April 16, 2003

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'The Allure of Obsolescence'
Through April 26, Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery

REANNE ESTRADA GOT her artistic gestalt while showering one day. Looking at a strand of her hair on a bar of soap, she realized that the soap would get dirtier and dirtier with each new act of cleansing. Ever the optimist, she turned her realization into sudden inspiration and now works entirely in what you might call "disposable media." For "The Allure of Obsolescence" she has created several series of incredibly beautiful artwork out of erasers, correction fluid, and packing tape. The tape pieces are especially amazing; the floral sculptures covering the gallery walls are made out of nothing more than tape that Estrada curled into circles of various diameters and then stuck together. The correction-fluid drawings are remarkable too for their delicate laciness, bringing Asian calligraphy or brush-and-ink painting to mind. Estrada's fine pen and pencil work can even make ordinary dime-store erasers look more like Inuit ivory carvings or smooth, patterned river stones. Much of her art is deceptive like that, fooling you into thinking it's made of something else, but its real genius lies in the way that it simultaneously fulfills and subverts the destiny of its materials. To become dirty and unusable is the usual fate of an eraser, and that's how Estrada has made those used in her show but not through overuse in the conventional sense. Through hours of labor, she has infused them with the cultural and monetary value of fine art. No one will ever use them to erase anything and they will never be thrown away. They exist in a state of limbo somewhere between utility and decoration, permanence and disposability, mass production and uniqueness. They are dirty, and they are beautiful. Tues.-Fri., 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. 49 Geary, fourth floor, S.F. (415) 229-1138. (Lindsey Westbrook)