Tag: Isaac Julien

Isaac Julien, “Maiden of Silence (Ten Thousand Waves)”, 2010, Endura Ultra photograph. Image courtesy of de Young Museum.

Ongoing to July 13 – Isaac Julien: I Dream a World at de Young Museum: Over the last 25 years, artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien has created immersive, multichannel video installations exploring power, politics, and personal experience through the lens of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Featuring 10 major video installations made between 1999 and 2022, alongside select early single-channel films including Looking for Langston (1989), this exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Julien’s work in a museum and his first retrospective in the U.S. Shot across Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, and Asia, Julien’s works untangle the web of post-colonial conditions that shaped the lives of individuals and societies across the globe. de Young Museum is located at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr in San Francisco.

Alec Soth, “Lee”, 2023, pigment print, edition of 9 + 4 APs. Image courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery.

Ongoing to May 23 – Alec Soth: Advice for Young Artists at Fraenkel Gallery: Advice for Young Artists explores the cultivation of creativity through playful and surprising photographs made at undergraduate art programs. Rather than offering the guidance promised by the show’s title, the series presents reflections on artmaking at different stages of life, exploring the connections between photography, time, and aging. Inspired by Walker Evans’s Polaroids of young people, the photographs range from bright still lifes made from art department props to enigmatic images of students and oblique self-portraits. Fraenkel Gallery is located at 49 Geary St #450 in San Francisco.

Mattea Perrotta, “Letters Never Sent”, 2024, oil stick and plaster on canvas. Nick Gorham, “Passage”, 2025, oil on canvas. Images courtesy of Et al. Gallery.

Ongoing to May 31 – Mattea Perrotta: The Forgetting of Air and Nick Gorham: Sun Turn at Et al. Gallery: In The Forgetting of Air, Rome-based artist Mattea Perrotta presents compositions that fuse monumentality with delicacy. Drawing from personal memory and the art historical lineages of the many cities she has inhabited, Perrotta crafts a painterly language of abstract forms and tonal gestures. Her works invite viewers into a meditative space shaped by cultural observation and emotional resonance. In Sun Turn, Nick Gorham explores the liminal space between landscape and abstraction. Rooted in his deep connection to Northern California, Gorham’s paintings balance intuitive mark-making with careful observation. The resulting works evoke internal landscapes as much as external ones, reflecting a search for meaning through painterly process. Et al. Gallery is located at 2831a Mission St in San Francisco.

Val Britton, “Transit”, 2025, acrylic, ink, collage, monoprint, and colored pencil on paper. Isca Greenfield-Sanders, “Pink Lake”, 2024, mixed media oil on canvas. Vanessa Marsh, “Grand Teton 8, mid day from Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park WY”, from the series “The Sun Beneath the Sky”, 2020, unique silver gelatin lumen photogram. Joni Sternbach, “13.08.30 #4-5 Yuko-Milo”, from the series “Surfland”, 2013, tintype diptych. Images courtesy of Berggruen Gallery.

May 1 to June 19 – Val Britton: Ghost Coast, Isca Greenfield-Sanders: Cut From A Dream, and Western Wave: Vanessa Marsh & Joni Sternbach at Berggruen Gallery: Portland-based artist Val Britton’s newest mixed media works form invented psycho-geographic terrains that explore themes of memory, care, and transformation. Combining painting, collage, ink, watercolor, drawing, and cut paper, Britton’s abstract compositions mimic and evoke the intertwining of spatial networks–cosmological, symbolic, emotional, topographic–that we inhabit at each given moment. In Cut From A Dream, New York-based painter Isca Greenfield-Sanders features idyllic landscape paintings and works on paper depicting the fleeting moments of found and collected memories. Western Wave is a photography exhibition by American artists Vanessa Marsh and Joni Sternbach exploring themes of memory, landscape, and the passage of time through historical techniques. Through various photographic processes, Marsh and Sternbach emphasize the tactile, ephemeral nature of their materials—where hand-poured emulsions, exposure times, and environmental factors leave visible traces of the artist’s hand. Berggruen Gallery is located at 10 Hawthorne St in San Francisco.

Martin Machado, “My Wake Series 15”, 2024, oil on linen. Image courtesy of Eleanor Harwood Gallery.

May 3 to June 21 – Martin Machado: Fine Dine the Demons at Eleanor Harwood Gallery: In this recent group of works, Martin Machado continues several ongoing series relating to the natural world’s cycles and his experience working on the water as a commercial fisherman and merchant mariner. Machado’s works are painted in oil, both on linen, and on nautical charts collected from international containerships Machado worked on. With equal parts gallows humor and optimism, the moodiness of these new works is also reflected in the show’s title “Fine Dine the Demons” borrowed from the lyrics of musician Adrienne Lenker’s song titled “Once A Bunch.” Eleanor Harwood Gallery is located at Minnesota Street Project at 1275 Minnesota St #206 in San Francisco.

Top: David Antonio Cruz, Detail of “thesecretofremainingyoung isnevertohaveanemotion, thatisunbecoming; thosebarriokids”, 2022; Bottom: Masako Miki Detail of painting. Images courtesy of ICA San Francisco.

May 16 to December 7 – Masako Miki: Midnight March and David Antonio Cruz: stay, take your time, my love at ICA SF: As Japanese artist Masako Miki’s largest presentation to date, Midnight March is also the first fully site-responsive exhibition at ICA SF’s new location at The Cube. The exhibition will collapse Miki’s two-dimensional and three-dimensional practices, bringing her paintings known as “Night Parades” to life in experiential form. David Antonio Cruz’s site-specific solo exhibition, stay, take your time, my love, acts as a “love letter” to the Bay Area queer community, layering references to art history, the handkerchief code, leather culture, and iconic sites around the San Francisco landscape. ICA SF is located at The Cube at 345 Montgomery St in San Francisco.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden “NEVER LET ME GO XII” 2024, Black jute rope, leather, leather dye and Saphir shoe polish. Image courtesy of SFAC Main Gallery.

May 29 to August 23 – Service Tension curated by Elena Gross and Leila Weefur at SFAC Main Gallery: Service Tension is a group exhibition curated by Elena Gross and Leila Weefur featuring work by Salimatu Amabebe, Ricki Dwyer, Xandra Ibarra, Sasha Kelley, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, and Autumn Wallace. The exhibition will explore the messiness and complexity of the queer body. The title, Service Tension, is an interpolation of “surface tension,” a phrase that signifies a resistant relationship between two surfaces and the title of the exhibition suggests a playful interrogation of sex, penetration, and power. The works in the exhibition trouble notions of masculinity within queer dynamics as well as sexual desire. The SFAC Main Gallery is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.

To Do List: June

Jun 1, 2023 In: To Do List Tags: Alicia McCarthy, Amy Elkins, Eamon Ore-Giron, Gordon Parks, Isaac Julien, Jeffrey Gibson, Libby Black, Muzae Sesay, Rex Ray, SF Camerawork, Teresa Baker By: Kerri Hurtado, Curator

L: Isaac Julien “Black Madonna / New Negro Aesthetic” Inkjet print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag R: Jeffrey Gibson “I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOUR LOVE” Cold press watercolor paper, studio ephemera, archival pigment prints on cotton, acrylic paint, two vintage beaded panels, vintage beaded belt buckle, vintage silver charm, glass beads, nylon thread and muslin. Images courtesy of Jessica Silverman Gallery.

June 1 to July 22 – Isaac Julien: Once Again…(Statues Never Die) and Jeffrey Gibson: Once More with Feeling at Jessica Silverman Gallery: Isaac Julien’s exhibition is inspired by the historical relationship between Alain Locke, a Harlem Renaissance philosopher, and Albert C. Barnes, a philanthropist known for championing African material and visual culture. Jeffrey Gibson will premiere nine new collages, incorporating found objects and images, beadwork, and textiles into intricate arrangements. Drawing on his Cherokee and Choctaw heritage throughout his varied practice, Gibson has turned to collage as a medium towards both self-discovery and inquiry into consumption, empowerment, and non-Western modes of relating to one another. The artist collects offcuts, paper scraps, objects, and imagery and stores them over decades in his studio. He assembles these disparate items to create new works, relating forgotten materials to the fractured history of Native peoples. Jessica Silverman Gallery is located at 621 Grant Avenue in San Francisco.

L: Eamon Ore Giron “Infinite Regress CXV (study 1)” mineral paint and flashe on linen, C: Libby Black “Chanel” charcoal and paint on paper, R: Teresa Baker “Two” oil pastel on paper. Images courtesy of Anthony Meier Gallery.

June 1 to August 1 – What’s That About curated by Saif Azzuz at Anthony Meier Gallery: This group exhibition curated by artist Saif Azzuz includes Bay Area artists whose practices have intersected with Azzuz’s during his time in the region. As evidenced by its title, the exhibition pushes back—through a direct and somewhat humorous acknowledgement—against the all-too-common practice of asking artists to explain what their work is about. By foregrounding the work’s physical properties and eschewing its conceptualization, Azzuz invites a more personal approach to the works on view, prompting viewers through the very absence of an ideational conceit to look more closely, think more deeply, and directly engage with the materials, processes, and emotional effects that cohere in each piece. Anthony Meier Gallery is located at 21 Throckmorton Avenue in Mill Valley.

L: Rex Ray “Cyphellae” painted and cut paper on oil. R: Zuzana Licko “Intersecting Figure #33” jacquard weaving. Images courtesy of Gallery 16.

June 2 to July 22 – Rex Ray and Zuzana Licko at Gallery 16: In the early 1990s, the San Francisco Bay Area was the epicenter of computer-based design. These two artists helped shape the future while straddling the fields of fine art and graphic design. Zuzana Licko founded Emigre magazine with her husband, fellow typographer and graphic designer Rudy VanderLans, in 1984. Emigre set the standard for digital typography and design and led to the creation of the Emigre Fonts type foundry, which is credited for being the first digital type foundry. Rex Ray (1956-2015) began his career as a graphic designer but soon devoted his studio practice to the making of handmade fine art. Ray was a beloved San Francisco artist and designer and major cultural force in the Bay Area. He was recognized worldwide for his distinct compositions, saturated colors, and unapologetic devotion to beauty. Gallery 16 is located at 501 3rd Street in San Francisco.

Guests bid on artwork at a previous auction.

Tuesday, June 6, 6 to 10 pm – Headlands Center for the Arts Benefit Art Auction at Fort Mason Center: Headlands’ Annual Benefit Art Auction features work by emerging and established artists and Headlands Alumni as well as unique, only-at-Headlands experience packages. With a silent auction culminating in the live auction and gala on June 6, this fundraising event supports the big ideas and innovative work that Headlands makes possible. Purchase tickets to the event here.

Gordon Parks “Untitled, Harlem, New York” archival pigment print. Image courtesy of McEvoy Foundation for the Arts.

June 16 to September 2 – What Are Words Worth? at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts: This exhibition explores the expansive holdings of artworks in the McEvoy Family Collection that engage language, literature, and typography. The exhibition’s title, borrowed from lyrics in the Tom Tom Club’s 1981 song “Wordy Rappinghood,” references the poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Expanding upon this playful reference to poetry, the modern and contemporary photographs, paintings, and prints on view examine the many fascinating ways that words can stimulate imagination and creativity. McEvoy Foundation for the Arts is located at 1150 25th Street in San Francisco.

L: Alicia McCarthy “Untitled” acrylic and spray paint on panel. R: Muzae Sesay ”Rare Salmon” oil, oil pastel, vinyl emulsion, acrylic, and colored pencil on canvas. Images courtesy of Pt.2 Gallery.

June 24 to July 29 – Alicia McCarthy and Muzae Sesay at Pt.2 Gallery: Pt.2 Gallery is featuring two solo shows by Oakland based artists. Alicia McCarthy engages with the immediate world around her and uses a decidedly focused color palette on mixed-media panels. Sincere and intense but also playful, McCarthy transforms found wood surfaces into bursts, geometric blocks of color and woven patterns that are often emphasized by text and spray paint. Muzae Sesay’s artistic focus derives from a relentless commitment to understanding our collective relationship to space, memory, community, and the perceived truths within them. His current work connects with the feelings that arise from testing the absoluteness of the strict and rigid aspects of physics and pragmatism found in architecture, design, and our built environment. Utilizing skewed perspectives of space and shape collapsed into two-dimensional planes of color, he creates surreal geometric interiors, exteriors, landscapes, and structures—presenting a situation in which to be experienced and explored. Pt.2 Gallery is located at 1523b Webster Street in Oakland.

Amy Elkins “Mishopshno/Carpenteria, Coastal Bluffs” photograph. Image courtesy of SF Camerawork.

Ongoing to August 5 – Forecast 2023 at SF Camerawork: This is SF Camerawork’s annual survey exhibition. Each year SF Camerawork invites an esteemed jury of artists, curators and critics to select and showcase the work of emerging imagemakers, with an eye toward current movements, trends and concerns in contemporary photography. This year, Bay Area artists Ashima Yadava and Minoosh Zomorodinia have selected the work of Mary Campbell, Harvey Castro, Amy Elkins, Shao-Feng Hsu (Juror’s Choice Award), Kei Ito, and Helia Pouyanfar from over 180 entries from around the world. SF Camerawork is located at Fort Mason Center for Arts, 2 Marina Blvd, building A in San Francisco.

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Tag: Isaac Julien

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