The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 2022 SECA Art Award program received over 230 applications for 5 awards.
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Awardees comprise 1:46, or 2% of applicants.
See all Art Competition Odds.
In response to President Obama’s recent, not-so-cool counterexample of art history majors, SFMOMA solicited responses along the theme of #ArtDegreesWork:
Did your degree in art history help you start a company? Get a museum job? Teach in a classroom? Share your story! #ArtDegreesWork
A lovely affirmation of what we artists and art history majors already know. Check it out here.
Christine Wong Yap, Positive Sign #50 (Optimal experience is something we make happen), glitter pen on gridded vellum, 8.5×11 in.
Starting today, I’ll continue posting Positive Signs on SFMOMA’s Open Space blog ever other Wednesday. Look for #34-60 to take a deeper look at flow, hope, autonomy, and aesthetic experience.
See all Positive Signs to date.
Through September 26, 2012: every other Wednesday
SFMOMA Open Space
Some aesthetic impressions from a Portland-San Francisco tour:
Looking east up the Columbia River Gorge, from Crown Point in Oregon, USA. Author: Hux. // Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Columbia River Gorge. The more I visit grand vistas, the more I understand Romanticism.
Landscape paintings don’t usually affect me—but imagine living in a crowded, dirty city in the Industrial age, then exploring such vast, stunning locales like the Columbia River Gorge, the Catskills, or the Lake District in the UK. Post-postcard, post-Ansel Adams, I might be desensitized to the images of these places, but I never fail to experience awe—smallness in light of something greater—when I visit these places. It seems natural to want to capture the grandeur and qualities of light, as much as preserve the environment for future generations. [Go Parks!]
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Ryan Pierce. Preview image for New World Atlas of Weeds and Rags. // Source: ElizabethLeach.com.
Get excited:
Ryan Pierce: New World Atlas of Weeds and Rags
Elizabeth Leach Gallery
Portland, OR
Through June 23
Really happy to catch the solo show of my CCA MFA classmate. Ryan specializes in hard-edged, post-apocalyptic narrative painting over luminous Flashe washes. He constructed this show around weeds, with tight botanical renderings of thistles, milkweeds, etc., as well as giveaways of pesticide-resistant seeds. My favorite paintings were from a sequence featuring the sun and the moon. I sensed some Charles Burchfield-esque visionary heat.
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Karl Blossfeldt, Adiantum pedatum, Maidenhair fern, young unfurling fronds, 12x. // Image source: PortlandArtMuseum.org. Caption source: karlblossfeldtphotos.com.
Karl Blossfeldt’s New Objectivity photos of botanical geometry.
70 Years/70 Photographs
Portland Art Museum
Through September 9
My knowledge of photography is a bit anemic, but this means that I get to enjoy many discoveries in the repair process. Blossfeldt’s images were a delight. See more at karlblossfeldtphotos.com.
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The short: Private lessons with Sharon Blair. Highly recommended.
The long: My sewing knowledge comprised making clothes for Puffy, my stuffed Crocker Spaniel, under the guidance of my mother. (Mom’s an excellent seamstress who made some of my favorite childhood dresses. She still uses a Montgomery Ward Singer dating from the late 1970s/early 1980s; to change stitches, she manually changes a baffling array of stamped metal gears.)
Remarkably, this experience, along with much experimentation, has girded me through sewn sculptures and ribbon projects over the past few years. In the same time though, I’d accumulated a battery of questions about fabrics and techniques. Sharon, the instructor, patiently answered them all. She has tons of industry experience, and started the lesson with a quick history of sewing machine manufacturers. <Tool nerd swoon>
I got a crash course in cutting and sewing, and practiced three of the six kinds of fell seams, which will be critical for an upcoming flag project.
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The Marianas (Michael Arcega and Stephanie Syjuco), Montalvo Historical Fabrications and Souvenirs (A Pop-up Shop), 2012. // Source: StephanieSyjuco.com.
The Marianas (Michael Arcega and Stephanie Syjuco)
Montalvo Historical Fabrications and Souvenirs (A Pop-up Shop)
Montalvo Project Space
Woodside, CA
Through July 20
Friends’ first collaboration. It’s good. Go see it, and bring cash!
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Allison Smith, Fort Point Bunting, 2012. // Source: international-orange.org. Photo: Jan Stürmann.
International Orange
FOR-SITE Foundation
Fort Point
San Francisco
Through October 28
Really good show in an amazing site. Go! I went on a foggy, chilly Monday (no crowds) and it was lovely.
My favorite was Allison Smith‘s Fort Point Bunting. Each of the 75 swags is accompanied by quotes from servicewomen printed on linen and framed in waxed canvas cording. The narratives were empowering. While military intervention is fraught, this insight in the battle for equal access to combat is pretty thrilling.
Stephanie Syjuco‘s International Orange Commemorative Store (A Proposition) establishes a standard of finish and level of production that is sublime, and should have most artists quaking in our boots. Anadamavi Arnold‘s crepe paper gowns were magnificent. I read Kate Pocrass‘ Average Magazine off-site, but found it to be the most entertaining and insightful look at the Golden Gate Bridge. I also loved Andy Freeberg‘s portraits of workers on the bridge, for the diverse, recognizable subjects, rarely-seen perspectives, and cool tools.
Fort Point’s history and vistas were great to explore. I enjoyed how the show engaged the site, so that viewers browsed historical/permanent displays in the course of visiting the exhibition. I expected a strong show due to the roster of international artists; I was pleased to find that the projects that resonated with me most form a collection of articulate, accomplished female artists.
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Robert Kinmont: 8 Natural Handstands (detail), 1969/2009; nine black-and-white photographs; 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. each; courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York. Photo: Bill Orcutt. // Source: bampfa.berkeley.edu.
State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970
Berkeley Art Museum
Through June 17
I’d heard rumors that this is the best show many locals had seen in a long time. Unfortunately, I had only one hour, so I didn’t have the quiet mind required for uncovering the historical significance of the performance documentation and historical ephemera that ran through the show.
I loved that the show brought the major West Coast art initiative Pacific Standard Time up to Bay Area. Also, it’s not often you get to see an major survey exhibition about California art that doesn’t have a Los Angeles bias. I enjoyed learning more about seminal artists like Gary Beydler, William Leavitt, Bas Jan Ader, and Guy de Cointet (these de Cointet text drawings are fantastic, backgrounding Tauba Auerbach’s text paintings). It’s always nice to see Bruce Nauman‘s video pieces installed—here, Come Piece, two closed-circuit televisions with different halves of their lenses taped off.
The only thing that struck me negatively was the way that political art (works by artists of color and feminist artists) was the last thematic section. The architecture of the last room especially made the agit-prop David Hammons seem like an afterthought. I can’t pinpoint it, but I suspect that the early earth and performance work relates to a spiritual quest in merging art and life, and I intuit a bit of a woo-woo factor there, reinforced by the fact that my contemporaries who are especially fond of these artists tend to make transcendental works themselves.
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Robert Bechtle, Potrero Hill, 1996; painting; oil on canvas, 36 in. x 66 in. (91.44 cm x 167.64 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Ruth Nash Fund purchase; © Robert Bechtle Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/104616##ixzz1xQHskP3. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Robert Bechtle, Potrero Hill (1996)
SFMOMA
Bechtle is a perennial favorite of the SFMOMA’s, and mine too. This late, great painting—on view in the second floor galleries—is like five paintings in one. The JPG doesn’t do it justice. Bechtle’s understanding of reflected light and surfaces is phenomenal. This work was the highlight of my SFMOMA visit, along with Anthony Discenza’s The Effect in the contemporary language art show, Descriptive Acts.
I expected that The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and the Bay Area and Parra: Weirded Out shows would be more extensive. In fact, the Fuller show has two huge wall graphics that leads to a room of fantastic, large screenprint posters and transparencies. That’s followed by a group show by local, contemporary designers that is so un-related visually that my companion and I assumed that we’d drifted into the permanent design exhibit. The Parra exhibit is a massive mural, that is lovely and loads of fun, but I would have loved to see some works on paper, to get a little more intimate with the person behind these famous graphics.
I also would have loved to see more of Mark Bradford‘s video and performance works, especially documentation of his intervention at the San Diego-Tijuana border, though those could have been in the Bradford show I just missed at YBCA. The extensive selection of Bradford’s collages helped me understand the depth of his innovation with the materials (posters and curling papers) and tools (rope and power sander).
Grateful for few days of art, sunshine, and friendly faces in California.
Thanks to everyone who came out to check out In Other Words at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. I really appreciate the interest and support! I think the show looks fantastic—all respect due to Kevin Chen, gallery director; Intersection staff, and the other artists for their thoughtful contributions.
The show continues through March 24, with many public events—most are free or sliding scale.
Here are a few snapshots, with better photos to follow on my site….
Positive Signs greets viewers at In Other Words, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
Closer view of Positive Signs. In Other Words, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
Detail: Positive Sign #16 at In Other Words, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
Detail: Positive Sign #16 at In Other Words, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
Intersection Gallery Director Kevin Chen (center) delivered thoughtful comments, connecting the show's linguistic theme with the gallery's location in the San Francisco Chronicle building.
Susan O'Malley's sandwich boards. In Other Words, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
Another project by Susan O'Malley involved semi-hidden placards. In Other Words, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
Meryl Pataky had a nice pair of installed wire works, whose shadows spelled positive and negative words phonetically.
More photos, including the infamous pinkie cam treatment, on Alan Bamberger’s ArtBusiness.com site.
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Snapshots of other exhibitions I enjoyed…
Kinetic media installation by Mario Ancalmo, SECA 2010 exhibition, SFMOMA.
See also Ancalmo’s show at Eli Ridgeway Gallery; don’t miss the lower level installations.
Deflated balloon dog by Jeffrey Songco, Steven Wolf Fine Arts.
No photos, but worth checking out: Gina Osterloh’s solo show of studio photos and a documentary about blind massuers, connected by her interest in dysfunctions of the body of and Richard T. Walker’s video at ybca.
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…as well as inspiring studio visits…
Studio visit with Stephanie Syjuco.
Spool holders, hooray!
Studio visit with Michael Arcega. Baby, the artist-designed and -made collapsible, outrigger canoe, under a pinata-disco ball-hybrid. Not to mention an envy-inspiring woodshop in the studio.
Mini disco ball, wood glue, and the story of a sailing expedition at Michael Arcega's studio.
Free crate + casters + door + sawhorses = two tables that fold into one. Genius!
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Plus, (aerial) Geometry vs Abstraction.
Geometry.
Geometry detail.
Abstraction.
If I were a purveyor of fine sentences I would stock gems such as these.
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In his post comparing jury duty to conceptual art, art critic Glen Helfand wrote on SFMOMA’s Open Space (“Justice Redux,” June 22, 2011):
Here’s my account of the case to which I was assigned: Ms. E drank something troubling, a crystal clear bottle of water with its Harrah’s label intact. It may have been standard transparent plastic, but was corrosive all the way down. She described burning up inside, but not as dramatically as her lawyer, who also relished, in words and sometimes pictures, the horrors of esophageal surgery….
What might be the real costs of a Drano cocktail, in PTSD dollars? It was as if there was a short circuit in my thinking patterns—all of a sudden, this was capital R real. Unlike forming a critical position on the Gertrude Stein exhibitions, our decision would have some measurable impact on someone’s life.
Lots of pleasing word-smithing here. The double duty of “capital”—both financial and figurative—is nice. Plus it’s nice to take the enterprise of criticism down a notch sometimes.
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Though critics do articulate fine ideas too:
the seemingly infinite archive of world events produced by photography conflates surface appearance with psychological depth, iconicity with memory, publicity with history….
Eva Díaz paraphrasing critic Siegfried Kracauer in a review of Drawn from Photography at the Drawing Center, NYC (Artforum, Summer 2011). Díaz goes on:
Artists… hand-copy photographs and photo-based media, thereby lengthening the duration of the image’s production and, for the viewer, transforming perception by fastidiously rendering what once presented itself with glossy immediacy.
Also in Artforum, Catherine Wood previewed the Manchester International Festival and this summer’s iteration sounds equally high-brow and low-brow—and totally fun. Adding the MIF to my bucket list.
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One more Artforum goodie*: Graham Bader considers Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstrokes paintings. In doing so, he quotes David Joselit, who characterizes painting’s “reification trap” thusly:
maximum prestige with maximum convenience of display
which means, as Bader writes,
[painting] is inevitably and intimately linked to the commodity.
The Brushstroke paintings are Ben-Day dot paintings depicting painterly strokes. Very cheeky. They are funny and interesting because they’re quotations, and I can’t help but think about Jerry Saltz’ recent rant against tired postmodernism:
The beautiful, cerebral, ultimately content-free creations of art’s well-schooled young lions…
…many times over—too many times for comfort—I saw the same thing, a highly recognizable generic institutional style whose manifestations are by now extremely familiar. Neo-Structuralist film with overlapping geometric colors, photographs about photographs, projectors screening loops of grainy black-and-white archival footage, abstraction that’s supposed to be referencing other abstraction—it was all there, all straight out of the seventies, all dead in the water. It’s work stuck in a cul-de-sac of aesthetic regress, where everyone is deconstructing the same elements.
in his reaction to the Venice Biennale on Artnet. (Though he did like some things, including an installation by Argentinian Adrián Villar Rojas, who made a massive beached whale for Moby Dick at the Wattis in 2009. Congrats to AVR, and to his collaborator Alán Legal!)
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The June 27th issue of the New Yorker is a good reminder of why I’m a subscriber. Rebecca Mead’s profile of Alice Walton, the Walmart heir opening a major museum in Arkansas, is quintessentially New Yorker. It’s about an individual of influence, yes, but the story is far from the stuffy Upper East Side. That I’ve yet to hear about this museum via typical art channels makes it even more intriguing. I’m also looking forward to reading Adam Gopnik’s essay on drawing. But in the meantime, Ian Frazier’s Talk of the Town contribution counterposes events in Harlem: a mostly-POC poetry reading and a mostly-white Socialist film screening. The description of the latter setting will ring a bell among radical buddies in Berkeley:
At a counter by the entry, racks of densely printed leaflets, the left’s traditional accessories, sat near new paperback editions of books by Leon Trotsky….
“O.K., everybody, can we all sit down…?” The last words were pronounced in the hopeful, rising tone that might be called the Leftist Exhortative….
The watchers in Freedom Hall roused themselves for a lusty booing and hissing of Dick Cheney when he came briefly into the frame….
…even the familiar pleasure of hating horrible things didn’t seem to buoy the Freedom Hall crowd. In the flickering dark, a palpable gloom.
Having been to a few gatherings like this myself, I found Gopnik’s humor winsome. The activists’ pessimism in the final couplet is too close for comfort. I suppose whatever inspired me to make the Activist Complaints drawings in 2007 still resonates with me.
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*This issue of Artforum is called “Acting Out: The Ab-Ex Effect.” Talk about tired of Ab-Ex.
Just came back from a trip to the West Coast to see family, friends, and art. Here are my cultural highlights…
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Portland, OR
My old college buddy Victor Maldonado, who’s now a professor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and seems to know everybody in the PDX art scene, was kind enough to take me around to galleries in the Pearl District. The scene is small but some spaces, like Elizabeth Leach Gallery, are clearly top-notch. The gallery owners were friendly and their storefront spaces seemed welcoming. Good times.
Jenny Holzer's tough-talking texts at the Printed Matter show at the Pacific Northwest College of Art's Feldman Gallery.
Gorgeous exhibition space in Weiden+Kennedy's foyer. Neat show examining work, including a publication with a prose poem by Victor Maldonado, an old college buddy.
I liked these photo-based color abstractions by Thomas Campbell in the Pearl Room at Powell's Books.
Nice painted-out photos by John Beech at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. A beautiful space to boot; so happy for Ryan Pierce, who's represented by them.
James Minden's etched/scribed black plexiglas works; three perspectives on the same work. At Augen Gallery.
Hall of video portraits. Susie Lee. Portland Art Museum.
Video portrait by Susie Lee.
Erotic Victorian figurines by Chris Anteman, also in the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards show.
This work reminded me very much of the work of Bay Area ceramicist Erik Scollon.
No photos but worth mentioning… The Museum of Contemporary Craft has at least two CCA connections, currently exhibiting an audio-weaving project by alumna Christy Matson and hosting a talk by faculty Deborah Valoma on July 9. Nice exhibition signage and web design to boot…. I also enjoyed my visit to Blue Sky Gallery, the home for the Oregon Center for Photographic Arts, and would encourage my photography friends to look them up.
I would have liked to check out some of the artist-run spaces in Central Eastside and the galleries at the surrounding colleges, but those will have to wait until a future visit.
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San Francisco Bay Area, CA
I got to see lots of art, friends, and art by friends in San Francisco. Staying in the West Bay, I wasn’t able to make it to the East Bay enough. But I got to see ambitious projects by friends at familiar spaces (Stephanie Syjuco at Catherine Clark Gallery), new spaces for familiar galleries (such as Frey Norris Modern and Contemporary in the SOMA or Steven Wolf Fine Arts in the exciting destination arts district emerging around Southern Exposure), edgier galleries that may not be around forever, and spaces I just never made it to before (Di Rosa Preserve in Napa, CA, and SFMOMA’s top floor).
Casteneda/Reiman's landscape illusions and installations at Baer/Ridgeway, San Francisco.
Steven Barich's meticulous graphite and charcoal works at Branch Gallery, Oakland. Branch is a cool little space in that part of downtown that seems cooler than ever.
An aquatint with hand painting by Barich. Priced very affordably, as are all the works in the show. In my correspondence with the artist, I considered doing another information graphic comparing Bay Area art prices to those of other cities (haven't got the time or resources at the moment to take this on, sorry!).
Stephanie is super meticulous about the presentation of her work. I love the open backs of these crates and the industrial feel of the lasercut stands. The blurred out postcards are especially wily. Knowing that the artist once worked at the Asian Art Museum, not far from Catherine Clark Gallery, makes the show quite cheeky.
Stephanie Syjuco's very finely tuned solo exhibition at Catherine Clark Gallery stages downloaded books and houseplants (!) in the back room.
Di Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA.
Usually you can find an art opening when hipsters are lounging out front. Here, they're accompanied by Discenza's sign.
Front of Inka Hoots' plane/shanty. Funny after building a shanty for Art in General just a week an a half ago.
Wall vinyl by Anthony Discenza. I like this writing-based practice; there's something distant and cynical while also engaged and a somewhat enraged.
Video installation by HalfLifers (Torsten Z. Burns and Anthony Discenza) at Zombie-Proof House at di Rosa Preserve. Short scenes where the artists portray zombies engaged in mundane tasks are interspersed with behind-the-scenes-like shots. Very appealing.
Masterful photos, beautiful prints, nicely installed, very sad show. If the models' eyes are shown, they are downcast; expressions are grim; all but one are women, often nude, all very pale and probably underweight. This is going to seem like a very facile critique, but why do men still make work photographing nude, disempowered women? Is it because photography's inherent connection to advertising allows for greater moral latitude or complicity with exploitative images? Fraenkel, by the way, usually has great shows, and this fall's line-up is really exciting.
At Stephen Wirtz Gallery, Doug Rickard's photos pulled from Google Street View, primarily featuring dark-skinned people in dilapidated environs, made me a little sick too. I am all for art projects that appropriate Google Street View, but something about the selection of these images, and their presentation as nice, re-photographed photos, seems exploitative. I saw the Google van when it came down my street. I felt curious and powerless to escape its cameras. In these moments, the subjects are no more or less powerless in their relationship to the Google camera, but putting a magnifying glass to them for further inspection, and grouping them among other scenes of impoverishment, seems further, and unnecessarily, disempowering.
I liked a few different works in the group show at Haines Gallery in San Francisco. I'd loved an image of a camera obscura installation by Abelardo Morell, so it was nice to see this photo, though I'd rather experience the installation still.
Small signs of protest against Ai Weiwei's detainment. Anytime people use Chinese take-out boxes, I cringe a little, but I appreciate the sentiment. This project appeared next to Christian L. Frock's Seed the Embassy materials..
Binh Danh's super cool daguerrotypes were also on view, for you to examine closely, at Haines.
These photograms by Wendy Small are quite nice. I overheard another visitor dismiss them as "decorative." Yes, they'd fit in as a cheeky Victorian element in someone's otherwise modern home, but still, the images are pretty neat.
Painting by James Chronister in Chromanticism at NOMA Gallery, curated by Liz Wing.
Chronister detail.
These abstract geometric drawings on newsprint by Richard Kent Howie are sort of childish, but it was neat to see work that's ostensibly about color in such a limited palette. Also at NOMA Gallery.
Richard Kent Howie detail.
Great video by David Claerbout at SFMOMA. Comprised of multiple shots of the same scene in an Asian high-rise apartment courtyard. The number and fineness of the images transition from believable to surreally plasticine. The video is called, Sections of a Happy Moment.
Eija Liisa-Ahtila's message to viewers of her video installation at SFMOMA.
2009 mica mural by Rosana Castrillo Diaz. That's a material I should work with.
Who can resist a Thiebaud cake? SFMOMA's Blue Bottle Cafe. That means it's probably baked by painter/sculptor/cake-maker Leah Rosenberg.
Tobias Wong's mirrored puzzle. SFMOMA.
A few moments after suppressing a few goodbye tears at SFO, I re-encountered this mosaic tile by Mike Mandell and Larry Sultan. Based on photographs of people awaiting arrivals, the faces are expectant. Reunifications are impending, and there's something very sweet about that joy counterbalancing the sorrow of goodbyes in equal measure at the airport.
After nine months in NYC, I’m really missing California. So when this image popped up in my inbox, it was perfect. Robert Bechtle—whose station wagon painting in the SFMOMA collection impressed me as a young artist—has updated the suburban blandness with a new print from Crown Point Press. Strong California sunlight on immaculate, impersonal Sunset district houses. So familiar, yet so far off in the outer avenues.
Robert Bechtle, Three Houses on Pennsylvania Avenue, 2011
R+D 