First Thursday Report

"Chris Johanson: All on Different Trips"
Painter Chris Johanson has left the big-city landscapes of his former work to zero in on the "people walkers" -- anonymous folks wandering with heads bent downward through fictitious city streets. Johanson reveals swatches of personalities in his characters, from the "total bridge-burners, you know those people who think it's OK to fuck people over and over" to the mountain walkers (symbolic of the daily climbing we all do) to the jobgoers, by giving them some necessary venting time in the form of erratically scratched text above their heads. Johanson tries to stay as close to "the people" as he can, working with black and simple pastel shades of house paint on found wood, scraps of butcher paper, construction paper, envelopes, and cardboard. There is an opening reception for "Chris Johanson: All on Different Trips" Friday, Sept. 4, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Four Walls, 3160A 16th St. (at Albion), S.F. Admission is free; call 626-8515. The exhibit is up through Oct. 3.

"The More You See Fourth Annual Emerging Artists Exhibition"
Soap scum and curly human hairs can give the heebie-jeebies to even the strong-hearted. So how Reanne Estrada manages to create hyperclean, minimalist object-drawings out of the two materials is a bit of an enigma. Estrada began making her slightly obsessive hair-on-soap pieces after a series of showers during which she noticed that her head of bountiful, luscious curly locks was coming out in clumps. She worked her anxieties into a new project, collecting the strands, stretching and embedding them into the "natural adherent that is soap scum," as she puts it. Estrada uses the soap bars like canvas, hanging several bars together in grid formation in Twenty Four, a six-bar ensemble where circles repeat and overlap. Estrada's work shows alongside fellow emerging artists Stephen Galloway, Maizie Gilbert, Laurie Long, Susan Preston, and South to the Future through Sept. 26 at Southern Exposure, 401 Alabama (at 17th Street). Admission is free; call 863-2141.

-- Marcy Freedman