Prima Facie: Openings at Coastline and Jamie Brooks

01 Aug Prima Facie: Openings at Coastline and Jamie Brooks

Mark Zuckerberg by Ray Turner

6:45 p.m., Costa Mesa

Mark Zuckerberg, having done as much as anyone who isn’t Steve Jobs to push us all headlong into the digital age (whether we wanted it or not) now tastes the revenge of the analog world in a show of paintings at Coastline Gallery. Curated by David Michael Lee, Like MARK features the Facebook founder’s face as portrayed by the likes of F. Scott Hess, Julio Labra and Bradford J. Salamon.

Marinus Welman, Harnessing the Energy (detail)

“Revenge” may be overstating it a bit, but Hess’ portrait of a dopey-looking Zuckerberg with his wife standing behind him in a NSFW-state of undress, the head of a large rabbit drapped over her shoulder, can only be described as excoriating. Marinus Welman’s Harnessing the Energy is a deranged portrait with color exploding from what’s left of the Facebook founder’s visage. Other paintings are more neutral or humorous, as in William Wray’s WTF.

Also part of the show is a literal wall of profile pictures created by the local artistic community, rendered on 15” square panels supplied by the gallery. The crowdsourced aspect of the wall helped to make the Saturday evening opening all the more social.

Clockwise from upper left: ‘profile pictures’ by Riley Waite, Megan West, Mark Leysen, Bibi Yang and others,  WTF by William Wray, the wall of profile pictures, Mark Zuckerberg by Tony Pinto

“Like Mark” runs through September 30.

Coastline Gallery
1515 Monrovia
Newport Beach, CA 92663

8 p.m., Costa Mesa

Etchings and woodcuts were the social media of an earlier age, a way for the artist to send their imagery out into the world for far less than the full price of an oil painting; but artists no longer commission an etching or engraving of their masterpiece, they post it on Instagram, so an artist today whose medium is ink on paper is free to be as expressive and original as they desire. The experimental possibilities are endless.

Vanessa Flores, The Island

First Impression, a pop-up print show that runs for two weeks at Jamie Brooks Fine Art, features a mix of veteran printmakers and recent devotees. Vanessa Flores’ screen print The Island — in an odd parallel of Hess’ Mrs. Zuckerberg — shows a drowsy-eyed topless female holding aloft the disembodied face of, for whatever reason, a warthog. Bill Jaros’ untitled drypoints, printed from shattered pieces of plexiglas, contain extraordinary depths of texture and detail. Noriho Uriu, a native of Japan, presents a brightly colored image inspired by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown of 2011, which like many of her images referencing economic dislocation or other disasters, may appear decorative but at the same time clearly pulls from deeper currents. What’s obvious above all is the time invested in her craft. Prima facie evidence that first impressions are indelible.

Clockwise from upper left: printmaking by Noriho Uriu, the artist, an untitled drypoint/mixed media piece by Bill Jaros

“First Impression“ runs for two weeks.

Jamie Brooks Fine Art
2967 Randolph Avenue, Unit C
Costa Mesa, CA 92626