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Doug Rickard's "A New American Picture" at Stephen Wirtz Gallery has been extended through June 18. These are images of different neighborhoods, mostly poor, mostly ethnic; some are in Detroit, some in Memphis, but they could be in Oakland, or Newark, anywhere overlooked in better economies and left to rot in the downturn. Most have people in them, oblivious to the camera while they go about their business, yet their presence doesn't mitigate the deserted quality of the settings. Facades crumble, and grass and weeds consume curbside yards. Windows are either boarded are darkened. The few people spotting the landscape seem to be loitering on abandoned property. Long stretches of flat roadside show businesses it's hard to imagine have opened their doors in the last decade--they share that quality with Edward Hopper's paintings, that even the evidence of life can't make it seem like anything is living in these streets and buildings. Yet people do live here, and their depiction is not by contrivance of the artist. It's the Street View feature from Google Maps. Rickard simply gathered and re-photographed the images for this exhibit. This raises the question of whether it is exploitative to curate images of people who seem unaware that their real lives and circumstances are about to make for such compelling viewing (the gallery website suggests that some of the people acknowledge the camera, but I did not see any examples of that). You have two more weeks to see it and decide for yourself.Fan Ho's "A Hong Kong Memoir" is at Modernbook through Sept 3. Isa Leshko's "Thrills and Chills" continues at Cordon Potts through July 30. Both galleries are at 49 Geary.
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