Deconstructing the Gaze: 'Forgotten Eyes': Contemporary Surrealism and Cubist Visions Challenge Perceptions of Reality
2026-04-03 13:00 - 2026-05-30 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Johansson Projects presents Forgotten Eyes an exhibition of painting by Pablo Benzo and sculpture by Soojin Choi. Known for their emotional and undulating compositions, Benzo and Choi exploit the unstable boundaries between interior and exterior worlds. Their representations of life are warped, distended, burnished, and ultimately engaged in a reality that is elastic rather than fixed, shaped by memory, intuition, and shifting sensorial conditions.
Operating at the formal and conceptual nexus of Surrealism and Cubism, Benzo’s paintings reinterpret early 20th-century modernism for the contemporary moment. Grounded in conventions of still life and portraiture, his pastel-hued interiors are rendered as sites of mystery and multiplicity. In Benzo’s painted world flowers float as they wilt and the joints of furniture crease like flesh. Blending the quotidian with the otherworldly, Benzo eschews realism for a dream-like plane of being, offering a comfortable familiarity that always necessitates a double-take.
Choi’s ceramic sculptures similarly forgo conventional modes of representation in favor of more circuitous structures. Often figurative, her work treats the human body as a plastic form. Limbs and faces emerge from painted underglaze applied to hand-built planes of flattened clay that twist and twine around each other. Choi’s figures never engage in a moment of recognition, instead looking outward with ambivalent expressions. Their contorted anatomy foregrounds their alterity, evoking the complexity of human connection, individuation, and the construction of the other.
Forgotten Eyes will run Friday, April 3 to Saturday, May 30, 2026. An opening reception will be held Friday, April 3 from 5-8 pm.

“Dreamscapes” art by Daisuke Okamoto + Brenda Cibrian
2026-04-03 17:00 - 2026-05-31 17:00 | FM Gallery, 483 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Artist Statement: Daisuke Okamoto
Daisuke Okamoto’s work, “OKAINA IMAGE” is an elaborate and involved system of ink line drawings representing identity and transformation, exploring the cycle of life in the complex, biomorphic narratives of the organic.
Daisuke Okamoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, and currently works and resides in Los Angeles, California. Okamoto’s art is heavily influenced by science fiction and psychedelic culture. Given his intense passion for repetitive line drawing, Okamoto has been known to work over a year on a single piece.
Okamoto partnered with Microsoft on a Microsoft Surface Pro 8 and made a mural for the ad campaign in 2022. And he has also done collaborative projects with PBS KCET in Southern California.
Okamoto’s murals are in CA, TX, NV, OR, UT, MI, NY in the United States, Tokyo Japan, and Berlin Germany.
Artist statement: Brenda Cibrian
Through paintings and murals I seek to make art that uplifts and creates connection within ourselves and with the world around us. My work starts with a feeling first then subject matter, I then add in playful elements with a whimsical visual flair. I use surreal colors, combine imagery that is in and out of focus, with graphical, symbolic shapes to tie compositions together. I like to explore themes of identity, introspection, core memories and nostalgia. Nature, abstract shapes and people are recurring elements in my art and my influences come from my Mexican American upbringing in South Central as well as early 2000s internet culture.
April 3rd – May 30th, 2026
Receptions: First Friday, April 3rd, 5-10pm
Receptions: First Friday, May 1st, 5-10pm
Hours:
Saturdays 1-5pm
Every first Friday of the month 5-9pm
otherwise by appointment

Wandering Stars: Young Artists’ Portrait Show
2026-04-25 10:00 - 2026-05-22 16:00 | East Bay Creative Lab, 558 Bellevue Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94610, United States
An exhibition showcasing OUSD High School students’ artwork. There are four schools represented in this show, which are: Fremont High, Skyline High, Oakland High, Oakland International, and Madison Park Academy.
Identity, home, and the power of unapologetic presence run through this youth portrait exhibition. OUSD artists worked in photography, digital media, collage, and painting—using symbols, brush strokes, color, texture, and imagination to portray what it means to be Oakland.
The evidence is in the details: facial expressions that don’t perform for anyone, the way they hold their loved ones, the specific choices that make each portrait theirs.
Representation matters here. These young artists are about to graduate, about to enter a world outside high school. But first, they’re making visible what they know about themselves—their beauty, their identity, the fact of who they are.
Wandering Stars is a celebration of beauty, selfhood, and identity. These artists don’t wait to be seen. They make themselves visible.

Opening Reception and Artist Talk – Abby Zhang: Private Weather
2026-05-08 12:00 - 2026-06-13 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Image: Abby Zhang, “Caution! Wet Floor”, 2025, Acrylic and oil on canvas, photo courtesy of the artist
Private Weather brings together a new group of paintings by Abby Zhang that explores how thought, feeling, and visual memory take form in space. Built through improvisation, revision, and accumulation, these works move between structure and instability, allowing images to emerge without fully settling. Meaning develops through relation: between marks, between paintings, and between the work and the room. The exhibition treats painting as both image and atmosphere, creating a space charged by tension, proximity, and change. Private Weather points to an inner climate made visible, where perception stays open and everything remains slightly in motion.
Bio:
Abby Zhang is a Bay Area–based painter whose work explores memory, perception, and psychological atmosphere through layered, semi-abstract images. She received her MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute in 2021, recently participated as a resident artist at Art Bias, completed a residency at Kala Art Institute and Vermont Studio Center, and has been selected for an upcoming residency at the Torrance Art Museum this summer.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, June 5, 5 – 9 pm

Artists’ Reception – Familiar Strangers
2026-05-16 14:00 - 16:00 | Manna Gallery, 473 25th St., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Join Manna Gallery in celebrating the opening of Familiar Strangers, a group exhibition featuring Devynn Barnes, Madelyn Covey, Monica Guillory, Pamela Mooney, Jillian Shea, Julianne Sterling, and Deirdre White. Meet the artists and be among the first to experience this thoughtful exploration of memory, identity, and image through contemporary figurative painting. The reception offers an opportunity to connect, ask questions, and engage with the work in a lively, informal setting.
May 16 – June 20, 2026
Artists’ Reception: Saturday, May 16, 2-4 pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5 pm & First Fridays, 5-8 pm
Devynn Barnes is an Oakland-based painter, visual artist, and archivist. Through her multi-disciplinary work, she transforms archival fragments into portals of Afro-surreal conjure, restoring suppressed Black queer presence and imagining landscapes of collective homecoming. Barnes invites viewers to confront their own narratives, encouraging a collective awakening, communal (melanated) homecoming, and admittance to our interconnected archives.
Monica Guillory paints from vintage photographs, transforming fleeting moments of intimacy and joy into layered compositions that mirror the fragility and emotional elasticity of memory—where figures emerge, dissolve, and persist through time.
Madelyn Covey paints portraits of friends and family that examine the performance of identity within intimate, domestic spaces. Working on found wallpaper, she builds visual relationships between subject and surface, creating textured reflections on connection, care, and the subtle ways we inhabit our roles.
Pamela Mooney reconfigures found imagery into compositions that are at once familiar and disorienting. Through distortion, color disruption, and chance, her work challenges viewers to unravel embedded meanings while considering the impact our cultural narratives have on the possibilities of the future.
Jillian Shea captures nightlife scenes as sites of tension and agency, where visibility and performance collide. Her paintings reframe femme presence as active and resistant, emphasizing camaraderie and autonomy within spaces shaped by the dynamics of looking and being looked at.
Julianne Wallace Sterling’s recent paintings are inspired by photos she took on vacation with her family. These photos are of cherished memories and travels with loved ones. These paintings begin in an atmospheric location but quickly dive into magical imaginings of place through light, floral design, and shadow. Sterling’s work is fundamentally portraiture, but she has been exploring the figure in the complexity of cityscapes.
Deirdre White constructs poetic, often unsteady worlds drawn from memory, landscape, and imagination. Her paintings weave personal and collective narratives of life in the American West, where grief, wonder, and resilience coexist within scenes of quiet upheaval.

Opening Reception and Artist Talk – Gustave Carlson: New American Stillness
2026-05-16 15:00 - 17:00 | Mercury 20 Gallery, 475 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Gustave Carlson, “Inverness Midday”, 2026, photo courtesy of the artist
New American Stillness by Gustave Carlson explores the quiet psychological presence of the contemporary American landscape. Focusing on ordinary architecture—coastal houses, open lawns, interiors, still lifes, and expansive skies—these paintings place absence at the center of experience. Rather than narrative, Carlson emphasizes observation, structure, and atmosphere. Buildings act as anchors within broad fields of light and color, suggesting both stability and solitude. Subtle tonal shifts allow spaces to feel at once specific and timeless, inviting viewers to consider how shadow, memory, and perception shape place. While Edward Hopper often conveys psychological isolation and Fairfield Porter captures domestic intimacy, Carlson draws from both to explore architecture as a perceptual construct rather than a narrative stage. In these restrained scenes, stillness is not emptiness but presence—an invitation to look longer and see more. His work suggests that the contemporary American landscape, when closely observed, continues to offer moments of quiet depth and reflection.
Bio:
Gustave Carlson is an architect and principal of Gustave Carlson Design in Berkeley, California, and a painter exploring the quiet tension between architecture, light, and lived space. He is the author of Pacific Modern Houses of Northern California (ORO Editions, 2018), a widely acclaimed survey of regional modernism. His award-winning architectural work has received international recognition and appears in Elle Decor, Dwell, Wallpaper, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Carlson holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and studied painting there under Color Field painter Adele Alsop. He has attended residencies at Edgewood Farm at Castle Hill in Truro, Massachusetts, and Studio Faire in Nérac, France. His paintings have earned honors including Best in Show at the Greenwich Art Society and have been exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Castle Hill Center for the Arts, Tiburon Library Gallery, Greenwich Art Society, and Mercury 20 Gallery. His work is held in private collections.
Gallery Hours: Friday and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm (and by appointment)
﻿Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: Friday, June 5, 5 – 9 pm

The Hidden Treasures of Stan Chan, GearBox Gallery
2026-05-28 12:00 - 2026-07-03 17:00 | Gearbox Gallery, 770 West Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
The Hidden Treasures of Stan Chan
May 26 – July 3 2026
Artist’s Reception: Saturday, May 30 1 – 4pm
Artist’s Talk: Saturday, June 13, 2pm with a reading by author Joanne Furio. This show is running Concurrently with Field notes
Gearbox Gallery is pleased to present the 2026 Inner Room juried show winner, Stan Chan. Chan’s installation of artifacts, writings and drawings creates an immersive experience that delves into a personal story of remembrance from his childhood in Oakland. This visual reading of objects and colorful bits gives the viewer a glimpse into our local past through the art of Stan Chan.
Chan says, “Growing up in East Oakland my immigrant parents were able to buy a house in the 1950s. It was a Victorian house and it was my shelter from the outside world. When I was a kid, I dug holes in the walls and in my mattress where I hid my treasures and through the years things accumulated in the nooks and crannies of the house.” It is from these memories that Chan’s installation of treasure boxes and colorful collages emerge.
Stan Chan, is an artist living in San Francisco with deep roots in Oakland. Receiving his MA from CCAC, Chan has shown in many solo and group shows locally and nationally including the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.

GearBox Gallery Artists’ Reception: Field Notes – Linda Ellinwood / Joy Every
2026-05-30 13:00 - 16:00 | Gearbox Gallery, 770 West Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Saturday May 30th from 1 – 4pm
Please join GearBox Gallery in celebrating the opening of Field Notes with GearBox Gallery artists Linda Ellinwood and Joy Every. All are welcome.
Running concurrently to Field Notes is the 2026 Inner Room Gallery winner, Stan Chan with The Hidden Treasures of Stan Chan. Artists’ reception on Saturday, May 30th from 1 – 4pm

GearBox Gallery Artists’ Reception: The Hidden Treasures of Stan Chan
2026-05-30 13:00 - 16:00 | Gearbox Gallery, 770 West Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Saturday May 30th from 1 – 4pm
Please join GearBox Gallery in celebrating the opening of 2026’s Inner Room Gallery winner Stan Chan: The Hidden Treasures of Stan Chan. All are welcome.
Running concurrently with The Hidden Treasures of Stan Chan, is Field Notes with Joy Every and Linda Ellinwood. Artists’ reception is on Saturday, May 30th from 1 – 4pm

“Positively Cynical” recent work by Ryan Tesluk
2026-06-05 17:00 - 2026-08-01 17:00 | FM Gallery, 483 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Ryan Tesluk’s art provides viewers with honest, unadulterated content that triggers a
plethora of emotions. While many individuals may be uncomfortable with what they see, the fact that some may feel such discomfort when looking at his paintings means Tesluk is doing
something right.
More soon!
June 5th – August 1st, 2026
Receptions: First Friday, June 5th, 5-10pm
Receptions: First Friday, July 3rd, 5-10pm
Hours:
Saturdays 1-5pm
Every first Friday of the month 5-9pm
otherwise by appointment

First Friday Reception — Multi-Artist Exhibition – May-June
2026-06-05 18:00 - 21:00 | Art@Archer, 431 13th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Five Bay Area artists bring their art and their unique styles to you. Meet the artists; view their work.
Dalit Fresco
Leon Kennedy
Christie Langley
Murray Nelson
Suying Zhang
Refreshments will be provided.
