Hi Fructose Captures Images of Dan Quintana's "Zero Instruments" Opening

Opening Night: Dan Quintana’s “Zero Instruments” at Varnish Fine Art

by Nastia VoynovskayaPosted on May 28, 2013

Stacey Ransom of Ransom & Mitchell, Dan Quintana and Alex Pardee

Last Saturday, Dan Quintana (featured in our current issue) debuted his solo show “Zero Instruments” at San Francisco’s Varnish Fine Art. For this body of work, Quintana stripped down the baroque style he is known for, presenting a new series of oil paintings and charcoal drawings imbued with a ghostly pallor. Rendered with an icy color palette, the new paintings bring about philosophical themes of the ephemerality of life with figures that billow and dissolve in the wind. Take a look at our exclusive photos from the opening reception below.

Dan Quintana and Junko Mizuno

Ken Harman of Spoke Art and Chuck Sperry

Last Week to See Jennybird Alcantara's "Creatures of Saintly Disguise"

Jennybird's amazing solo show Creatures of Saintly Disguise will be coming to a close on Saturday, July 28. If you haven't made it in yet, swing by during our normal business hours, Tues-Sat 11am - 6pm. In the meantime, here's a beautiful view put together by Kerri:

For those without Adobe Flash capability, head over to the exhibit page HERE

Farewell to the Gorgons

Mind Spring featuring Chuck Sperry, Chris Shaw and Ron Donovan ends Saturday, so come by the gallery for a last look at the Gorgons, hand-pulled screenprints, and luminescent originals.  

You'll find Sperry in the Mission Sunday teaching an art class, and you'll never get better silkscreen instruction:

Occupy Art with Jon-Paul Bail & Chuck Sperry

Jon-Paul Bail & Chuck Sperry present
OCCUPY Art!
an Art Course at the Free University

Sunday February 19th, 2012

The Free Uni­ver­sity of San Fran­cisco Art Class is every Sun­day from 2:30pm to 5:00pm (Feb­ru­ary 5th to March 4th) at Vira­cocha - 998 Valen­cia Street (at 21st Street), San Fran­cisco, CA.

The Free Uni­ver­sity of San Fran­cisco aims to make the high­est level of edu­ca­tion avail­able, com­pletely free, to any indi­vid­ual who wants it, regard­less of color, creed, age, gen­der, nation­al­ity, reli­gion or immi­gra­tion sta­tus — a uni­ver­sity free of money, taught for free. The only require­ment for mem­ber­ship is a desire to teach and/or a desire to learn.

Course Descrip­tion:

The Free Uni­ver­sity Art School is very proud to present Jon-Paul Bail (of Polit­i­cal Grid­lock) pro­lific Bay Area artist who uses the streets of the world as his can­vas. Since last year’s bril­liant pre­sen­ta­tion of street art com­plete with a wheat paste demon­stra­tion (video taken by yours truly) at the Free Uni­ver­sity, Jon-Paul Bail has been extremely active mak­ing a series of Hella Occupy posters for the Occupy move­ment across California.

The Relaunch(es) make way for Mind Spring

With the Relaunch Part II (all sculpture show) ending tomorrow, Varnish Fine Art is pleased to present the upcoming show: 

Mind Spring: New paintings, installations, and limited silkscreen editions by Chuck Sperry, Chris Shaw, and Ron Donovan.  Lending rock and alternative music a form of visual expression in sync with their urban environments, Chuck Sperry, Chris Shaw, and Ron Donovan embrace, alter, re-assign meaning and re-contextualize images until they become the medium-the subject emerging, used purposely--irreverently or reverently--to transform ephemeral events and experiences into a lexicon of shared cultural visual memory.

Please join us for the Mind Spring opening reception on Saturday, January 14th, 4pm to 7pm.  On exhibit through February 18.

In the title piece Mind Spring (shown above), Chuck Sperry creates an icon of the Worldwide Occupy Movement and it's antecedent in the Arab Spring. The figure wreathed in blooming spring flowers is a representation of the surprising enlightened humanism, the opening mind, the broadened socio-political possibilities which has swept the world in 2011.

Chuck Sperry has honed the craft of designing and hand screen printing for over 15 years to become recognized throughout the world as one of the foremost rock poster artists. Elevating the craft to fine art, Sperry creates socio-political artwork beyond rock. He adheres to the ideal that beauty strengthens his message. Sperry works in San Francisco, but exhibits internationally from Bristol to Belgrade. He has been featured in documentaries for film and television in the US, Europe and Australia.

Chris Shaw's work (shown above) is collected by both rock poster fans as well as art collectors. Shaw’s posters and paintings have been featured in several books, notably, The Art Of Modern Rock. Shaw’s artwork has also been published in a myriad of newspapers and magazines both domestically and abroad. German Rolling Stone magazine named Chris Shaw “Artist of the Year” in 2001. Shaw’s posters were featured in the 2009 documentary film “American Artifact”. In 2011, Shaw, Sperry and Donovan collaborated on a 6 month installation exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.


For the last 2 decades Ron Donovan has created hundreds of cutting-edge rock posters (pictured at left), all the while spilling spurious political propaganda. Prolific rock art poster artist Ron Donovan opened The Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company together with Chuck Sperry in the late '90's. Donovan became well known for his rene­gade, abun­dant cre­ative energy and can­did expres­sion. His Pacific Island back­ground and influ­ence invig­o­rated his focus on Amer­i­can polit­i­cal satire and rela­tions, and multi-cultural stud­ies. It was also in col­lege where he met Chris Shaw, fel­low col­lab­o­ra­tor.


Give us a shout at the gallery or visit our website for more information about this exhibit.