Mark Your Calendar: Auctions and Openings

Another fun weekend in store for Bay Area art lovers:

* On Saturday, March 21, from 4 to 7 p.m., Oakland's Johansson Projects hosts an opening reception for Kate Eric and Marina Vendrell Renaut's joint show, Flaming Furbelows. The exhibit "explores uneasy encounters between attraction and repulsion, tenderness and terror. From inside fleshy mounds of fur and yarn, Renaut's plush and bulbous monstrosities offer up wooly orifices and suggestive pleasures. Eric's 'Bug Wars' invoke similar unsettling dioramas of violence and seduction, as otherworldly insects wage battles across landscapes of post-apocalyptic glee and Dr. Seussian wonderment. Taken together, these artists present visions of a phantasmic post-natural world, where desire warps into perverse narratives and cross-contaminated forms." Johansson Projects is located at 2300 Telegraph Ave. at 23rd St. in Uptown Oakland.

* Over in San Francisco, the exhibition party for Hilary Williams's A City With Colored Dreams runs from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday night at the Frankee Uno. If you haven't seen Williams's incredible, surreal silkscreen prints of the City, you must rectify that immediately. Music, snacks, and libations will be provided. Frankee Uno is located at 1221 Divisadero St. at Eddy.

* Also on Saturday night, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., San Francisco experimental-arts organization the Lab hosts its 25th annual Silent and Live Auction. More than 200 local, national, and internationally renowned artists have donated work to the event, and most of the original pieces have a starting bid of just $25. Participants include Mike Arcega, Leo Bersamina, Michelle Blade, John Casey, Ajit Chauhan, Joshua Churchill, Gail Dawson, Victor De La Rosa, Tara Lisa Foley, Matt Furie, Bryson Gill, Taro Hattori, Cynthia Ona Innis, Xylor Jane, Jeff Kao, Tom Marioni, Karla Milosevich, Paul Mullins, Trevor Paglen, Hillary Pecis, Genevieve Quick, Ed Ruscha, Casey Jex Smith, Kirk Stoller, Stephanie Syjuco, Heather Wilcoxon, and many more. There's a sliding-scale, $10 to $25 admission fee, which includes snacks and drinks. The sale continues Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m., when admission is free. The Lab is located at 2948 16th St. at Capp in the Mission District. More info here.

* Finally, although Alex Lukas's new solo show, And Another Shall Rise to Take Her Place, actually opened at SF's White Walls Gallery last weekend, it looks amazing, so I had to include it for those of you who may not have checked it out yet. The show will be up through April 3 at White Walls, 835 Larkin St. at Myrtle in San Francisco's "Tendernob" area.