Theo Auer at Zza’s Wine Bar and Gallery

August 13, 2009 in THE WINE BAR GALLERY

“WE ARE NOT RESPONSE FOR ANY BELONGING”

A solo exhibition of photography

by Theo Konrad Auer

Opening Reception: 6-9 p.m., Saturday, August 29. 2009

Oakland, CA

August 5, 2009 –Oakland artist and curator Obi Kaufmann is proud to announce the latest in a series of dynamic art exhibitions featuring emerging Oakland artists.

“WE ARE NOT RESPONSE FOR ANY BELONGING,” a solo exhibition of photography by artist, curator and journalist Theo Konrad Auer, will be available for viewing from Saturday, August 29- October 2, 2009 at Zza’s Wine Bar and Gallery, 552 Grand Avenue in Oakland.

pics are from a recent meeting with Theo, and are only indicative of what will actually be in the show. -obi

“It is surprising,” says Kaufmann “what a critical and indeed commercial eye Theo has for photography. We all know Theo’s involvement in the community, but his art is really good too. Zza’s, with its amazing hospitality to the local art scene, is the perfect place to exhibit Theo’s first public show of photography.”

Oakland-born and based, Theo Auer documents the world in which he is as much a participant as an observer and critic. Auer helped found Oakland’s popular monthly first Friday Art Murmur artwalk event. And as a blogger and reporter, his artist exposes, reviews and coverage of issues paramount to Oakland’s art community, have been published in a variety of local and national publications, including Juxtapoz, Hi Fructose, Art Business and The Oakbook. Inspired by the works of photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and William Eagleston, Auer now aims to stake out a middle ground between the worlds of photojournalism and what The Academy and market have traditionally deemed “artistic photography.”

In Auer’s own words: “I live in a world at flux in a time of gentrification that I believe is not occurring as rapidly as many say, but is rather in the middle of its cycle, begun just before my birth at the end of the seventies, in a hospital that no longer exists. The Lake Merritt Hospital, long demolished, still stands in my memory – its phantom architecture flickering in and out of Oakland’s skyline. There is a compelling irony in that I was born in an institution now long dead; and yet, I have been, for the last several years, the chronicler of many art spaces now dead, too. This is my story, though it is clearly a side story; a subplot in the greater narrative I have authored.

Through these photos taken with cheap cameras on manual settings, I have attempted to tie and sew together the fragmented threads of a life lived in as much flux as the world I find myself in. Some are seemingly abstract; some are a meditation on the perception of time in a shifting landscape; and others give off a grim, dry humor. In all, nothing is edited; nothing is interfered with. To do so would be an abominable violation of the trust I have placed in the seconds that make up the moments you will be seeing before your eyes, and fill the gap in which your personal prejudices set in.”

Contact:
Obi Kaufmann
925-951-7501

Art Curator
Zza’s Wine Bar & Gallery
550 Grand Ave.
Oakland, CA 94610

obikaufmann@msn.com
www.oaklandsweetart.info
www.obikaufmann.com

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