Bass & Reiner Gallery

SF Art Galleries - Openings & Events Event source calendar Event Link: see venue calendar above ^^ For Your Amusement Martin Malvar Opening 10.3.2026 from 5-7pm Request a preview Martin Malvar is a really nice guy. He's friendly, he remembers names and occupations, what things people like and where they've been. He's self-effacing but not overly so. He has an old-fashioned humility. His work is less friendly. Nearly always containing simplified human figures rendered in high fidelity through gouache or airbrush, the paintings are playful but focus on depictions of psychological distress and ego formation, creating visual puns with not entirely comfortable punchlines. For Your Amusement, on view at Bass & Reiner Gallery from October 3 through November 28, 2026, is full of them. In these works, painted on matte board and set in frames Malvar built himself, the self becomes something to be handled: a figure on a sheet of paper is fed through a shredder, a muscle-print T-shirt hangs from a wire hanger bent into a head, and a person exists only as a hole cut in a sheet stamped “Fragile.” The titles sound like someone insisting they're fine (“I’m strong I think”), and the figures wear the same calm, faintly pleased expression whatever happens to them. The airbrushed polish makes it all easy to look at, which is the point. The distress is real, but it's been packaged, and the show’s title tells you who it's for. Martin Malvar was born in Fremont, CA, in 1994. He has a BFA in studio art with a concentration in painting/drawing from SF State University. He lives and works in San Francisco. location provided by event source: "1275 Minnesota St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA" ―――――――――― SF Stuff To Do