, a founding member of Men's Recovery Project and the owner of the now defunct Vermiform Records. He lives in California with his wife, Tara, and their eleven cats.

George Chen is a freelance writer and musician based in Oakland. Music projects include Chen Santa Maria, KIT, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, and running the record label Zum. He has performed "stand up" "comedy" about "five" times, all since seeing the terrible, terrible "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

Deana Uribe is a poet, comedian, and student from Los Angeles California. She has performed stand up comedy twice, the first time at the Playhouse 7 Laemmle Theater in Pasadena and the second time at the Horsecow Gallery in West Sacramento. Her perfomances consits of elaborate long stories dashed with Satanic-stoner references. She lives in Felton, in the Santa Cruz mountains.

Upcoming: Orion Shepherd

exhibition in february
check back for details and announcement

Music at Adobe Books

unicorn basement
MC/VL
wednesday
21 january 2009
8pm
*free

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

bonnie banks in the COUNCIL OF THE ERRTH
super failures of the errth
featuring corpsemop colosi
ion clappers
music by
VSLS
Head Boggle
Bullshit Detector
incindental music by
Bonnie Banks Council / Errth selection.

thursday
22 january 2009
7-10pm
*free

Ex Libris

Opening reception at the twentieth hour with musical entertainment on
Wednesday, 14 January 2009

A formation out of the chaos and the clutter of Adobe Books, Ex Libris is an exhibition of books selected by a group of local artists, writers and creative thinkers. Beginning on the fourteenth of January, the Backroom Gallery transforms into a library as a glimpse into the literary influences on local creative and critical inquiry.

Participants include Courtney Fink, Vincent Fecteau, Colter Jacobsen, Julian Myers, Emily Prince, Jeannene Przyblyski, Kyle Ranson, Evan Rehill, Brion Nuda Rosch, Michael Swaine, Margaret Tedesco, and Meredith Tromble

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3166 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
t: (415) 864-3936
e: adobebooksbackroom@gmail.com