Adrian L. Burrell “Cyclical Symphony” 2022. Image courtesy of MSP Foundation.
October 7 to December 3 – Adrian L. Burrell: Venus Blues at MSP Foundation: Born and raised in Oakland, Adrian L. Burrell explores in Venus Blues the idea of history as a living phenomenon in the face of duress and erasure. The exhibition highlights Burrell’s large-scale sculptures and life-sized photographs created specifically for the exhibition, as well as the debut of a new iteration of the artist’s ongoing film project, The Saints Step in Kongo Time. Artist and curator tour: Saturday, October 7, 6:30pm, 1201 Minnesota Street.
Exhibition title graphic courtesy of YBCA.
October 6 to May 5, 2024 – Bay Area Now 9 at YBCA: Bay Area Now 9 is the ninth iteration of YBCA’s signature triennial exhibition highlighting artists working throughout the Bay Area’s nine counties. Each BAN is an attempt to answer the question: What are artists making, thinking, dreaming about right now? Featuring over 30 multidisciplinary artists—a nod to YBCA’s upcoming 30th anniversary—the exhibition features numerous new commissions spanning the campus. The Opening Night Party is on Friday, October 6 from 7:30-11pm at YBCA 701 Mission Street in San Francisco. RSVP here.
Ana Teresa Fernandez “The Space Between Us” 2022. Image courtesy of di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art.
October 7 to January 21, 2024 – Listen Louder: Ana Teresa Fernández at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art: In her largest career survey to date, San Francisco-based multidisciplinary artist Fernández shows paintings, sculptures, and films alongside site-specific installations and performances exploring the intersection of migration and climate change. Land-based installations – including a glittering ‘SHHH’ floating on di Rosa’s Winery Lake, and an exhortation to ‘LISTEN’ visible from Sonoma Highway – encourage us to listen louder to the earth, and each other. Fernández’s rigorous practice emerges from site-specific interventions and embodied actions, and her work frequently meditates on how borderlands delimit movement and stasis; freedom and detention; and even life and death. Through enacted narratives, she embodies the stories that divide but also bind us as human beings sharing a planet of great fragility and beauty. Opening Reception, Saturday, October 7 5:30–7:30, 5200 Sonoma Highway, Napa. For tickets please visit here.
Left: Christy Matson Right: Andy Mister “I had a dream and you were in it” 2023, Pastel on linen mounted on panel. Images courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents.
Ongoing to October 28– Christy Matson: West of West and Andy Mister: My Apologies at Rebecca Camacho Presents: Matson debuts a new series of woven paintings that distill and explore abstraction, landscape and the relationship between reality and imagination. Referencing the broad topography of the Pacific Coast, a region integral to the artists life, Matson begins each piece as a memory drawing, a sketch inspired by places or spaces Matson has experienced in real time. The exhibition functions as a biographical map, a record of tangible moments absorbed at differing speeds, navigated by touch and feel. Mister worked with friend and photographer Pauline Shapiro, who formed and documented small flower bouquets culled from her garden in Brooklyn, Mister sets the arrangements against a seamless backdrop, keeping them unplaced in space and time, floating. Titled My Apologies, Mister’s exhibition is a love letter to the humanity of intimate gestures that compensate for unintended errors in partnership. Rebecca Camacho Presents is located at 794 Sutter Street in San Francisco.
Terri Loewenthal “Horse Ranch Camp (Ute land)” 2023, archival pigment print. Image courtesy of Cult Aimee Friberg.
Ongoing to November 4 – Terri Loewenthal: Mountain Goat Mountain at Cult Aimee Friberg: This new body of work is a further evolution of Loewenthal’s initial reckoning with the impact of Manifest Destiny and her perspective on the West as a female photographer. In this time of drastic impacts to the climate and our planet, Loewenthal pushed herself, both deeper into the remote landscape and deeper into her process. Using new techniques and handmade tools, she offers her audience the opportunity to look beyond the sublime into a space where awe culminates in a sense of connection and whole-ness, celebrating what it means to be a human in nature. Cult aimee Friberg is located at 1401 16th Street (at Carolina) in San Francisco.
Lorena Molina “Entre Palmas” 2018, Archival inkjet print. Image courtesy SFAC Main Gallery.
October 13 to December 16 – Transcending Physicality: The Essence of Place at SFAC Main Gallery: Curated by artist and educator Minoosh Zomorodinia this group exhibition explores the complicated concept of “place” and the interplay of relationships and interactions that shape and define places. Transcending Physicality recognizes that place extends beyond mere physicality, encompassing narratives, histories, and emotions. Through the work of fourteen artists, the exhibition aims to illustrate the multifaceted dimensions that contribute to the essence of a place. Opening Reception: Friday, October 13, 6 – 8 p.m. SFAC Main Gallery, War Memorial Veterans Building 401 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.
Pacita Abad “L.A. Liberty” 1992. Image courtesy of SFMOMA.
October 21 to January 28, 2024 – Pacita Abad at SFMOMA: The first retrospective of Pacita Abad (born 1946, Batanes, Philippines; died 2004, Singapore) features more than 40 daring works that showcase the artist’s experiments in different mediums, including painting, sculpture, textiles, and works on paper. Abad is best known for her trapuntos, a form of quilted painting made by stitching and stuffing her canvases as opposed to stretching them over a wood frame. Over a 32-year career, the prolific artist made a vast number of artworks that traverse a diversity of subjects, from colorful masks to intricately constructed underwater scenes to abstract compositions.