By Vanessa Carr
This Friday and Saturday nights, the internationally traveling “Yo! What Happened to Peace?” art show comes to San Francisco’s Jack Hanley Gallery. Started in 2003 in Tokyo by curator John Carr in response to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Los Angeles-based show has been traveling to cities around the globe, most recently Stockholm and London.
The San Francisco show, which opened last night, is a selection from the show’s total body of 250 handmade prints — mostly silkscreens, linocuts, and woodcuts — contributed by 130 artists worldwide with influences ranging from punk rock and hip hop graphics to the Chicano Poster Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s.
A pro-peace, anti-war art show in San Francisco may seem about as novel as a Charlton Heston fanatic at a gun convention, but “Yo! What Happened to Peace” should not be dismissed with a been-there-done-that yawn.
While some of the pieces fall victim to tired “Fuck Bush” iconography, the majority of the work represents political printmaking at its best: exceptional graphic design, intense colors, expert production, and sharp political commentary.