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A white square with Zamin Project participants, founder, and moderator names above and below a circular geometric graphic element.

Zamin Project

Aggregate Space Gallery 1255 26th ST STE 101, Oakland, CA

Through dedicated artist interviews and panel discussions, members of the Bay Area SWANA community address a critical question: how can we create our own resources?

Free

Three square blocks are lined up in a row, each with a smoothed hole in the center that decrease in size with each cube, all against a hazy white background.

Wind Over Water

Round Weather 951 Aileen St., Oakland, CA

The show focuses on art as meditation device and practice.

Free
Arches of dark brush strokes curve and overlap each other, forming something of a bridge and dripping down the whitespace at the bottom of the page.

Charlie Milgrim: Water in Motion

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

She works in painting, sculpture, installation, and photography, and with a wide range of materials including bowling balls, discarded objects, and folded tar paper.

Free
A naked figure straddles on the back of a small horse, which is lying on the ground, their arms balancing them and their eyes set somewhere in the distance, beyond the viewer.

Sara Lisch: Metamorphosis

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Metamorphosis is a metaphorical extension of her garden and symbolizes life, death, and renewal.

Free
Flower pedals are stitched together to form a lush, colorful palette of color, fusing purples and pinks and yellows and greens and reds, with natural light sneaking through from behind.

Jessica Cadkin: Rupture & Rapture

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

The beauty of nature is both fierce and fragile: the destructive power of a tornado wrapped in the delicacy of flower petals.

Free
Two bodies, their body hair, features, and proportions cartoonishly and lovingly exaggerated, are tangled in pleasure, one enwrapped in the legs of another.

Jeffrey Cheung: Did you know love is healing?

pt.2 Gallery 1523b Webster St., Oakland, CA

Cheung’s paintings repel ideas of heteronormativity and stress the idea that representation matters. The ambiguous characters, undefinable by race or gender, are instead typified by the joy that they share, and the light they spark in one another.

Free
An image, incredibly close, of an eye—the surface of the image smudged and blurred by fingerprints.

TABITHA SOREN: SURFACE TENSION

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

The images she chooses are drawn from web searches, text messages, social media content, and personal pictures, raising questions about authenticity and exploring the difficulty and lack of desire to distinguish between reality and fiction.

Free

Two photos of women side by side—one with a blue shirt and collar-bone-length, curly hair, standing before art; another with shoulder length hair and a short-sleeved black top against a curtain of chains.

Tabitha Soren: Sarah Thornton in Conversation

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

They will discuss Soren’s artistic process, vision, and photographic works on view in Tabitha Soren

Free
A figure lies on their side, a cream colored sheet draped over their midsection, their hand on their knee and their white beard out of focus and half out of frame.

Chris Komater: Allegory of Inclination

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

His desires and narratives are given visual form through photography, a medium that is as true and objective as it is malleable and obfuscating.

Free
Paint drips sideways and upside down in these dizzying layers of color, pattern, direction and emotion.

Raymond L. Haywood: Love Letters and Love Notes

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Through a key decision to incorporate the color black as ground, Haywood has produced his most mature body of work to date.

Free

On the left, a fake tree concealing a radio tower; on the right, two purple bowling-balls are suspended between faded white music stands.

XX @ XV: 15th Anniversary Group Show

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Mercury 20 Gallery is thrilled to present an exhibition celebrating its 15th year as an artist-run gallery.

Free

Two planetary orbs hover in a haze, one before the other, with a something void between them.

High Plains

Johansson Projects 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA

Ranging in mediums from exposures on gelatin silver photo paper, to reclaimed wood lath constructions, and layered painting and drawing on canvas, these three artists use unique vocabularies to compose reflections of individual experience.

Free
Toothbrushes, hair clips and various tangled objects are caught up in a mess of hair, braid, and cornrow.

UNSEEN: THE HIDDEN LABOR OF WOMEN

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

At a moment when Mills is transitioning away from its identity as an historically women’s college, Unseen celebrates the power and legitimacy of women’s experiences.

Free
The words "The Works" are centered in a swirling circular pattern of blues, blacks and a scratchy white.

The Works

Round Weather 951 Aileen St., Oakland, CA

Most of these artists’ greatest commonality is the found; a majority of the artworks gathered here incorporate found objects, materials, or images.

Free

An individual details the ear of a lifesize pencil sketch of a figure in a mugshot.

Virtual Artist Talk with Lava Thomas – Mills College Art Museum

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

Drawing from her family’s Southern roots, current and historical socio-political events, intersectional feminism and African American protest and devotional traditions, Thomas’ practice centers ideas that amplify visibility, healing, and empowerment in the face of erasure, trauma, and oppression.

Free
Flashes of blackish fireworks busy an old radio microphone against hot orange and yellow.

JOHANNA POETHIG: HIDEOUTS, ESCAPE HATCHES AND A SUBMARINE

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

A current of sound runs through the Submarine of war, of work, of stealth, of humor, submerged, sub-colonial, subliminal, sublime, surging, streaming, sinking and surfacing from our dark waters.

Free

Multiple images are arranged against a white background, two of a splashing, milky black and white and another a close up of a river-way barrier, all beside the words "SplitNature Tanja Geis + Catherine Mackey."

SplitNature: Tanja Geis + Catherine Mackey

Round Weather 951 Aileen St., Oakland, CA

SplitNature is Round Weather’s first two-person exhibition, showcasing recent and time-tested artworks by Tanja Geis and Catherine Mackey.

Free
Painted in soft, warm pastels, the leaves of a green plant are captured mid-flower.

Tara Esperanza: The Succulent Garden

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Esperanza’s interest lies in sharing the beauty that she sees through her art.

Free
A crackling, wirey sculpture of light hums in light blue hues.

Andrea Brewster: The Fragile Balance That Lies Beneath

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Her sculptural pieces are deliberately ambiguous, a fantastical synthesis of biological imagery that ask the viewer to question whether the form is animal, botanical, or cellular; subtly shifting focus between a sense of familiarity and the otherworldly.

Free

A snake encircles the title "Ouroboros" in all-caps red font, while chasing its own tail.

Opening Reception | Ouroboros: 2022 Mills College Senior Thesis Exhibition

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

Experimenting with a range of forms and media from painting to ceramics and installation, the artists in “Ouroboros” invite the viewer to imagine alternate realities, question one’s relation to everyday objects, and reflect on living with mental illness.

Free
A black and white photo of two cars parked in front of an old bus, a sign above all of them reading "C.C.A.C. Gallery"

The Last Wednesday Night

Oliver Art Center Tecoah Bruce Gallery 5212 Broadway, Oakland, CA

Before COVID, each Wednesday night the CCA community would gather on the Oakland campus for exhibition openings and events. Across the gallery spaces on and around campus, there would be art, music, food, and we would toast the accomplishments of graduating students, esteemed faculty, and distinguished alumni. 

Free

Thin strings of dark blue and black found fabric is tied together in a grid of 4x5 squares.

Kathleen King: An Event in the Form of Questions

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Kathleen King’s recent assemblage and sculpture is comprised of materials gathered from city streets and the waste stream. An Event in the Form of Questions grids and structures evoke the given order from high-rises to prisons. This work challenges viewers to look at abandonment and lack as both material and spiritual conditions, as well as to think about satisfaction, which is linked to consumption and our global climate catastrophe. What do we need?

Free
A crowd of migrant workers depicted in soft warm tones of watercolor, walk and gather against a forested background above a running river.

Jill McLennan: Migration Altered

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Jill McLennan’s work moves from local to global focus as she documents the movement of humans and animals around the planet in Migration Altered. McLennan’s paintings address the human impact on the earth through time, traveling back to a place inhabited by indigenous people and looking forward to damaged wetlands being reclaimed by birds.

Free
On a concrete floor: Steel wine barrel hoops are placed above a panel split into four quadrants. The quadrants are painted with abstract black and grey spirals, orange lines, and geometric gold and grey elements.

Charlie Milgrim: Plane Shapes

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

While rigor and reason shore up Euclid’s logical system of plane geometry, Charlie Milgrim takes a more intuitive approach and renders her own geometric system of the three basic planes—the circle, square, and triangle. In Plane Shapes she creates an association of non-objective paintings and objects in which concentric and eccentric circles—one ordered, one disordered— collide with the linear edges and sharp corners of squares and triangles.

Free

Geometric black and orange intricate, abstracted line work against a white background.

Yulia Pinkusevich: Very Yellow-White Flash

Round Weather 951 Aileen St., Oakland, CA

Round Weather’s first solo show highlights the powerful work of Yulia Pinkusevich. Born in Kharkov, Ukraine, the bodies of work represented range in tone from Pinkusevich’s scarily prescient Isorithm series based in a declassified military manual for mapping predictions of the impacts of nuclear bomb airbursts to her grandly soothing Sakha series meditating on connections with the ancient Siberian spirituality of her ancestors.

Free
Three thin, suspended spirals in blue pink and yellow cast shadows on a white surface.

Mary Curtis Ratcliff: Casting Shadows

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Mary Curtis Ratcliff’s latest show of new works, Casting Shadows is comprised of kinetic and wall-mounted sculptures and features the circular form, a major element of Ratcliff’s work since the early 1970s.

Free
An abstracted flower-like image with black and white tones

SARA LISCH: THE MIND GARDEN

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

In her new show, The Mind Garden, Sara Lisch creates collages that explore and grow consciousness.

"Lenticular Clouds" by Craig Calderwood- a reclining figure against a background of gold wears a blue shirt patterned with amphoras. A mirror reveals their backside.

Craig Calderwood Artist-Led Tour

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

Join Craig Calderwood for a special walkthrough of her exhibition, The Light Bulb Sound, and take home a risograph print designed by the Artist. The Light Bulb Sound, part of MCAM’s 2022 Art + Process + Ideas Exhibition, shares elements of Calderwood’s creative process, including preliminary drawings and notes, alongside finished paintings. The exhibition shares […]

Free
Textile collage in a neutral palette by Virsik Leah

LEAH VIRSIK: COMMON THREAD

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Virsik’s works contain thread and stitching, painted over self-portraits, silk organza, prints and old business cards, and dots and holes, all which reveal and conceal.

Free
A close-up image of multi-colored feather bundles

JESSICA CADKIN: PLUME

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Jessica Cadkin’s installation, “Plume,” is made up of over seventy abstracted feather shapes, layered in small groupings and mounted on clear rods.

Free
An abstracted image of 16 pixels wide by 9 pixels high

CHRIS KOMATER: 16:9

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

For his new series, “16:9,” Chris Komater has produced a body of very low-resolution photographs, 16 pixels wide by 9 pixels high. Almost visually indecipherable, the imagery suggests forms but the viewer completes the work by imbuing it with intent, definition, and meaning. Inspired by today’s polarized views of reality, he has created photos that […]

Free

A green upholstered fainting couch sits stoically against a stone wall. A line art Art Nouveau border surrounds the piece of furniture.

Fainting Couch: A Contact Improv Dance Performance

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

Join artist Christy Chan for a walkthrough of her exhibition, Patterns, followed by a contact improv dance performance by members of UNA Productions dance company in response to Chan’s Fainting Couch. Light reception to follow.

Free
A topographical image with blue shadowing and off-white highlights⁠

Composed Surfaces

Round Weather 951 Aileen St., Oakland, CA

Composed Surfaces is an exhibition of paintings by Alexandra Bowes, Vicky Colombet, Tyler Cross, Sally Egbert, Prajakti Jayavant, and Javier Manrique.

A black and white surrealist pattern on paper featuring natural motifs

Night Vision

Gray Loft Gallery 2889 Ford Street #32, Oakland, CA

Gray Loft Gallery is delighted to present Night Vision – curated by Isaac Jasper Amala. What happens when we can see with night vision? Night Vision presents the work of nine artists whose diverse practices tune into subtle and fugitive wavelengths – revealing glimpses of the tender, haunting, kaleidoscopic, sensual, and expansive worlds hidden within […]

AN abstract explosion of pale blue and red across a golden yellow and gray background.

Lisa Kairos: Superbloom

Slate Contemporary 473 25th Street, Oakland, CA

The work in this show is inspired by the six months that artist Lisa Kairos spent in the Mojave Desert, just outside Joshua Tree National Park.

Free
A scenic horizon featuring pink and blue hues.

NEOCLES SERAFIMIDIS: ABEYANT LANDSCAPE

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

In late 2021, Neo Serafimidis began a photographic exploration in response to the perception of nature and reality into which we would emerge after COVID. As it turned out, the pandemic was not over; re-emergence in any sense was suspended. Our relationship to this new world is vague and as variable and mutable as the virus itself.

Free
Black and White Geometrically Abstract Painting

RAYMOND L. HAYWOOD: ENVY OF DESIRE

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

This body of paintings on recycled wood panels and old growth redwood is a continued exploration of how painter Raymond L. Haywood deals with and relates to the countless killings of African Americans in the United States.

Free
Two Patterned textiles side-by-side

CHRISTINE MEURIS & KRISTINA NOBLEMAN: IN SYMMETRY

Mercury 20 Gallery 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA

Artists Christine Meuris and Kristina Nobleman are IN SYMMETRY. With the concepts of wholeness and balance in mind, they have created work in their related yet unique visual languages.

Free
A comic strip showing a person laying crust criss cross across a pie tin.

Book Release: Today’s Special

The Lede 308 41st St, Oakland, CA

Come celebrate the release of TODAY’S SPECIAL by Melek Zertal & Christina Svenson

Free

Christy Chan, Detail from All Is Not Lost, 2019, Digital video projection in Wassaic, NY. Funded by Empire State Arts Foundation and curated by The Wassaic Project

ALL IS NOT LOST

All is Not Lost is a nighttime experience intended to offer a moment of pause in the chaos of our time.

Free
Collage of the featured artists and their work

Judith Belzer and Kathryn Spence in Conversation

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

A conversation between Bay Area artists Judith Belzer and Kathryn Spence, whose work is featured in MCAM’s fall exhibition Shifting Terrains.

Free
A graphic conch shell on sand meets a minimalist horizon of blue and teal

Someday Morning

Johansson Projects 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA

Johansson Projects presents Someday Morning, a two-person exhibition of works by Brian Scott Campbell and Matthew F Fisher. The works in this show skew toward perceptually driven portrayals of nature: a wave, the sun, a waterfall, a grove of trees, rolling hills, winding paths.

Free

A colorful abstract painting featuring anthropomorphic forms of fish, eyes, birds, and floating faces.

Painting Out of A Corner

Transmission Gallery, Oakland 770 West Grand Ave., Oakland, CA

Transmission Gallery Oakland presents Painting Out of a Corner, a solo exhibition of M. Mark Bauer’s colorful, intricate and fantastical paintings. 

Free
A fist punches through an arid landscape

Bessma Khalaf Artist Lecture

Mills College Art Museum 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA

Bessma Khalaf utilizes photography, video, sculpture, and performance to explore the boundaries of landscape, place, and image

Free

A gray scale image of the side of a large building with many windows is overlaid with an image of the moon.

SHADES OF GRAY

Gray Loft Gallery 2889 Ford Street #32, Oakland, CA

We are delighted to present SHADES OF GRAY, a group show selected by Ann Jastrab and Jan Watten. On display will be photos of cool neutrals, sophisticated deep charcoal gray images, glimmers of gray in a color landscapes and the beautiful mid-tones of perfect gelatin silver prints. Mixed media, alternative processes, color imagery and traditional black and white photographs will be on view.

Free