'Far off the Runway'
Through Dec. 19, Virginia Breier Gallery

KATY DRURY ANDERSON'S bustiers are among the highlights of "Far off the Runway." How Do You Measure Up? is made entirely out of flexible tape measures, with a woven bodice and poking-out coils for the cups. Paper Doll is all pink-and-white puffs on the outside but full of pins, sticking inward, on the inside. The two pieces articulate an already familiar message – at what price beauty? – but in a humorous and largely original way, spoofing the traditional associations of femininity that go along with sewing clothes. "Far off the Runway" is one of several recent local clothing-related craft exhibitions and typical in the sense that the most interesting works are not always the most beautiful or the most wearable, but they usually articulate something (else) about contemporary life. That said, it's surprising how many of the works are, in fact, wearable despite their apparent weight or awkwardness. Lucia Matzger, for instance, makes overshirts out of used coffee filters. Her garments look like some kind of medieval leather armor, even though the filters are contemporary in every sense of the word – the flimsy detritus of our machine-based, one-time-use, "disposable" culture. Carol Durham's Shaman Shorts are a pair of men's boxers made from a white tissue-paper-like material that looks deceptively pretty and delicate but is actually gut. Pockets all over the shorts contain Viagra-related paraphernalia – everything from actual Viagra tablets to graphic logos to those enigmatic advertising photographs of beatifically smiling couples holding hands on the beach. By connecting such nonspecific, dreamy imagery to the very specific, literal, mildly smelly gut material, Durham points out the radical disconnect between the advertising practices of pharmaceutical companies and the products they are actually selling. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m., 3091 Sacramento, S.F. (415) 929-7173. (Lindsey Westbrook)