Sin Contar Cincuenta: Miguel Arzabe Solo Show
2026-01-17 13:00 - 2026-03-21 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Johansson Projects, 2300 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Johansson Projects is pleased to announce Sin Contar Cincuenta, the third solo exhibition by Oakland-based artist Miguel Arzabe with the gallery. Arriving at a moment of heightened social and cultural reckoning, the exhibition features a dynamic body of new weavings that reflect not only a rich “pluriverse” of influences–interpolated ways of being and expression that span the artist’s personal life, Bolivian heritage, and art historical precedent–but also the urgent need to honor and defend cultural plurality in today’s world.
Sin Contar Cincuenta runs from January 17 – March 21, 2026 with an opening reception and artist talk on January 17, from 3-5pm.
For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140 or info@johanssonprojects.com

One Thing Leads to Another -- Gina Borg & Patrick Crotty
2026-02-21 - 2026-03-28 | Manna Gallery, 473 25th St., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Manna Gallery presents One Thing Leads to Another, a two-person exhibition featuring Oakland-based painter Gina Borg and San Leandro–based artist and designer Patrick Crotty. Bringing together painting and marquetry, the exhibition highlights two distinct practices shaped by close attention to materials, process, and the evolving language of making.
Gina Borg explores how color behaves in relationship, using a limited palette of warm and cool shifts layered through repetitive marks to create subtle tonal changes that generate movement, spatial tension, and optical vibration across the surface.
Patrick Crotty works in traditional marquetry, precisely assembling thin wood veneers to “paint” with natural grain, tone, and texture, transforming a centuries-old craft into detailed contemporary imagery.
Together, their work creates a dialogue between gesture and construction, surface and structure, where each decision leads to the next and the process becomes a visible chain of connections.
February 21 – March 28, 2026
Artist Reception: Saturday, February 28, 2-4 pm
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5 pm & First Friday, March 6, 5-8 pm

Multi-Artist Exhibition -- March-April, 2026
2026-03-06 10:00 - 2026-04-25 18:00 | Art@Archer, 431 13th Street, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Join us in welcoming these wonderful Bay Area artists to our first show of 2026. Varied styles. Varied mediums. Enjoy their artistry!
Arie Dallas
Ken Knudsen
Nina Krebs
MacArthur Nelson
Shu
Diane Wang

"Who Am I?" portraits by Leslie Plato Smith
2026-03-06 17:00 - 2026-03-28 17:00 | FM Gallery, 483 25th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
For March we are honored to feature the work of local Bay Area artist Leslie Plato Smith, in her latest show entitled, “Who Am I?”
“We are living in turbulent times. We are questioning our values, beliefs, and education. Our national leaders prove to be untrustworthy, as the media feeds misleading narratives. Our history feels as uncertain as our future. We are having difficulty finding common ground, the truth, and what we stand for. Conflict is everywhere. Everyone is asking themselves: “Who Am I?”
Artist Bio:
Choctaw, Viking, AVChancellor, Governmental Relations, emerita. Highlights: national award for bringing together 60 art departments, creating 125 life-size statues showing how budget cuts negatively impact access and opportunity, democracy and upward mobility; European Cultural Centre’s Venice Biennale: “Who Are We?”; Spotlight Artist for Richmond Art Center, “Vulnerability;” “Clay Sustains: Vessels of Change” Palo Alto Art Center.
Plato Smith’s grandfather was born on the Choctaw Reservation and her orphaned grandmother was born to immigrant parents from Denmark and Sweden. Migration, immigration, resettlement and environment/wildlife are key themes that resonate through her creative practice and professional work. She is very committed to acknowledgement of ALL LIFE. Her mother, Lee Plato Smith, educated at California School of Fine Arts, taught her to draw off the edge and never be afraid of making mistakes.
March 6th – 28th, 2026
First Friday reception: March 6th 5-10pm
Hours:
Saturdays 1-5pm
Every first Friday of the month 5-9pm
otherwise by appointment

Frank D. Cole: The House Inside
2026-03-12 12:00 - 2026-04-25 17:00 | Transmission Gallery, 770 West Grand Ave., Suite A, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Gallery Hours: Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 12 – 5 pm, and by appointment
Opening Reception: Saturday March 14th, 1-4 pm
Artist’s Talk: April 18, starting at 2 pm
Transmission Gallery is pleased to present The House Inside, recent paintings by East Bay painter, Frank D. Cole.
Working from his West Oakland studio, Frank Cole paints from a distance, both geographic and temporal. His large-scale works emerge from reflections on his childhood in Mississippi, with landscape, weather, and architecture forming an enduring visual vocabulary. In this work, Mississippi becomes less a fixed geography than a felt condition, a stand-in for memory and connection, suspended between clarity and dream.
Framed by porches, window casings, and thresholds, Cole’s paintings position the viewer in an interior space, looking outward. Beams, panes, and floorboards divide and measure the picture plane acting as armatures for recollection, holding in place fleeting impressions of light on water, wind through tall grass, or rain dissolving a stand of trees. The result is both architectural and narrative, emerging as quiet meditations on place and time, imbued with reverie and longing.
The paintings carry a subtle tension between shelter and exposure, presence and absence. No figures occupy these interiors; instead, the viewer becomes the inhabitant. The threshold functions as a metaphor for memory–a point where the past remains visible yet inaccessible.
Accompanying the larger canvases, small preparatory studies reveal the evolution of each composition. In these pieces, Cole tests structure, color temperature, and atmosphere. The studies function as concentrated meditations—intimate works where gesture and light are first explored before expanding into the larger paintings.
While rooted in a specific place, these recollections resonate beyond their origin, becoming a point of departure for a broader exploration of early embodied experience – how light filled a certain room, the rhythm of rain on a roof, the view framed by a familiar window. Through carefully constructed interiors and expansive vistas, Frank Cole transforms personal memory into a contemplative space others can inhabit.
