Stas Orlovski, “Teardrop with Mountain”, 2017. Image courtesy of Traywick Contemporary.
Ongoing to May 25– Stas Orlovski: обjект at Traywick Contemporary: Los Angeles-based artist, Stas Orlovski incorporates a variety of imagery from diverse sources such as Japanese woodblock prints, Victorian era journals, and Russian modernism into his collage-based practice. His works also involve a variety of media including printmaking, drawing, transfer, and painting. The body of work in the exhibition is autobiographical, referencing memories and dreams from Orlovski’s childhood, and also art historical movements such as Russian Suprematism, European Surrealism, and Soviet experimental animation. Throughout the exhibition, similar themes of migration and loss are expressed with a sense of absurdity and humor. Orlovski’s work acknowledges the powerful experience of a collective history, and the ephemeral nature of personal memory. Traywick Contemporary is located at 895 Colusa Avenue in Berkeley.
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 30, 3- 5pm
Alec Soth, “Nick, Los Angeles”, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist and Fraenkel Gallery.
Ongoing to May 11– Alec Soth: I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating at Fraenkel Gallery: Taking its name from a line in Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Gray Room,” the works in the show investigate the possibilities and limitations of what photographs can convey about the inner lives of their subjects. Often the result of extended engagements with the people Soth photographs, the large-scale portraits and interiors were made in the U.S. and Europe. The subjects are artists, writers and choreographers, among others. Intimate and quiet, the images reveal something otherwise unknowable about both the sitter and the photographer. Fraenkel Gallery is located at 49 Geary Street, 4th Floor.
Todd Hido, “Untitled #176”, 1994. Image courtesy of Casemore Kirkeby.
April 2, 7 to 8pm– Todd Hido Lecture at Minnesota Street Project: As part of the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program, Bay Area photographer Todd Hido will give an artist talk referencing his three decades of work. Hido photographs around North America creating haunting narratives through images of suburban scenes, desolate landscapes, and stylized portraits. His work has a cinematic aesthetic that communicates to viewers in a distinct visual language full of psychological tension and emotion. Minnesota Street Project is located at 1275 Minnesota Street.
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Tom Burckhardt, “Psychodiagnostik”. 2018. Image courtesy of Gregory Lind Gallery.
April 4 to May 18– Tom Burckhardt: Psychodiagnostik at Gregory Lind Gallery: Burckhardt’s recent works explore the line between figuration and abstraction, with an emphasis on how our perceptual biases impact us. The concept of pareidolia, in which figuration or faces are read in abstract visual phenomena, is key to his works. Imperfection is built into Burckhardt’s process, as he always starts with a single panel, painted intuitively, which he completes before moving on to the next panel, where he works to create the same image in reverse. One side reveals an improvisational process, while the other is executed in an analytical fashion. By working on two panels at different times, and then adjoining the original and its mirror image, Burckhardt emphasizes the paradox of a symmetrical image that is literally split down the middle, revealing both its wholeness and its inherent sense of division. Gregory Lind Gallery is located at 49 Geary Street, 5th Floor.
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 4, 5- 7:30pm
(left) Josephine Taylor, “Darrow”, 2018. (middle) Libby Black, “Some Women”, 2017. (right) Taravat Talepasand, “Customs and the Manners of the Women of Persia, and their Domestic Superstitions I (detail)”, 2019. Images courtesy of Gallery 16.
April 5 to May 31– Epoch: Libby Black, Taravat Talepasand, Josephine Taylor at Gallery 16: The definition of epoch is a period of time in history or a person’s life typically marked by notable events or particular characteristics. The long-standing friendship between Libby Black, Taravat Talepasand, and Josephine Taylor, has woven it’s way through many spheres of life: love, home, motherhood, work, culture, community, history, politics. What began two years ago as a correspondence via email between the artists evolved into a greater dialogue about what it means to be an artist, a feminist, a teacher and a mother. Inspired by a mutual love and respect for each other’s work, practice and careers, the exhibition presents the work of these artists in dialogue together for the first time. Through various methods of appropriation, re-authoring and the shifting of perspectives, Black, Talepasand and Taylor explore ideas of domesticity and the presence of women in their work. Gallery 16 is located at 501 3rd Street.
Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 6- 9pm
Gerald Wiggins, “Untitled (The Supremes)”, 2018. Image courtesy of Creativity Explored.
April 5, 5 to 9:30pm– Art Changes Lives Auction and Gala Hosted by Creativity Explored at City View at METREON: Creativity Explored gives artists with developmental disabilities the means to create and share their work with the community. Creativity Explored’s annual auction and gala celebrates the power of art to change lives with dinner, drinks, and the exclusive opportunity to bid on some of the best works of art created by the talented artists working in their studios. City View at METREON is located at 135 Fourth Street, 4th Floor.
Buy tickets here.
Sally Scopa, “All the Oceans”, 2018. Image courtesy of Embark Gallery.
April 13 to May 18– Out of Line at Embark Gallery: The exhibition features eight Bay Area artists who create drawings made with anything but pen or pencil: light, fabric, seeds, architectural drafting software and even heavy metal particles from air pollution. Like ghostly memories of the actions of the artist, the artworks in this show capture the immediacy and intimacy we recognize in traditional drawing. Through their use of innovative materials and techniques, they add layers of complexity to the act of mark making, while still doing the essential work of drawing. The artists detect and highlight the shape of the world in new and interesting ways. Embark Gallery is located at 2 Marina Blvd, Building B (3rd Floor), Suite 330.
Opening Reception: Friday, April 12, 6- 9pm
Natani Notah (left) “Red (Blood), White (Gold), and Blue (Ocean), Bolo (2/7)”, 2017. (right) “I Dreamt an Asteroid Came, Bolo (3/7)”, 2017. Image courtesy of the artist.
April 4 to 28– Divinely Diné at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery: Through mixed media sculptures and detailed works on paper, the exhibition explores the connections between culture, politics, and survival. For Natani Notah, bringing disparate entities together to coexist serves as a generative act of healing from intergenerational trauma. Part prayer and part declaration, Divinely Diné disrupts our conceptions of what we think it means to be a Native American woman living in the present-day U.S. Adobe Books Backroom Gallery is located at 3130 24th Street.
View of a past open house event. Image courtesy of Headlands Center for the Arts.
April 14, 12 to 5pm– Spring Open House at Headlands Center for the Arts: The Open House is free and open to the public. It provides a once-a-season opportunity to roam the various buildings of the Headlands Center for the Arts campus, meet the current artists in residence, view works in progress, and attend screenings, performances, and readings. You will also have the opportunity to engage in a hands on, creative reuse art activity and enjoy a house-made lunch. Headlands Center for the Arts is located at 944 Simmonds Road in Sausalito.
Installation view of Davina Semo’s “Precarious Hardware” exhibition. Image courtesy of Jessica Silverman Gallery.
Ongoing to May 4– Precarious Hardware: Davina Semo at Jessica Silverman Gallery: San Francisco based artist, Davina Semo creates rough and glossy sculptures. Combining works from four diverse series, the work explores the tension between nature, society and the self, as well as the philosophical troika of liberty, beauty and power. The exhibition is taut with contradiction, riffing on the relationships between strength and vulnerability as well as natural growth and destruction. Jessica Silverman Gallery is located at 488 Ellis Street.
View from last years event. Image courtesy of Art Market San Francisco.
April 25 to 28– Art Market San Francisco at Fort Mason Festival Pavilion: Art Market San Francisco is an art fair that is now going into its ninth edition. The fair will feature seventy-five modern and contemporary art galleries from around the world bringing some of the world’s most intriguing artists and galleries to San Francisco. In showcasing historically important work alongside relevant contemporary pieces and projects, Art Market San Francisco creates an ideal context for the discovery, exploration, and acquisition of art. Fort Mason Festival Pavilion is located at 2 Marina Blvd.
Buy tickets here.