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The Dark Arts

The Robots Have Feelings Too group art show, currently taking place through May 18th at Culture Cache Gallery in San Francisco, spotlights many brilliant modern artists (whose works you can peruse on their website), my favorite of which being event curator Jeff Soto, whose graf-inspired robot-beings remind me somewhat of Mark Ryden, who is currently exhibiting his latest work at the Earl McGrath Gallery in Los Angeles.

However, one participating artist who profoundly garnered my attention with his dark and provocative work is Jonathan Weiner, a RISD grad and Brooklynite, whose pieces Subterranean Benediction and Sephardic Dancer invoke Judaic symbolism rather intrigueingly in a Tim Burtonesque Nightmare Before Christmas kind of way. (Notice the payes & the Cohanic hand gesture in SB?) Weiner’s collected works are both stunning and impressive. If you’re in the San Fran area, I recommend you check out the show.

Also, on the Jewish art front, my friend David’s step-father, Paul Graubard, will be exhibiting work that has been “inspired by [his] visions of Jewish life,” at the Andrew Edlin Gallery in Chelsea, NYC, from May 8 through June 7.

On April 30-July 30, director Pearl Gluck and musician Basya Shechter will be exhibiting an installation at the Eldridge Street Project. “Using fragments of lived experience from the landmark Eldridge Street Synagogue and its surrounding historic neighborhood, Trance is a sound and video installation that breaks boundaries and sparks cross cultural dialogue between the Asian and Jewish communities on the Lower East Side.”


And while we’re on the subject of art—I recommend a visit to the website of David Friedman, a kabbalistic artist from Tzefat, whose works explore the deepest levels of Jewish mysticism with vivid colors and a delightfully cartoonish candor. More of my friends have his prints hanging than any other artist I’m aware of.

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