Miriam Böhm, “Nothing”, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist and Ratio 3.
Ongoing to December 20– Miriam Böhm: While, Weil at Ratio 3: Through a combination of studio-based photography and natural motifs, Böhm brings her meticulous and perplexing image-making to the tradition of landscape photography. By repeatedly photographing a physical arrangement of paper or other simple materials and incorporating sections of those photographs into the original arrangement, Böhm constructs a still life that features itself as a subject. By combining images of trees, lakes, and mountains in her camera’s frame, Böhm’s photographs suggest familiar vistas without resolving into traditional landscapes. Each image maintains a relationship to studio-arranged still life photography, while expanding on Böhm’s distinctively sculptural photographic practice. The works are varied in their presentation and complex in their conception, as Böhm’s practice becomes at once more expansive and distinct. Ratio 3 is located at 2831A Mission Street in San Francisco.
View from past art sale event. Image courtesy of Kala Art Institute.
December 5 to 8– Holiday Pop-Up Sale at Kala Art Institute: Kala’s highly anticipated holiday sale features mark-downs of up to 50% on framed and unframed works on paper and printed goods by Kala resident artists. Proceeds support the artists and non-profit programming. Kala Art Institute is located at 2990 San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley.
Preview and Opening Reception: Thursday, December 5, 6-8:30pm
View of Southern Exposure’s exterior. Image courtesy of Museeum.
December 5 to 7, 12-8pm– Holiday Art Sale at Southern Exposure: Southern Exposure will bring out treasures from their archives and offer them for in-person purchases at affordable prices for this 3 day art sale. Hidden gems from past Monster Drawing Rallies, beautiful catalogues and publications, exhibition posters, rare prints, and more will all be for sale. 100% of the proceeds from the holiday sale go to support Southern Exposures free programming. Southern Exposure is located at 3030 20th Street in San Francisco.
Installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery 16.
Ongoing to January 17– Shaw & Co at Gallery 16: The exhibition honors the legacy and influence of the Shaw Family, whose influence and contributions to the Bay Area’s art and music scene have been on display for over four decades. On view is a collection of work by members of the Shaw Family as well as a collection of work by many Bay Area artists for whom the Shaws have been friends with, inspired by or inspirations for including Rebeca Bollinger, Mike Henderson, Don Ed Hardy, Bob Hudson, Sahar Khoury, Alicia McCarthy, Jim Melchert, Ruby Neri, Cornelia Schulz, Ehren Tool, and Wanxin Zhang. Gallery 16 is located at 501 Third Street in San Francisco.
(left) Masako Miki, (right) Donzell Lewis (detail). Images courtesy of Cynthia Ona Innis.
December 7 to 26– Fiberful, Tippy Toes: Terry Hoff, and Right Here, Right Now, Richmond at NIAD Art Center: Three exhibitions are opening at the NIAD Art Center’s galleries. Fiberful, organized by artist Cynthia Ona Innis, showcases the work of artists who explore themes of identity, the human condition and their own personal narratives using traditional and non-traditional methods of fiber-based work.
Tippy Toes: Terry Hoff exhibits Hoff’s unique canvases with abstracted forms that often include discarded tape, fabric and plaster, resembling large rocks. Drawing from his suburban upbringing, the works frequently mirror the textures of suburban track home ceiling textures. Combining a nostalgic and psychedelic aesthetic elevates Hoff’s notion of a visual language that lies somewhere in between past, present, and future.
Right Here, Right Now, Richmond is a juried exhibition that looks at the excellent and risk-taking new work being made in Richmond. NIAD Art Center is located at 551 23rd Street in Richmond.
Opening Receptions: Saturday, December 14, 1-4pm.
Jim Campbell, “Southern California”, 2019. Image courtesy of Hosfelt Gallery.
December 14 to January 25– Jim Campbell: Closer to Nothing at Hosfelt Gallery: With light as his primary medium, Jim Campbell probes the liminal boundaries of perception. His newest body of work exploits extreme data deficiency as a means of engaging primal pathways of comprehension. Each piece, effectively incomplete without viewer participation, resolves itself only through the brain’s capacity to extrapolate meaning from a paucity of information. The exhibition will include work that incorporates imagery from Eadweard Muybridge’s groundbreaking human and animal motion studies from the late 1800s. Muybridge devised a method of sequential still photographs to capture aspects of bodily motion undetectable by the human eye. Campbell inverts this concept to test the limits of discernment by breaking down Muybridge’s images into minimal data with continual variations in magnification. Navigating the threshold between the analog and the digital, his work activates an experience of neurological alchemy whereby data transforms into knowledge. Hosfelt Gallery is located at 260 Utah Street in San Francisco.
Artist Reception: Saturday, December 14, 4-6pm
View from last years event. Image courtesy of Root Division
December 14 to 18– Misfit Maker & RD Makes: Inaugural Studio Artist Exhibition at Root Division: This exhibition and event will consist of live art making and local vendors. The exhibition showcases the range of processes and works being produced at Root Division. Over 30 Bay Area artists will be making small sculptures and other giftables on site in Root Division’s gallery. These objects range in spectrum with distinct designs and innovative approaches to object-making. Each artist made item will be available for sale as they are completed. Root Division is located at 1131 Mission Street in San Francisco.
Reception: Saturday, December 14, 4-8pm
Christina Seely, “Quantitare – glacies (Exponential Ice, Gully Breen / Svalbard Territory )”, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist and EUQINOM Gallery.
Ongoing to January 11– Christina Seely: Perdita, In Finding(s) at EUQINOM Gallery: In this current complex moment of dramatic; political, cultural, and environmental flux, Seely’s recent work faces into the inherent tentativeness brought on by exponential change. Using the word perdita, Latin for “lost”, and drawing from the content of an archive of materials, or “findings” accumulated over the last ten years of expeditionary travels to the arctic and tropics, the project functions as a set of impossible riddles. While this invitation points to the fundamental human proclivity of our need to understand, the work as a set of visual puzzles that are designed to fail, has the aim of finding a home in ongoing disorientation. The photograph functions in the project as a foundational prompt, referencing the “real world”. Imagery is used to build as a set of semiotics that formulate a kind of language of the natural world. While an uneasiness may form in the cumulative experience of the work, satisfaction and discovery lie in a realization of what is familiar along the way. In evoking a search with inherent failure woven in, the project also suggest a need for humility by pointing to the impossibility of truly comprehending the fullness of nature or our place within the complexity of the larger planetary whole. EUQINOM Gallery is located at 1295 Alabama Street in San Francisco.