Star Wars Themed Art Show in SF
Star Wars “12 Parsecs” by Jeremiah Kille 48x60in
This December 18th, the anticipated Star Wars Episode VII will be released to movie theaters. This time, no Ewoks will be present, nor the much anticipated Jar Jar Binks as a theorized Sith Lord. To celebrate the return of the Star Wars series, the Great Wall of China graced its steps with many storm troopers, Banksy in the UK illustrated a work with a storm trooper painting “Stop Wars”, and in San Francisco, White Walls Shooting Gallery will be featuring a Star Wars themed group show featuring artists: Jeremiah Kille, Helen Bayly, Michael Brennan, Scott Musgrove, Scott Listfield, Adam Lister, CANTSTOPGOODBOY, Ted Lincoln, Jesse LeDoux, Nick Vargas, Justin Angelos, Wes21 Schwarzmaler, aka Remo Lienhard.
Star Wars “Chewie Too” by Justin Angelos (close up photo of bigger work)
Curated by artist, surfer Jeremiah Kille and co-curator Justin Giarla, the group show will be on view a few days prior to the release of Episode VII. Almost 40 years after the original release of Episode 1, White Walls ventures back in time to the original roots of production, bringing together artists without CGI, and without Disney. It is also without artists Doze Green and Mars-1, whom I had hoped to see on the line-up, but makes up for it by showing Wes21, who covers the Metaphysic, and Scott Listfield, who amazes the viewer once again with his astronaut themed landscapes.
Listfield, who studied painting at Dartmouth, brings the protagonist into the everyday pop-culture landscape, as an astronaut, distant from his surroundings. When I look at his work, I see a depiction of author Robert Heinlein’s, A Stranger in a Strange Land, a story of a human being raised on mars, newly returning to earth, combined with excerpts of the movie Brazil, and the everyday life of a Storm Trooper. Although this is my take, he mentions that his inspiration is from Star Wars and Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, which was released about 8 years before he was born. “I do not know if people genuinely believed we’d be living in space in 2001…But from Lost in Space to the Jetsons to Jurassic Park, it seems that popular culture craved and fomented this space-age perception of the future. Generations raised on these programs, movies, comic books, and novels are now grown and living in a future filled with mini vans, Starbucks, iMacs, and Hip Hop videos.
Banksy “Stop Wars’ is not currently featured at White Walls, but everyone says it should be
In many ways, the year 2001, like 1984 before it, failed to live up to expectations. In hindsight, these expectations appear almost comical. And yet the world today is strange and unusual in ways unimagined in 1957, when Sputnik was launched, or in 1968, when 2001 was released, or even in 1990 at the dawn of the world wide web. The present is in fact a very unusual place, and it’s strangest in the ubiquity of things we take for granted.”
“The astronaut in my paintings is simply here to explore the present.” –Scott Listfield
Dec.12th-Jan. 9th 2016
White Walls Gallery
886 Geary Street (between Hyde and Larkin)
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