Richard McLean, “All American Standard Miss”, 1968. Image courtesy of di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art.
Ongoing to December 31– Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times (Part 2) at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art: Part 2 of Be Not Still: Living in Uncertain Times is an experimental blend of new art commissions and works from the di Rosa collection. The exhibition will also have four new projects by Bay Area artists, each responding to the evolving social and political climate through a topic of their choice. Lexa Walsh explores the topic of assembly through her guest-curated presentation of works from di Rosa’s collection of Northern California art. Victor Cartagena, Ranu Mukherjee, and Lava Thomas address immigration, societal health, and solidarity through large-scale commissioned installations. Di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is located at 5200 Sonoma (Carneros) Highway in Napa.
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 30, 5– 7pm
Farah Al Qasimi, “Living Room Vape”, 2016. Image courtesy of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.
July 6 to August 25– Conversation 7 at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery: The exhibition brings together work by Marcela Pardo Ariza and Farah Al Qasimi. Farah Al Qasimi’s work draws upon her communities in both the United States and the United Arab Emirates. Marcela Pardo Ariza’s practice explores queerness and representation, using photography as a means to reveal the construction of persona and identity—both public and personal. The exhibition engages a dialogue that not only concerns the nature of photography, but also how similar ideas around context and framing affect how we interact with those we do not know. For the communities that these artists are collaborating with—the LGBTQ+ community, the Arab community, performers, family, and the intersections of identities that people occupy—there are imposed expectations about ‘who they are’ that both artists are able to expose and exploit within their work. The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 126.
Opening Reception: Friday, July 6, 6– 8pm
Phillip Maisel, “Untitled (3477)”, 2018. Image courtesy of Gregory Lind Gallery.
July 12 to August 25– Phillip Maisel at Gregory Lind Gallery: While rooted in the language of photography, Maisel’s practice traverses sculpture, collage, and installation. Never fully resigning itself to a single medium, each piece meditates upon perception, while drawing on the framework of architecture and design. Maisel makes series of photographs of everyday materials, making adjustments between each frame by repositioning, introducing, or extracting elements. On the final printed image, Maisel reintroduces dimensionality to the flat picture plane by integrating collage elements or physical cuts into the surface. Maisel draws attention to the form by confusing the perception of its layers—the collage within the collage, where the part cannot be differentiated from the whole, nor the image from the real thing. Gregory Lind Gallery is located at 49 Geary Street, Fifth Floor.
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 12, 5– 7:30pm
Ranu Mukherjee, “Movement 1”, print design detail, 2018. Image courtesy of Gallery Wendi Norris.
July 14 to January 20– Ranu Mukherjee: A Bright Stage at the de Young Museum: Combining printed linen, embroidered silk, paint, and animation, Ranu Mukherjee’s A Bright Stage metaphorically transforms the de Young atrium into a grove of banyan trees. Native to India, the banyan tree is sacred to people of diverse faiths as a symbol of fertility, life, and resurrection. The canopies of mature banyans often reach such significant scales that they come to define the outdoor meeting places that form the social, commercial, and political core of many Indian communities. Responding to the history and architecture of the de Young, A Bright Stage reflects on the cultural and spatial perspectives of the museum. Invoking the banyan’s form and mystical and political connotations, the installation accentuates the atrium’s physical qualities and its role as a social gathering space. The de Young Museum is located in Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive.
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 14, 1– 4pm. Ranu Mukherjee in conversation with Claudia Schmuckli, the Curator in Charge.
View from last years event. Image courtesy of Minnesota Street Project.
July 20 to 22– 2018 SF Art Book Fair at Minnesota Street Project: The 2018 SF Art Book Fair is an annual multi-day festival of artists’ publications. This event is free and open to the public and will feature artists’ books, art catalogs, monographs, periodicals, zines, printed ephemera, and artists’ multiples. These works will be presented by over 100 independent publishers, antiquarian dealers, artists, collectors, and enthusiasts. Over the course of the weekend, the fair will be complemented by a diverse range of talks, discussions, book launches, on and off-site special projects, exhibitions and signings. Minnesota Street Project is located at 1275 Minnesota Street.
Image from last years event. Image courtesy of the Headlands Center for the Arts.
July 29, 12- 5pm– Open House at Headlands Center for the Arts: Three Sundays a year, the Headlands Center for the Arts invites guests to roam the various buildings of their campus, engage with artists in their studios, experience new work and works in progress, and stay for a homemade lunch in the Mess Hall. The Open House connects visitors to the working process of artists and fosters conversations about the creative process. Scheduled in conjunction with the Headlands Center for the Arts’ three Artists in Residence seasons, the Open House features curated happenings and events scheduled throughout the day, including readings, performances, screenings, and guided walks. The Headlands Center for the Arts is located at 944 Fort Barry in Sausalito.
Martin Machado, “Ships Passing, Red Sea”, 2018. Image courtesy of SFAI.
Ongoing to August 19– Martin Machado: Fluid State at SFAI’s Main Gallery: SFAI alum Martin Machado is a visual artist who has traveled the world on international commercial vessels as a merchant mariner. His work takes the form of drawings, paintings, and photographs that offer a window into this often-overlooked system of global commerce that underpins modern life. Cumulatively, the works in this exhibition illustrate Machado’s time at sea and his deep engagement with the people, places, and historical and cultural complexities of maritime exploration and trade. The exhibition’s title, Fluid State, alludes to the state of flux that defines both a life at sea and the shifting tides of global capitalism. SFAI’s Main Gallery is located at Fort Mason Campus, 2 Marina Blvd.
Corine Vermeulen, “Boy and fire hydrant”, 2011. Image courtesy of Pier 24 Photography.
Ongoing to March 31– This Land at Pier 24 Photography: The exhibition focuses on work made throughout the United States within the past decade. The photographers included in the exhibition examine aspects of the country’s current social climate, from the mundane to the politicized. The exhibition’s title is drawn from Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land”. Viewed by many as an alternative national anthem, it alludes to the uneasy tensions fundamental to our vision of this nation filled with promise and peril, possibilities and letdowns. At the bottom of the sheet of paper on which Guthrie hand- wrote the song’s lyrics, he noted, “all you can write is what you see.” The artists included in this exhibition use cameras rather than pens, creating photographs that speak to what they see in the United States today. Pier 24 Photography is located on Pier 24.