Keith Secola, “The Uncompahgre”, 2019. Image courtesy of Local Language.

January 3 to February 29– Keith Secola: The Uncompahgre at Local Language: The Uncompahgre people are a tribal band/community from the Ute Indian Tribe that reside on the Uintah & Ouray Indian Reservation in Northeastern Utah. Utes lived a life of movement and oneness with nature, summering in the high mountains and spending winters in the low valleys. Due to ongoing wars and westward expansion, the Uncompahgre were relocated by military force to the Utah Indian Reservation hundreds of miles from their original homeland. During these times the people did what they could to survive and hold on to their cultural and spiritual practices. The photographic archives in this exhibition are of the Uncompahgre people after their forced removal to the Utah Indian Reservation. They were collected by the artist from archival albums from his grandparents. Keith Secola’s recent body of work involves the reinsertion of the American Indian image onto collaged and deconstructed book covers of American colonial history, creating a new surface for printing and painting. The use of archival photography on the textbooks allows Secola to create a layer between the past and present and to form new narratives that question Native identity through the fusion of image, text, and memory. Local Language is located at 477 25th Street, Oakland.

Rashaad Newsome, “King of Arms Ballroom”, 2019, installation view. Image courtesy of SFAI.

January 10 to February 23– Rashaad Newsome: To Be Real at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture: The exhibition presents a series of neo-Cubist portraits in expressive frames, threading an ornamental glamour through figures reflecting on human agency, Blackness, and the radical futurity of emerging identities. Paired with new sculpture, A.I. and installation elements, To Be Real invites the viewer to imagine a richer and mutually shared way of being in the world. The exhibition draws from ballroom divas, haute couture, and African art. The collages present extraordinary subjects, each aware of their pose. Together, the collaged and sculptural figures draw from Queer, Black, and Ballroom life itself, pointing to the future utopias that these lives represent and inspire. Newsome invites his viewers to converse with him as we seek to understand the meaning of being human against a history that keeps certain peoples outside the accepted realm of humanity. Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture is located at 2 Marina Blvd. 

Kira Dominguez Hultgren, “Arose”, 2019. Image courtesy of Eleanor Harwood Gallery.

January 11 to February 29– Kira Dominguez Hultgren: Intrusions at Eleanor Harwood Gallery: Dominguez Hultgren weaves together histories of tangled intrusions nourished on the global confusion of the word Indian. Beginning with two Navajo weavings from around 1876 and two Punjabi head-coverings embroidered by her great-aunt Dalip Kaur around 1923, Dominguez Hultgren mines with material hyperbole the historical narratives that surround these two “Indian” archives. What does it mean to form an identity or nation in the negative, in distinction to what one is not? This is the question which motivates Dominguez Hultgren to weave through photographic documentation of the two Navajo weavings in her work. For Dominguez Hultgren, textiles are an archive of material metaphor and physical protest from which she can reenact and destabilize historical narratives. Eleanor Harwood Gallery is located at 1275 Minnesota Street, Suite 206 in San Francisco.

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 11, 6 – 8pm

Ron Nagle, “Handsome Drifter”, 2015. Image courtesy of BAMPFA.

January 15 to June 14– Ron Nagle: Handsome Drifter at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA): Ron Nagle has made stunning, entirely unique small sculptures since the 1960s, producing a body of work that is as original as it is mischievous. He began his career making funky, rough cups and vessels out of earthenware, and by the early 1960s was using low-fire, slip casting techniques, making smoother surfaces and bringing into play the luminous colors that would become his calling card. In his recent works, Nagle continues to diverge from traditional ceramic processes, introducing synthetic materials such as polyurethane and resin. Made with an overarching sense of playfulness and linguistic humor, a bodily and architectural sensibility, and a keen attention to color, these finely tuned, pitch-perfect sculptures condense sensory wonder into perfect packages of experience and feeling. Their miniature scale makes Nagle’s odd, elegant, sensual, and sometimes abject objects endlessly surprising models for imagination. BAMPFA is located at 2155 Center Street, Berkeley. 

View from past event. Image courtesy of Drew Altizer.

January 16 to 19– FOG Design + Art Fair at Fort Mason Center: Celebrating today’s most significant creatives and leading contributors to the worlds of design and visual arts, the fair assembles 48 leading international galleries and prominent 20th-century and contemporary design dealers. FOG has become a focal point for the design and arts communities on the West Coast and further afield. The fair is synonymous with a uniquely pioneering spirit due to its bold hybrid approach and intimate presentation of art and design, dynamic programming on-site and its community-led mission to champion art and design in its historic Fort Mason setting. Building on FOG’s longstanding commitment to cultural institutions, the fair’s Preview Gala is honored to continue its crucial support of SFMOMA’s exhibitions and education programs. FOG represents a key moment in which the local and global community congregate to engage in critical dialogue, artistic exchanges, and a shared passion for creative pursuits. Fort Mason Center is located at 2 Marina Blvd in San Francisco.

Buy tickets here.

View from past event. Image courtesy of Casey Kelbaugh.

January 17 to 19– UNTITLED, ART Fair at Pier 35: UNTITLED, ART is an international, curated art fair founded in 2012 that focuses on curatorial balance and integrity across all disciplines of contemporary art. The fair innovates the standard fair model by selecting a curatorial team to identify and curate a selection of galleries, artist-run exhibition spaces, and non-profit institutions and organizations, in dialogue with an architecturally designed venue. Pier 35 is located at 1454 The Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Buy tickets here.

Sophie Calle, “North Pole”, 2018. Image courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery.

January 23 to March 21– Sophie Calle: Because at Fraenkel Gallery: The exhibition is part of Calle’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between narrative, memory, and photography, and mixes humor and melancholy with her particular eye for irony. Because feature new works by Calle on view for the first time in the U.S. In each piece, a felt curtain embroidered with Calle’s writing conceals a hidden photograph behind it. In presenting viewers with the text before the picture, Calle upends the usual order in which images are read, creating a poetic surprise or puzzle. Fraenkel Gallery is located at 49 Geary Street, 4th Floor. 

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 25, 1 – 4pm

Miriam Simun, still from “Your Urge to Breathe is a Lie”, 2019. Image courtesy of Headlands Center for the Arts.

January 26 to March 8– Tomorrow Is Already Here at Headlands Center for the Arts: The exhibition unveils work related to a new programming thread at Headlands called Thematic Residencies. Thematic Residencies begin with a prompt and gather artists and non-artists such as scientists, policy makers, and community advocates to ideate and collaborate on how the arts can help to produce innovative, culturally relevant research and serve communities on the ground. Tomorrow Is Already Here draws from the practices of participants in Headlands’ 2016 and 2018. The work focuses on climate change, and includes new works, collaborations, commissions, and writing emerging from the research and encounters during the residencies. Headlands Center for the Arts is located at 944 Simmonds Road, Sausalito.

Opening Reception: Sunday, January 26, 2 – 5pm