GLENN HIRSCH Exhibitions

HOME
SPRING CLASSES IN ASHEVILLE
CLASS SYLLABI
TEACHING REVIEWS
ART: LOST TONGUE SERIES
ART: ABSTRACT SANCTUARIES
ART; BIOMORPHIC FANTASIES
EXHIBITIONS
COLLECTIONS
CONTACT

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



  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *