For complete up-to-date East Bay art listings, look under “Billboard” on the home page for the “Select Category” pulldown, then select “Art Galleries” or “Museums.”
Everyday Universes — Color, meet randomness. Justin O’Neill and Paula Malesardi zap the eyeballs with neon orange, glowing blood-red, and vibrating yellows in what appear to be technical topographical maps of imagined islands. Lines of blue, pink, and green denote altitude changes in these abstracts, which O’Neill says he creates with a spill or splash of shape against a flat, one-color surface. The Déjá Vu triptych echoes corollaries from the Mandelbrot set and chaos theory, while his Have We Met? series samples paleobiology with a trilobite shape iterated six times. Both pieces profess faith in some type of order underneath the chaos. The question they ask is, “Are you willing to be a believer?” — D2 (Through Jan. 6 at the Gallery of Urban Art, 1266 66th St., Oakland.)
Grids and Reflections — Beautiful abstract art hides in the mundane world of everyday objects. The East Bay’s Art Levit locates and captures those forms in nineteen color giclée photographic prints of urban scenes and geological formations. Brick facades hold exquisite decomposing linear patterns. Colorful, corroding pipes replace those boring, abstract color swaths in corporate offices. Is there some type of creativity coded into the everyday patterns of our lives? The stacks of wooden pallets and piles of compressed plastic recyclables whisper “yes,” while Levit is all ears. — D2 (Through Jan. 22 at the Photolab Gallery, 2235 Fifth St., Berkeley; 510-644-1400.)
The Jazz Image — The stuff that jazz documentaries are literally made of lines the walls of the Berkeley Public Library through January. Berkeley resident Lee Tanner spent four decades shooting the jazz greats as a personal side project, with his pictures eventually appearing between the covers of magazines like Rolling Stone and American Photo, as well as front and center on LP and CD jackets for Atlantic Records and many others. In Berkeley, Tanner presents 25 gorgeous, black-framed, black-and-white prints of Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and more. It’s all brilliant framing, amazing lighting, and exquisite compositions of shimmering instruments and oily musicians looming up out of the blackness; plus a screening of a Tanner jazz documentary for PBS January 8 at noon. — D2 (Through Jan. 24, 2090 Kittredge St. JazzImage.com or 510-981-6100.)
New Works — An uninventive title for an unassuming space. Look southwest from where Gilman hits the BART tracks, and you see a fenced-off green area. A split boulder of granite spits water at the front entrance as a steel sculpture whirls nearby. A New Leaf has hundreds of abstract fountains, whirling kinetic art, and tortured sculptures, all outdoors and ready for your backyard. The abstract steel shapes alienate, but the rush of dozens of fountains soothes. — D2 (Through Jan. 15 at A New Leaf; ANewLeafGallery.com or 510-525-7621.)
What’s Going On? — The curators of the Oakland Museum’s ambitious new show about the Vietnam War era in California tell not one story but many. Along with a more straightforward chronology of the war itself, the show juxtaposes opposing voices. The accompanying audio tour is crucial to the viewer’s appreciation, but sadly, to get to often-riveting first-person accounts, patrons have to listen to a tedious summation of events relayed by an anonymous narrator. — B.K. (Through Feb. 27; MuseumCA.org or 510-238-2200.)
