January 7, 2003

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PLACE A CLASSIFIED AD |PERSONALS | MOVIE CLOCK | REP CLOCK | SEARCH

'Perez Prado: Unauthorized Collaborations'
Through Jan. 25, A.O.V.

CURATED BY SAN Francisco artist Julio Morales, this exhibition features work by more than a dozen Bay Area artists, all inspired by or paying tribute to mambo bandleader Perez Prado, the first Latin American musician to become an international crossover sensation. If you don't visit the gallery's bathroom, you'll miss one of the best parts: a video by Reuben Lorch-Miller projected onto the restroom wall that features a heavily digitized, slowly moving image of Prado's face accompanied by the sound of Lorch-Miller whistling a well-known Prado melody. The "soundtrack," such as it is, is lighthearted and well-intentioned – this is a tribute, not a mockery, even if it does happen to be in the bathroom – and the projector hums along as if in a plucky effort to make up for the lack of supporting orchestration. Some of the other artworks in the show, such as Gordon McNee's Mambo Steps painting and Reanne Estrada's Perfidia (scratched version), rely on their titles to make an explicit Prado connection. The latter is particularly beautiful. Estrada generated a sound wave from the opening bars of one of Prado's recordings, then etched an overlapping, semiabstracted version of the wave image into colored vellum. Up close, the sound wave lines look as if they could just as easily be outlines of oceans and continents or the jagged edges of a broken record; they visually evoke the concept of "world music" while steering clear of crude literalism. Other participating artists include Geoff Chadsey, Jenifer Wofford, Chris Oliveria, and Eamon Ore-Giron and David Goldberg, who have created a fabulous front-window video projection. Best viewed at night, the video features music-and-dance segments from Prado's movies accompanied by a heavily adapted and remixed soundtrack. Thurs.-Fri., 5-8 p.m.; Sat., noon-6 p.m., 3328 22nd St., S.F. (415) 431-8341. (Lindsey Westbrook)