News & Exhibitions / San Francisco

NEWS BY LOCATION

  • Awardee Spotlight: A Dialogue with Stephanie Syjuco

    4/3/18

    Stephanie Syjuco is a San Francisco-based conceptual artist and educator. Her work addresses political concerns regarding issues of labor and economies within a capitalist system. Upon her inclusion in Being: New Photography 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art, we asked the early Artadia Awardee to join us in a brief dialogue.

    Your series, Cargo Cults, one featured in MoMA’s New Photography, blends the language of the tools of image-making with the visuality and commodification of “ethnic” patterning. Can you speak more about what inspired this series and how these themes relate to your earlier projects and overall practice?

    My work has always dealt with capitalism, power relations, and cultural resistance and innovation within the edges of globalization and empire. These are tough topics, and are the result of my interest in directly addressing tough times. Sometimes this manifests in the production of intimately handmade and crafted objects, socially engaged workshops and site-specific collaborations, to digital technologies and 3D imaging.

    Cargo Cults grew out of a fascination with historical ethnographic photos from the Philippines, and the notion that these images were constructed and influenced by the dominant culture/colonizer that created them. As an American immigrant, I’ve had to myself construct an identity based on a collage of visuals and influences, each telling me what I am “supposed” to culturally be. The Cargo Cults images are a bit cheeky in that they appropriate garments and props from American shopping malls, restyling them to appear “native.” These levels of constructs are a large part of this series, and relate to other projects in which I highlight the confusion of boundaries of native and foreign, which shifts depending on perspective.

    More recently, I’ve been examining the condition and construction of what is popularly known as “American” by re-creating iconic garments from historically significant moments of American cultural conflict. These include: the Pilgrim (religious orthodoxy and the initial settling of this country), American Revolution (formation of an exclusionary nation under democratic ideals), Civil War (slavery and white supremacy), and American Prairie (Manifest Destiny and Westward expansion), among others. These are sewn out of green chroma-key fabric, a material that is used in video imaging technology to “drop out” or replace a background when filming a subject in a staged environment. This project highlights what is supposed to be “invisible” and places it in the foreground, re-visiting the narratives of American history and indicating that they may be as constructed and fictionalized as is our current mediated state of fake news and cultural nativism.

    What drew you to the Bay area? What makes you stay?

    I have been professionally based in the Bay Area almost my entire artistic career. Part of this was by circumstance, having immigrated to San Francisco as a young child from the Philippines and attending local schools and colleges. I did spend time in other cities at different points of my life but the Bay Area seemed to have the opportunities that could afford a young artist space and opportunity, not to mention a rich history of experimental art and artists. I lived in numerous artists warehouses and live/work spaces, and these supported me. Things have drastically changed since then, however, and I’m not sure this area is hospitable for artists anymore, due to rising housing costs, extreme gentrification, and the loss of affordable work space, which is incredibly unfortunate. I stay because I am invested in the cultural network that is still here, and am currently a Professor in Art Practice at UC Berkeley, a public university where I get to work with an incredibly talented and ambitious group of students who are not necessarily culturally represented in the larger art world.

    You received one of the first Artadia Awards in 1999, our founding year. What were you working on then? How has your practice evolved over nearly two decades since receiving the award?

    In 1999 I was definitely an emerging artist, having finished my BFA degree in Sculpture four years prior. I was working a full time job and juggling a studio practice, which is difficult when you’re just starting out in your career, and my artwork reflected these conditions in terms of scale and access to proper materials — the work was modest in size or made of things that were affordable for a young artist. Thematically, at the time I was addressing the constructed landscape and the definitions of “natural” and “artificial,” hand-making digital items and images. In the almost 20 years since receiving the Artadia Award, I’ve been lucky to have been able to create sizable installations and ambitious projects using resources and equipment not available to me earlier — laser cutters, digital printing, computer graphics, sculpture fabricators, a larger studio, and more. Earlier on I had also been focusing mostly on discrete gallery-oriented work, and as my interests changed and began to encompass working with networks and flows of capital as a thematic, I started working on socially-engaged projects that involved active public participation and larger institutional commissions. It feels like a progressive career growth and Artadia was a huge help in giving me a boost of confidence and support from the beginning.

     

    See more of Stephanie’s work on her Artadia Artist Registry page, and on her website.

     

    Images: Citizens, Installation view at RYAN LEE Gallery, 2017. Cargo Cults (Cover-Up), 2016. Neutral Calibration Studies (Ornament + Crime), 2016. Neutral Orchids (Phalaenopsis, small), 2016.

  • Art & Dialogue: San Francisco Public Program with Helen Molesworth

    2/14/18

    Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in conversation with Julia Bryan-Wilson, at The Lab on Saturday, November 11, 2017.

    Thank you to The Lab for hosting this event, and to Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of California, Berkeley, for moderating.

    Helen Molesworth is the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, where she recently curated the first US retrospective of the Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino and the monographic survey Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. From 2010–2014 she was the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston, where she assembled one person exhibitions of artists Steve Locke, Catherine Opie, Josiah McElheny, and Amy Sillman, and the group exhibitions Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, Dance/Draw, and This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. As head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum, she presented an exhibition of photographs by Moyra Davey and ACT UP NY: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis 1987–1993. From 2002–2007 she was the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, where she organized the first US retrospectives ofLouise Lawler and Luc Tuymans, as well as Part Object Part Sculpture, which examined the influence of Marcel Duchamp’s erotic objects. While Curator of Contemporary Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art from 2000–2002, she arranged Work Ethic, which traced the problem of artistic labor in post-1960s art. She is the author of numerous catalogue essays and her writing has appeared in publications such as Artforum, Art Journal, Documents, and October. The recipient of the 2011 Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Award for Curatorial Excellence, she is currently at work on an ambitious exhibition inspired by the American painter and film critic Manny Farber and his 1962 essay, “White Elephant vs. Termite Art.”

    The Lab believes that if we give artists enough time, space, and funding to realize their vision, the work they produce will change the way we experience the world and each other. These propositions challenge the familiar ways we perceive value, and so we seek out extraordinary artists who are underrepresented as a result of gender, class, race, sexuality, or geography, and whose work is not easily defined and therefore monetized. As a site of constant iteration and indeterminacy, The Lab is, above all, a catalyst for artistic experimentation. The Lab is a nonprofit arts space, founded in San Francisco in 1984.

  • Art & Dialogue: San Francisco Summary by Helen Molesworth

    1/17/18

    Letter from the Bay Area

    I recently spent two days shuttling around San Francisco and Oakland doing studio visits. Everyone always wants to know what an “outsiders” assessment of their local scene is, and this trip was no different. Many of the artists wanted to know if I thought what was happening in the bay area was different than what was happening in Los Angeles. I have to say I didn’t really experience a huge gap in regionality in this regard. I suspect the proximity of Northern and Southern California—despite their temperamental differences—and that old beast the internet has conspired to produce a field where there were far more similarities than differences. Sure, some LA studios are a lot larger than San Francisco ones, but many of the Bay Area studios I visited were in super cool buildings—old military barracks, or building and compounds that were artists owned and run for decades were the highlights—but like any day of studio visits anywhere, I often found myself on the outskirts of town, in newly gentrifying neighborhoods, in the basements of people’s homes and in odd mixed use spaces. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein the studio is the studio is the studio. And yes, they were all a bit damp and a little chilly.

    The mix of artists was quite diverse. Day one started immediately from the airport and showcased the Bay Area’s incredible range of art and artists. There were folks working in and expanding wildly the tradition of craft. Josh Faught is productively crossing the wires of gay history and an expansive weaving tradition, making text and fiber based pictorial works that are as witty as they are incisive. Ruth Laskey similarly uses a loom but she produces meticulous weavings that summon the 1960s minimalist challenges to painting. David Huffman’s painting studio in Oakland was filled with brightly colored canvases that explored the now almost century long dictionary of abstract painterly marks, infusing them with the long struggle for civil rights in the United States. Meanwhile Amy Franceschini shared her work as part of the design/urban planning/artist collective XXX XXX. Particularly cool was their co-opting of urban “junk space” for community driven gardens and spaces. Luckily for me I was staying in SF’s historic Japantown so I was able to fortify myself with a huge bowl of Ramen. Day two continued my adventures in the land of Uber and Lyft, as I ultimately wended my way to an amazing outcropping overlooking the bay to the studio of painter John Bankston, whose paintings play with the logic of childrens’s coloring books, fantasy stories, and the problems and pleasures of queer desire. It was also a day which proved that artists are often really historians at heart. Desiree Holman was exploring the bizarre history of eugenics and extraterrestrial abductions via video and performance. While Carrie Hott shared reams of research about the history of artificial light from whale oil to the lightbulb, knowledge she then deploys to make sculptures, installations, and small chap books style publications. My day ended with Sadie Barnette, whose delicate collages and drawings highlight the history of the Black Panther movement, particularly her own father’s role in the movement, and the effect of the movement on him. In the long Lyft ride back to SF, over the always beautiful Bay Bridge, I thought a lot about how dedicated artists have to be to both follow their curiosity and to confront the daunting space of the studio every day. I am always in awe of the profound levels of commitment artists have, on the one hand to explore their own psyche and interests, and on the other how hard they work to communicate what they know and have discovered to others.

    Thoughts of bravery and generosity followed me into my amazing meal at Rintaro. (I pretty much ate Japanese food for my entire stay.) On my last night UC Berkeley Art Historian Julia Bryan Wilson graciously agreed to interview me for a public talk held at The Lab in the Mission. Julia asked me a particularly tough question—one about the internal workings of museums in relation to the ongoing efforts so many of us are involved in to diversify our staffs, our collections, and our audiences. There was something about the vibe in the room, the engaged and cool feeling of the assembled audience, that prompted me to be a lot more honest and disclosive than I usually am. The transparency and honesty was rewarded by a really probing Q&A where the historical liberal, dare I say radical, history of the Bay Area was in full effect. In these hard times the room felt like a gathering of like-minded souls…a small reminder that art and church have often gone hand in hand, for both are, at their highest aspiration, about belief in and faith in the possibility of making the world better than when you found it.

    After that we did what artists have been doing for at least 150 years—we all trundled off to a bar to keep the conversation going…

    _________________________________________________________

    Helen Molesworth is the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, where she recently curated the first US retrospective of the Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino and the monographic survey Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. From 2010–2014 she was the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston, where she assembled one person exhibitions of artists Steve Locke, Catherine Opie, Josiah McElheny, and Amy Sillman, and the group exhibitions Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, Dance/Draw, and This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. As head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museum, she presented an exhibition of photographs by Moyra Davey and ACT UP NY: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis 1987–1993. From 2002–2007 she was the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, where she organized the first US retrospectives ofLouise Lawler and Luc Tuymans, as well as Part Object Part Sculpture, which examined the influence of Marcel Duchamp’s erotic objects. While Curator of Contemporary Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art from 2000–2002, she arranged Work Ethic, which traced the problem of artistic labor in post-1960s art. She is the author of numerous catalogue essays and her writing has appeared in publications such as Artforum, Art Journal, Documents, and October. The recipient of the 2011 Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Award for Curatorial Excellence, she is currently at work on an ambitious exhibition inspired by the American painter and film critic Manny Farber and his 1962 essay, “White Elephant vs. Termite Art.”

  • Announcing the 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awardees

    9/7/17

    Artadia is pleased to announce the Awardees for the 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awards: Sadie Barnette (James D. Phelan Awardee) and Carrie Hott. As the 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awardees, Barnette and Hott will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds as well as access to the ongoing benefits of the Artadia Awards program. Additionally, Artadia’s booth at UNTITLED, San Francisco 2018 will feature original artwork by the two Awardees. This is Artadia’s 10th Award cycle in San Francisco. The application for the Awards was open to any visual artist living in the Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo, for over two years, working in all media, and at any stage of their career.

    In the first round of jurying, Dena Beard, Director, The Lab; Sally Frater, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University; and artist Andrew Kuo, selected five Finalists: Simone Bailey, Sadie Barnette, Sofía Córdova, Carrie Hott, and Davina Semo. Rory Padeken, Associate Curator, San Jose Museum of Art, joined Beard for the second round of evaluations. The jurors conducted studio visits with the five Finalists to determine the Awardees.

    Padeken lauded the circumspect and personal practices of each Awardee: “Sadie Barnette and Carrie Hott find inspiration in the archive where they unearth hidden or invisible histories, resulting in multimedia projects and installations that explore systems of state and institutional power. They imbue their objects with social and political meaning to reveal the complex structures that permeate everyday life. In the case of Barnette, the political becomes personal as she reclaims her family’s history from the veiled world of government surveillance. For Hott, seemingly disparate ideas are linked through a formal layering of objects and processes, revealing the connective thread that binds her projects to a larger social world.”

    Beard declared: “I was deeply inspired by how Sadie Barnette and Carrie Hott’s practices create direct aesthetic conversations with the objects and people that are nearest to them, and they do this with a distinct formal acuity that compels us into new perceptual territory. Their work feels both generous and powerful.”

    Artadia is now holding Awards cycles in each one of its cities every year, allowing the organization to provide more consistent support to distinct arts communities across the United States.

    The 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awards are generously supported by The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Artadia San Francisco Council members, and Artadia’s Board of Directors. To honor the generous gift of The San Francisco Foundation, Sadie Barnette was named the James D. Phelan Awardee.

    Image details, left to right: Sadie Barnette, Untitled (Purple sky stars), 2017, archival pigment print with rhinestones, 13.5 x 16 3/4 inches; Carrie Hott, Summer Night Forever, 2017, wood, paint, lamps, lightbulbs, white noise machine, baby monitor, CD player, tape player, VCR, whale CDs, Joy Division mix tape, Titanic VHS tape, Nirvana CD, cables, abalone shell, dimensions variable.

  • Announcing the 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awards Finalists

    8/23/17

    Artadia is pleased to announce the five Finalists for the 2017 San Francisco Awards: Simone Bailey, Sadie Barnette, Sofía Córdova, Carrie Hott, and Davina Semo. The Finalists will receive studio visits with the second round jurors, who will ultimately select two artists as Awardees to receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds.

    The Finalists were selected by jurors Dena Beard, Director, The Lab; Sally Frater, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University; and artist Andrew Kuo.

    Beard, inspired by the process, described her impression of the artist community in San Francisco: “It was an honor to be able to see the extraordinary work produced in the Bay Area, and the quality and depth of engagement of our artists has made me more hopeful than I have been in a very long time. I am incredibly grateful that organizations like Artadia can consistently provide artists with necessary funds to be able to live and work in the Bay Area — it is no small task in these times, and the value of their work is immeasurable.”

    Frater discussed the strength of the Finalist group: “Although glad for the opportunity to review all of the submissions for the 2017 Artadia San Francisco deadline, I am particularly excited by the work of artists who have been shortlisted from this round. Working in a range of genres that span performance, painting, sculpture, and text-based practices, the artists selected by the jury collectively are​ producing work that emerges from a place of conceptual and formal dynamism, while engaging with issues that are of critical import at this moment. Their practices speak well to the work that is being made in the region.” She went on to mention the benefits of the process to participating curators: “I was also pleased to be able to go through the review process with peers based in other areas of the United States and to be able to participate in Artadia’s ongoing efforts to support the work of artists, at a time when the need for their perspectives and production is critical.”

    Kuo highlighted the quality and diversity of the applicant pool: “The scope and range of applicants for Artadia’s San Francisco award was considerable and inspiring. From the pool of painters, performers, sculptors, and multi-disciplinary artists from the Bay, we’ve selected five strong Finalists who represent the rigorous and investigative practice of making art.” He went on to describe his thoughts on each artist: “Simone Bailey’s presentation discusses the ideas of time and narratives that lie in emotion and mystery. Her videos and performances look to capture the uncertainty in her world. Sadie Barnette’s project that documents her father’s history as a Black Panther feels timely and personal. Her grasp of subject matter and the polish of her presentation stand out. Sofía Córdova’s ambitious videos and performances explore her thoughts on climate change and the science of the future. The works are large in scale, both physically and conceptually. Carrie Hott’s work creates multi-media installations in relation to specific spaces. The dexterity in her practice involves unique uses of light and a carefully crafted hand. Davina Semo’s elegant sculptures use industrial materials to create a sense of power, menace, and tension. Her ominous works are resolved and complex.”

    This is Artadia’s 10th Award cycle in San Francisco. The application was open to all visual artists living in the five Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo for over two years, working in any media, and at any stage of their career. Finalists and Artadia Award recipients are selected through Artadia’s rigorous, two-tier jury review process. In the first round of review, jurors evaluated the merit of all submissions and collaboratively determined the five Finalists.

    The 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awards are generously supported by The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Artadia San Francisco Council members, and Artadia’s Board of Directors.

    Image, clockwise from top left: Simone Bailey, The Highest (From Roma), 2016, black video still,01:15; Davina Semo, WE DON’T WIN ANYMORE, 2016, powder-coated steel chain, 8 x 8 feet; Sadie Barnette, Untitled (Purple sky stars), 2017, archival pigment print with rhinestones, 13.5 x 16 3/4 inches; Carrie Hott, Summer Night Forever, 2017, wood, paint, lamps, lightbulbs, white noise machine, baby monitor, CD player, tape player, VCR, whale CDs, Joy Division mix tape, Titanic VHS tape, Nirvana CD, cables, abalone shell, dimensions variable; Sofía Córdova, Still from Echoes of A Tumbling Throne (Odas al fin de los tiempos) #7: Las Saturnales, 2015, video and original sound composition.

  • Application Now Open for the 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awards

    7/4/17

    The San Francisco Artadia Awards are open to all visual artists living and working throughout the five Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo. Individual artists and collaboratives working in all media, and at any stage in their career are strongly encouraged to apply. Artadia Awardees are selected through a two-tier jury process that combines local expertise with outside perspective from leading curators and one artist. A preliminary panel will evaluate all online submissions and select five Finalists in August. A second panel will conduct studio visits with each Finalist, gaining a broader context for the artists’ work. Two Awardees will be selected from the Finalist pool to receive unrestricted Artadia Awards of $10,000.

    The San Francisco Artadia Awards are:
    – Open to anyone living in the Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo
    – Free of application fees and project outline requirements
    – Merit-based
    – Unrestricted

    Apply if you:
    – Have lived in one of the five Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo for at least two years
    – Are not currently enrolled in an art-related degree program
    – Would like to have your work seen by a panel of prominent curators

    Application due
    August 1, 2017
    11:59 pm PDT

    Apply Here

    The 2017 San Francisco Artadia Awards are generously supported by The Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Artadia San Francisco Council members, and Artadia’s Board of Directors.

  • UNTITLED, San Francisco

    1/10/17

    Artadia will present work by 22 Artadia Awardees at the inaugural UNTITLED, San Francisco art fair, January 12 – 15, booth C13. Additionally, limited editions by Joseph Havel (2004 Houston) and Richard T. Walker (2009 San Francisco) will debut at the fair.

  • Art & Dialogue: San Francisco Public Program with Peter Eleey

    12/8/16

    Presented as part of Artadia’s Art & Dialogue series, Peter Eleey, Curator, MoMA PS1, gave a talk at The Lab in San Francisco on November 3, 2016.

    Peter Eleey currently serves as Curator and Associate Director of Exhibitions and Programs at MoMA PS1. Since joining MoMA PS1 as its Curator in 2010, Eleey has organized 20 exhibitions at the museum, including premiere presentations of Ed Atkins, Darren Bader, and Matt Connors, as well as acclaimed surveys of Huma Bhabha, James Lee Byars, Lara Favaretto, George Kuchar, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, and Maria Lassoing. From 2007 through 2010, Eleey was a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where he organized exhibitions with Trisha Brown and Goshka Macuga. Before joining the Walker, he was a Curator and Producer at Creative Time, New York from 2002 to 2007, where he organized a wide range of multidisciplinary projects and events.

    The Lab is a catalyst for artistic experimentation. Our projects ignite critical dialogue amongst individuals, organizations, and communities. We support diverse and underserved artists, providing them with essential resources, time, and space to develop work that takes risks and pushes the boundaries of the non-profit platform. As a site of constant innovation and iteration, our programming exposes the elements of art making and transforms the creative process here and abroad.

    We are W.A.G.E. Certified. W.A.G.E. Certification is a program initiated and operated by working artists that publicly recognizes non-profit arts organizations demonstrating a commitment to voluntarily paying artist fees that meet a minimum standard.

     

  • Announcing the 2016 San Francisco Awardees

    9/16/16

    Artadia is pleased to announce the Awardees for the 2016 San Francisco Artadia Awards: Josh Faught and Ruth Laskey (James D. Phelan Awardee). The 2016 San Francisco Artadia Awardees will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds as well as access to the ongoing benefits of the Artadia Awards program. The Awardees are also eligible for the inaugural National Artadia Award to be presented at the end of 2016. This is Artadia’s ninth year providing unrestricted Awards to artists in San Francisco. Applications for the Awards were open to any visual artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo, for over two years, working in all media and at any stage of their career.

    In the first round of evaluations, Jenny Gheith, Assistant Curator of Sculpture and Painting, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Brian Sholis, Curator of Photography, Cincinnati Art Museum selected five finalists from 490 submissions. Ceci Moss, Independent Curator, San Francisco, CA, joined Gheith for the second round of evaluations. The jurors conducted studio visits with each of the five finalists to determine the Awardees.

    Gheith observed that Faught and Laskey are part of an important arts tradition in San Francisco, stating: “For a place like San Francisco that has a rich history in craft and textiles, it’s perhaps not surprising that both Artadia awardees use a loom, albeit for very different purposes and results.” She noted the unique ways in which Faught engages with the medium: “Josh Faught’s work is steeped in the histories of the medium and represents a space for urgent self-expression and political agency. The seriousness by which he address both banal sentiment and collective calls to action is remarkable, and so very much his own.” Moss elaborated on the materials and themes present in Faught’s work: “Josh Faught is a singular artist, whose work isn’t easily catergorizable. Combing handmade textiles, archival research, pop cultural detritus, and sculptural concerns, he addresses how language establishes community and connection. Attentive to the importance of signal and disguise in queer history, his quirky, clever and impressive tapestries play with what we know, or assume we know.”

    Gheith and Moss cited the influence of painting on Laskey’s process. Moss said of the artist: “I would classify Ruth Laskey as a painter by other means. During our visit, I was struck by her methodical approach to her practice, and particularly how she’s developed her unique process over time, which involves weaving hand dyed thread on a loom to create graphic forms. Her composition process is meticulous, from diagrammed sketches to the final cut cloth. From our conversation, it sounds like she’s contemplating a move to more complex forms and I look forward to seeing her next stage.” Gheith echoed this sentiment, stating: “For Laskey, who approaches weaving as a painter, it has allowed her to integrate both the figure and ground, support and composition, into one seamless structure. It was terrific to see the complexity by which she embeds geometric forms through a distinctive use of the twill weave. The possibilities for her are endless.”

    Artadia’s Awards and cultural programs in San Francisco are made possible with the support of the San Francisco Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Artadia’s Board of Directors, Council members, and many generous individuals throughout the United States. To honor the generous gift of the San Francisco Foundation Ruth Laskey was named James D. Phelan Awardee.

    Image: Left to right: Josh Faught, Attachments, 2016; Ruth Laskey, Twill Series (Wasabi/Wedgewood Blue), 2016

  • Above Accents Across: An Exhibition of Bay Area Awardees at Minnesota Street Project

    8/29/16

    Above Accents Across
    An Exhibition of San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Awardees
    Curated by Juana Berrío and Kelly Huang

    Opening Reception: September 10, 2016 from 4:00 – 6:00pm
    Exhibition Dates: September 10 – 24, 2016

    Minnesota Street Project
    The Atrium, Gallery 200 and 201
    1275 Minnesota Street
    San Francisco, CA 94107

    This exhibition serves foremost as a celebration of the history of Artadia in San Francisco. The ten artists whose works are included—John Bankston, Rebeca Bollinger, Castaneda/Reiman, Enrique Chagoya, Desirée Holman, Guy Overfelt, Brion Nuda Rosch, Sergio De La Torre, and Richard T. Walker—are all Artadia San Francisco Awardees who still live and work in the Bay Area. The exhibition spans three spaces at Minnesota Street Project: Galleries 200, 201, and the Atrium. Artist Desirée Holman’s closing event will take place on Saturday, September 24.

    San Francisco has always been a major center for social, cultural and economic change. At the time when Artadia was founded (1997) and began giving awards (1999), San Francisco was just going through the first dot com boom and bust. Many artists were getting pushed out of the city because of the high costs of living. The Artadia Award gave many artists the chance to continue their practice, and continues to do so today. As we are experiencing another moment in the Bay Area where the tech industry is booming and changing both the socio-cultural fabric and the economic realities in the city, artists are once again affected by and responding to what is happening around them.

    The artists in this exhibition are particularly interested in investigating, appropriating, and in some cases challenging, historical truths by emphasizing personal narratives.  As a result, their works present a distorted reality where the real fuses with the unreal, and where absence plays as important of a role as presence.

    In the Atrium, Brion Nuda Rosch (2009 San Francisco) presents a series of newly commissioned sculptures composed of several layers of found materials that suggest the presence of abstract body-like forms and a variety of art historical references.

    Distributed throughout the exhibition spaces are four small paintings by Guy Overfelt (2001 San Francisco). Interested in having an element from American underground culture reproduced in a context far removed from it, the artist hired craftsmen in China to make painted reproductions of four flyers from punk concerts in the 1980s.

    Rebeca Bollinger (2001 San Francisco) presents a series of photographs that depict an unusual grouping of belongings of a relative who suffers from Alzheimer’s, combined with other images that depict an equally disorienting mixture of appropriated imagery and fragments of her ceramic works, which are also present in the show. Finally, a video from 1994 presents a scrolling list of the 644 keywords that CompuServe related to the images included in an early online photography forum. This exhibition borrows the first three words that appear on the list as its title: above accents across.

    Richard T. Walker’s (2009 San Francisco) neon sculptures interweave sound into landscape, and vice-versa, recalling fragments of personal memories and desires. The juxtaposition of bright fragile neon lights with rocks, large glass panes, and the sound of a single sharp note creates both a constant balance and tension.

    The duo castaneda/reiman (1999 San Francisco) present commissioned sculptural interventions responding to two of the gallery spaces at Minnesota Street Projects. Bringing together digitally printed imagery with construction materials, their new sculptures suggest the story of a space that either existed in the past or might exist in the future.

    By appropriating Goya’s Caprichos series, Enrique Chagoya (2005 San Francisco) revisits the socio-political metaphors represented in these prints from the late 18th Century, altering subtle elements to highlight how these images are still relevant today as the human experience transcends through history.

    John Bankston’s (2001 San Francisco) work gravitates around the episodes of the life of Mister M, a Black male character the artist invented. Using the aesthetics of coloring books, the artist created an ongoing visual novel that begins when Mr. M is captured and taken to the “Rainbow Forest.” Each of his drawings and paintings presents one of the many encounters Mr. M. has while making his way through this new world.

    Sergio De La Torre’s (2007 San Francisco) new video work, shot on a desolate Italian beach, shows a line of bollards made of overturned sand buckets. This absurd gesture creates a symbolic barrier that prevents access from land to water and water to land, but is ultimately an effort that can only be ephemeral. Created in collaboration with Barbara Chiloiro and Pancrazio De Padova.

    As a closing event, Desirée Holman (2007 San Francisco) will be in conversation with Li Rao Wright, her Mandarin tutor, with whom she will be discussing (in Mandarin and in English) the particularities they both encounter when trying to communicate, and all that is transformed or lost in translation.

    ChickenWithDuckSpeaking

    샷谿羈쉿：Chicken with Duck Speaking
    A Tutoring Session
    Desirée Holman and Li Rao Wright

    Saturday, September 24, 2016, 4:00pm

    I am a middle-aged American with an English mother tongue with no other fluent language knowledge. Two years and a half years ago, I began to avidly learn Mandarin Chinese.

    Li Rao has been my Mandarin language tutor for around two years. We meet weekly to converse in Mandarin for an hour. By sharing one of our weekly meetings in the gallery, our session allows viewers a glimpse into our shared process.

    샷谿羈쉿：Chicken with Duck Speaking explores the experiential space of language acquisition in the literal and metaphorical transition between fluent English and learned Mandarin. “Third Place” (Kramsch 1993) in language learning refers to the construction of a new hybrid space between the source language and the target language. As students become a more integral part of their target language learning community, they start talking within (and not only about) the practice they are involved in.

    My work at large continues to be engaged with the states of change, mutability and flexibility of identity as expressed internally and externally, and the domain of language in this exercise of world-building and self-construction is a natural extension of these inquiries. Thematically, in making this work, I seek to explore the process of de-centering or, simply stated, taking a step back from the learner’s beliefs and thoughts to engage with another cultural framework, and to ultimately occupy the “third place”. This process ultimately allows questions about one’s own culturally-determined assumptions and about the the society in which one lives.

    The Curators

    Juana Berrío is an independent curator and writer based in San Francisco. She co-founded and directed Kiria Koula, a contemporary art gallery and bookstore that was located in The Mission District in San Francisco. She has worked as an Education Fellow at the New Museum in New York (2012) and at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2010-2011), and served as a curatorial assistant for Massimiliano Gioni (2013 Venice Biennale). As an independent curator and writer, she has been a contributor for Frog magazine, Bielefelder Kunstverein, SFMOMA’s Open Space, Kadist Foundation (Paris), and Look Lateral, among others. She is currently working as the San Francisco Head of Local Programming and Development for Untitled SF, 2017.

    Kelly Huang joined Zlot Buell + Associates as an Art Advisor in 2009. She works directly with private and public clients in all aspects of their collecting needs—from advising on purchases to handling museum loans and overseeing installations. Previously, Kelly worked as a Curatorial Assistant at The Renaissance Society, Visiting Gallery Manager for Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and as Photo Editor for The Atlantic magazine. She is a co-founder of Artadia’s San Francisco Council. She has also been a regular columnist for Art21 Magazine.

    Minnesota Street Project

    Located in San Francisco’s historic Dogpatch district, Minnesota Street Project offers affordable and economically sustainable spaces for art galleries, artists and related nonprofits. Inhabiting three warehouses, the Project seeks to retain and strengthen San Francisco’s contemporary art community in the short term, while developing an internationally recognized arts destination in the long term.

    Founded by entrepreneurs and collectors Deborah and Andy Rappaport, Minnesota Street Project was inspired by the couple’s belief that philanthropic support for the arts today requires an alternate model—one suited to the innovative nature of Silicon Valley and the region as a whole.

    Their vision of a dynamic, self-sustaining enterprise that shares its economic success with arts businesses and professionals aims to encourage heightened support for the arts from newcomer and established patrons alike.

    Support

    Artadia’s programs in San Francisco are made possible by The Fleishhacker Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, IfOnly, Artadia’s dedicated Board of Directors, Council members, and many generous individuals throughout the country.

  • Announcing the 2016 San Francisco Artadia Awards Finalists

    8/23/16

    ARTADIA ANNOUNCES FIVE FINALISTS FOR 2016 SAN FRANCISCO AWARDS AND AWARDEE EXHIBITION AT MINNESOTA STREET PROJECT

    New York, NY – Artadia is pleased to announce the five Finalists for the 2016 San Francisco Artadia Awards: Simone Bailey, Josh Faught, Ruth Laskey, Mitzi Pederson, and Will Rogan. The Finalists were selected by jurors Jenny Gheith, Assistant Curator of Sculpture and Painting, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Lauren Haynes, Associate Curator, Permanent Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Brian Sholis, Curator of Photography, Cincinnati Art Museum, following a review of 490 applicants in early August.

    The applicant pool represented the impressive breadth and diversity of San Francisco’s artist community. Jenny Gheith observed: “There was an overwhelming number of applications which speaks to the intense need for support for visual artists in the Bay Area. The perspectives that my fellow jurors offered helped me reflect on the artistic community here and the diverse range of voices. I look forward to our conversations with the Finalists next month.” Lauren Haynes reflected on Artadia’s process and the selected Finalists, stating: “I really enjoyed getting to know the work of some of the fantastic artists living and working in San Francisco. I think the Finalists represent an amazing cross-section of contemporary artistic practice.”

    Brian Sholis highlighted the unique opportunity that Artadia’s open-application provides curators and applicants. He remarked: “In my day-to-day work as a curator, it can be easy to forget how many talented artists working in so many media exist in a given community. I knew that many talented artists live and work in the Bay Area — the Artadia applications showed just me how much exciting activity takes place in San Francisco.”

    This is Artadia’s ninth time presenting curator-driven, unrestricted Awards to Bay Area artists since the organization’s founding in San Francisco. Applications for the 2016 San Francisco Artadia Awards were open to all visual artists living in the Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties) for over two years, working in any media and at any stage of their career. Finalists and Artadia Award recipients are selected through Artadia’s rigorous, curator-driven jury review process. In the first round of review, jurors evaluated the merit of all submissions and collaboratively determined the five Finalists.

    Jenny Gheith will be joined by Ceci Moss, Independent Curator, to conduct studio visits with the Finalists and select two 2016 San Francisco Artadia Awardees in September. Each artist will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds and access to the lifetime benefits of the Artadia Awards program.

    Artadia’s announcement of the 2016 San Francisco Awardees will coincide with the organization’s exhibition, Above Accents Across, at Minnesota Street Project. Organized by Juana Berrío, Independent Curator, and Kelly Huang, Art Advisor at Zlot Buell + Associates, Above Accents Across will feature work by ten artists from Artadia’s network of 73 Awardees living and working in the Bay Area. The exhibition will be on view from September 10 – 24, 2016, and provides a timely opportunity to consider the importance of visual artists to San Francisco.

    Artadia’s programs in San Francisco are made possible by The Fleishhacker Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Artadia’s dedicated Board of Directors, Council members, and many generous individuals throughout the country.

    Image details, clockwise from top left: Simone Bailey, Will Rogan, Ruth Laskey, Mitzi Pederson, Josh Faught.

  • Art & Dialogue: San Francisco Public Program Hamza Walker at The Lab

    8/31/15

    Hamza Walker at The Lab, San Francisco, August 13, 2015

    Hamza Walker, Curator at Renaissance Society and co-curator of Made in L.A. 2016, presented a free public program at The Lab for Art & Dialogue: San Francisco. See a video of the full conversation above, courtesy of The Lab.

    Hamza Walker is the Director of Education and Associate Curator for the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Recent exhibitions at the Renaissance Society include “Teen Paranormal Romance” (2014), “Suicide Narcissus” (2013), and John Neff (2013). His important 2008 Renaissance Society exhibition, “Black Is, Black Ain’t,” explored a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a moment where racial identity was being simultaneously rejected and retained. Walker is the recipient of the 1999 Norton Curatorial Grant and the 2004 Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement, presented by the Menil Collection. In 2010 he was awarded the Ordway Prize; awarded by the New Museum and named for the naturalist, philanthropist, and arts patron Katherine Ordway. He has recently been announced as curator of the Hammer Museum’s forthcoming biennial, “Made in L.A. 2016.” Walker has contributed reviews and art criticism to New Art Examiner, Art Muscle, Dialogue, Parkett, and Artforum, in addition to numerous catalogue essays on artists ranging from Giovanni Anselmo and Darren Almond to Thomas Hirschhorn and Heimo Zobering. Prior to his work at the Renaissance Society, Walker was the Public Art Coordinator for the City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs.

  • Congratulations to the 2013 San Francisco Awardees

    5/1/13

    The two recipients of the $15,000 awards are: D-L Alvarez (James D. Phelan Awardee) and Lucy Raven (Supported by the Wattis Foundation). The two recipients of the $3,000 awards are: Liam Everett (San Francisco Council Awardee) and Alicia McCarthy.

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  • Exhibition Exchange: SFAI

    7/15/11

    East Meets West: 2009 Boston Artadia Awardees opens at SFAI on July 14 San Francisco, CA: A group exhibition of the Artadia Awardees 2009 Boston, curated by Mary Ellyn Johnson. The show is on view from July 15–September 10, 2011 in the Walter and McBean Galleries on SFAI’s 800 Chestnut Street campus. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 14 from 5:30­–7:30 p.m.

    East Meets West brings together the seven Boston-based artists who received the 2009 Artadia Award: Claire Beckett, Ambreen Butt, Caleb Cole, Raul Gonzalez, Eric Gottesman, Amie Siegel, and Joe Zane. The show is part of the Artadia Exhibitions Exchange program, a groundbreaking initiative from the nonprofit organization Artadia to foster dialogue and exchange between artists, peer organizations, and arts communities around the country. By exhibiting awardees from one Artadia city in another—current partner cities are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, and the San Francisco Bay Area—the program provides vital exposure for Artadia Awardees, promotes partner communities as cultural hubs, and opens new avenues for curatorial enrichment. The series of five shows in 2010–2011 includes an exhibition of Artadia Awardees 2009 San Francisco Bay Area at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center from July 15–September 18, 2011.

    East Meets West falls within the New Voices section of SFAI’s Exhibitions and Public Programs department structure. The New Voices initiative and Arcadia share the goal of encouraging young curators, artists, and activists by providing them with spaces and strategies to present their projects. Additionally, the Walter and McBean Galleries strive to present work by compelling artists who may be as-yet-unknown to local audiences.

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