SOLO AND GROUP SHOWS
2017
Inclusions Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
Group Exhibit
2016
Inclusions Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Group Exhibit
Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR.
Group Exhibit
2015
Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR.
Group Exhibit
Arc Gallery,
San Francisco
Group Exhibit
Wisdom 2.0 Summit,
San Francisco
Five-person Group Exhibit
2014
Wisdom
2.0 Summit, San Francisco
Five-person Group Exhibit
Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR.
Group Exhibit
Linus Galleries, Pasadena, CA
Group Exhibit
2013
Wisdom 2.0 Summit, San Francisco
Five-person Group Exhibit
Fred Parker Giles Gallery, Eastern Kentucky
University, Richmond, KY
Group Exhibit
2012
Maryland Federation of Art, Annapolis,
Md.
Group Exhibit
City Hall of San Francisco, SF, Ca.
Two-Person Exhibit
Kings Gallery, First
Unitarian Universalist Society, SF, Ca.
Two-Person Exhibit
University of California Berkeley San Francisco
Design Center, SF, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
2011
Southeastern College Arts Conference, Savannah, Ga.
Group Exhibit
JFK University
Arts Gallery, Berkeley, Ca.
Group Exhibit
2010
Union Street Gallery, Chicago Heights, Il. Group Exhibit
Marin Arts Council, San Rafael, Ca.
Group Exhibit
RootDivision, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
JFK University Arts Gallery, Berkeley, Ca.
Group
Exhibit
2009
Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura, Ca.
Group Exhibit
JFK University Arts Gallery, Berkeley, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Red Door Gallery, Oakland, Ca. Group Exhibit
2008
California Institute of Integral Studies, S.F., Ca.
Solo Exhibit
2007
Adams State College, Alamosa, Co.
Solo Exhibit
SomArts Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit "Evolution"
Red Ink Studios, San Francisco, Ca.
Group
Exhibit
SomArts Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit "Temenos"
2006
Springer-Croke Fine Art, San Francisco, Ca.
Solo
Exhibit
San Luis Obispo Art Center, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Springer-Croke Fine Art, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
JFK University Arts
Gallery, Berkeley, Ca.
Group Exhibit
2005
SomArts Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
JFK University Arts Gallery, Berkeley, Ca.
Group
Exhibit
2004
American
River College, Sacramento, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
City College of San Francisco, S.F., Ca.
Three Artist Exhibit
California Polytechnic University, Pomona, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Peninsula Museum of Art, Belmont, Ca.
Group Exhibit
2003
Southern Oregon University, Ashland Or.
Solo Exhibit
2002
Rogue College,
Grants Pass, Or.
Solo Exhibit
Chemeketa College, Salem, Or.
Solo
Exhibit
CBS Marketwatch.Com, SF, Ca.
Group Exhibit
2001
Stanford University, Stanford, Ca.
Two Artist Exhibit
Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, Ca.
Solo
Exhibit
Terrain
Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Two Artist Exhibit
College of the Siskiyous, Weed, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, Ca.
Group
Exhibit
2000
Merced
College, Merced, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Terrain Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
1999
Sinclair College, Dayton,
Oh.
Solo Exhibit
Truckee
College, Reno, Nv.
Solo Exhibit
William Torphy Fine Arts, San Francisco, Ca.
Two Artist Exhibit
1998
Sanchez Art Center,
Pacifica, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Napa
Valley College, Napa, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Carl Cherry Arts Center, Carmel, Ca.
Group Exhibit
1997
College of Notre Dame,
Belmont, Ca.
Group Exhibit
St.
Francis Hospital Foundation, S.F., Ca.
Group Exhibit
SomArts Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
1996
Ferian Internacional
del Arte, Mexico City
Group Exhibit
Chico Art Center, Chico, Ca.
Solo
Exhibit
Modesto College, Modesto, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
501 Cultural Center, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
SomArts Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
1995
World Trade Center, Mexico City
Group Exhibit
Tonalli Gallery, Mexico City
Group Exhibit
Museum of Modern Art, S.F., Ca. (Benefit)
Group Exhibit
Bedford Gallery, Regional Arts Center, Walnut
Creek, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Ventura College, Ventura, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Cerro Coso College, Ridgecrest, Ca.
Solo
Exhibit
1993
Mace Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
University of New Mexico, Las Cruces, Nm.
Group Exhibit
Chapman
University, Orange, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Mace Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
1992
University of the Pacific,
Stockton, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Mace
Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Modesto College, Modesto, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Ghia Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, Ca.
Group
Exhibit
Gallery Sanchez, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
1991
Mace Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Solo Exhibit
Richmond Art Center, Richmond, Ca.
Group Exhibit
Mace Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
Group Exhibit
1990
Richmond
Art Center Rental Gallery, Richmond Ca.
Solo Exhibit
S.F. Art Institute MFA Exhibit, S.F., Ca.
Group
Exhibit
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SELECTED REVIEWS
East Bay Express
BIOMORPHIC BLENDS THE REAL AND THE SURREAL
by Josef Woodard, Los Angeles Times
On
first impression, San Francisco painter Glenn Hirsch's work, now at Ventura College, seems innocent enough. Machine-like
shapes, ambiguous biomorphic images and alien life forms interact on strange landscapes in a kind of playful mode of surrealism,
or, as he says in his artist's statement, a kind of psychedelic art.
But there is turbulence rumbling and
a mashing-together of both imagery and media. With such dream-laden works as 'Dark Carnival,' 'Indignant Pirouette,'
and 'What Really Happened at Waterloo,' he mixes oil, acrylic, watercolor and the 3-D effects of layering paper. Forms
and archetypes swim across the pictures, fuzzy of focus, and a carefully rendered, unsettled feeling hovers over the art.
Hirsch's world, as represented by these paintings, is analogous to both dream states and to cyberspace. It's
a place where things are real and yet never real, perfectly logical and yet intangible and subject to chaotic occurrences
at any moment.
In the New Media gallery, prints from the college's permanent collection make for a good companion
for the Hirsch exhibition, between Goya's tragicomic etchings, Dali's pre-digital 'Dalivision,' and Chagall's
spare fantasies.
* * * *
CRITIC'S CHOICE: GLENN HIRSCH
by Harry Roche,
SF Bay Guardian
With titles like Rite of Spring. Spy in the House of Love, and Daughters of Polymorphous, it's
ironic that Glenn Hirsch says his visionary paintings aren't intended as literary narratives. What's more, his Biomorphic
Fantasies spring from a surprisingly successful cross-fertilization of romanticism, symbolism, and surrealism -- movements
that were intimately intertwined with the literature of their day.
Against translucent backdrops of magic mountains
and sparkling seas, Hirsch's lush fantasyscapes bristle with bizarre life forms that you won't find classified anywhere.
While his profusion of plant life harks back to romantic landscapes by Samuel Palmer and Philip Otto Runge, his glowing jewel-like
colors owe a lot to Odilon Redon's symbolist dreamscapes, and his biomorphic brood recalls the surreal jellyfish of Gorky
and Matta. What could easily have become a muddy mishmash has coalesced into a highly personal vision that's simply out
of this world.
* * * *
GLENN HIRSCH AT MACE GALLERY
by Mark Van Proyen, Artweek
Magazine
The notion of the picture plane means different things to different people, but rarely does one encounter
such distinct pictorial syntaxes as surface, window, and semiological field -- operating simultaneously in a single visual
image. It is just this kind of simultaneity that remains so consistently striking in more than twenty works on paper by Glenn
Hirsch, each one a highly complex rejoinder to the question that asks who says you can't have it all?
Having
it all points to the way Hirsch employs a variety of media as well as a multiplicity of pictorial syntax. In any given work,
there is a build-up that begins with watercolor over pencil, and is followed by layers of pastel and charcoal as well as acrylic
and oil-based pigment. In this way, Hirsch generates apparition-like images that announce themselves slowly to the viewer's
gaze, occupying a thin territory that oscillates between the obscure and the distinct. But once they come into focus, these
apparitions turn out to be a familiar cast of surrealistically inspired characters (toothed vaginas, serpentine penises and
an array of menacing and ominous plant forms), all gone to an unruly seed in a seemingly untended garden of sublime sublimation.
Actually, this garden only seems untended. Even closer inspection reveals much conscious decision-making about
underlying structure and dramatic staging -- but this kind of artifice is well hidden by the work's allusions to subconsciously
inspired myth-worlds. The most compelling thing about these works, however, is neither their psychologically loaded imagery
(which owes too much to art-historical sources to carry a full load of metaphorical weight), nor their inventive formal construction.
The most interesting aspect of these works is the way that their actual surfaces say so much about he excitatory vitalism
of the skin, running a gamut from the thin and diaphanous to the ruggedly scarred. It is amid this kind of pictorial tissue
that we see the familiar retinue of surreal actors recast as the codified inscriptions of past trauma and desire. Thus, the
act of looking at Hirsch's work becomes an act of psychosomatic archeology as the eye seeks to uncover the libidinous
memories behind the multifarious veil of tactility.
For all of their visceral imagery and visual density, these
works don't come off as being heavy in either a visual or psychological sense. Instead, they achieve a rare kind of uncanniness
born of formulating tactility as a signifying system that stands metaphorically equal to those omens that we call images.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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