We've noticed many birds during our travels to and from San Francisco's galleries. They are everywhere—sailing across canvases and tote bags, tattooed onto forearms, pinned onto backpacks, and stitched into shirts. Artist Paul Urich seemed rather contemptuously aware of this phenomenon when we spoke with him earlier in the week at the Low Gallery, where his current solo show, Inside Out, will hang until July 2nd. His works on paper and panel are teeming with feathered friends—hybrid, mythological creatures formed of birds' heads atop beast's legs. They inhabit an absurd geography where hills are too tall to be real, water flows the wrong way, and gravity defies itself, scattering rainbows from the mouths of Urich's crossbreeds. "I'm thinking of moving away from birds," he said. "Even though I've been drawing them for a long, long time, there are too many birds in San Francisco!" Spot on, we say.
We Have Been A Mountain (detail)
Image courtesy of the artist and Low Gallery
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