Phoenix Mission

Luna Rienne Gallery is pleased to present Phoenix Mission, a pop-up print and sculpture exhibition curated by life-long SF Mission fixture Dogpaw Carillo and also featuring René Yañez, Michael Rios, Calixto Robles, David Crook, and Colin Bowring.

Opening Reception Saturday, March 5, 6-9PM
Showing through March 21, 2016

Phoenix Mission showcases printmaking, painting, and sculpture that have helped define the art aesthetic for which San Francisco’s most mural-filled neighborhood is known. It aims to celebrate, educate, and bridge the diversity of cultures in one of the city’s most popular districts.

Dogpaw Carrillo, born in San Francisco’s Mission District, has been part of the neighborhood’s ever-changing pantheon of cultural caretakers for almost sixty years. Surrounded by artists, poets, musicians, and creative people of all kinds, his work explores the connection between art and music. Dogpaw grew up next door to Fantasy Records, was one of the early wave of street artists in the 70s, and spearheaded the multimedia collective Gravy Dogs in the 80s. Since then, he has created a variety of poster designs, radio shows, “razadelic” projections, and paintings.

Michael Rios is a native of Oakland CA. He attended the San Francisco Academy Of Art on scholarship in the 60s, then worked as an illustrator for mens clothier Roos Atkins before opening his own design studio in North Beach. Rios turned to fine art in the 70s as well as moved to the Mission, where he became involved in the burgeoning Latino art scene and painted some of the first murals in the Mission. He worked extensively with Carlos Santana, creating album covers, concert backdrops, clothing designs, posters, and guitars. Rios continues to cross boundaries with his powerful, colorful visions.

René Yañez is a Mexican-born painter, assemblage artist, performer, curator, and community activist. Having moved to the Bay Area in 1966, he help to found the Mission Cultural Arts Center and Galeria de la Raza, where he served as the director for 15 years. He is also one of the first people to introduce the Day of the Dead celebrations in the United States.

Calixto Robles is a painter, printmaker, and sculptor from Oaxaca, Mexico. Inspired by the myths, symbols, colors, and ancient traditions of Meso-America, he mixes the silkscreen techniques, which enhance texture and brilliant color, with drawn and found images. Robles’ paintings explore magical realms while his ceramics allow him to reconnect with earthly materials.

David Crook is an artist and astrologer based in San Francisco’s Mission District. He holds an MFA in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Colin Bowring, The Wizard, explores the medium of science to make art about discovery energy, color, and the transient visual experience. Working with large adjustable mirrors, holographic gyroscopes, human-sized water prisms and bicycle rim water lenses, he transforms beams of sunlight into scattered patterns of spectral bliss.