Garden Party

Over 30 galleries and museums in and around the Yerba Buena Center area will participate in the Gardens Gallery Walk at Yerba Buena Gardens, held from 4 to 9 p.m. Thursday. The event is free; visitors get the chance to see artwork and listen to the Israeli instrumental quartet ESTA, while kids have the opportunity to create their own art. One of the participating galleries, SF Camerawork, departs from its usual fare of printed photographs with the exhibit "Deus in Machina: Imagemaking and the Machine." The show is comprised of four installations by different artists coming to terms with image production in the technological age.

In his piece 3's & 9's, artist Michael Rudnick has built a modern-day zoetrope atop a triangular-shaped wooden table housing a motor, a film reel, and a band that spins nine Tupperware glasses, each featuring a tiny transparency of a barking dog. These spring into animated motion to the accompaniment of the quiet hum of the motor. The homespun feel of the body of the machine contrasted with the sophisticated imagery it produces creates fertile ground for thought on the seamlessness of image-making at the end of the 20th century. SF Camerawork is located at 115 Natoma (at Second Street), S.F. Admission is free; call 764-1001. The Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade is located at Third and Mission streets. Admission is free; for a list of participating galleries and museums, call 541-0312.

In association with "Desert Cliche: Israel Now -- Local Images" at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Refusalon is showing work by Gilad Ophir and Roi Kuper, two Israeli photographers who were pursing different projects when they decided to collaborate on their recent work Necropolis: Military Spaces. Large-format black-and-white pictures of abandoned military barracks sit in the background of a bleak desert. Wartime seems far away; the only remainder is the empty face of destruction. Ophir and Kuper's work is interesting both for its brave attempt to record a contemporary wartime phenomena and for the way each artist's work has over time become almost indistinguishable from his partner's. The show runs through Sept. 30 at Refusalon, 20 Hawthorne (at Second Street), S.F. Admission is free; call 546-0158.

-- Marcy Freedman