Holiday Season in San Francisco

November 14, 2017

In San Francisco this holiday season? LSS Art Advisory recommends these must-see gallery and museum exhibitions:

Untitled (2017) by Adam Fuss is featured in “Liquids: 1987-2017” on display at Fraenkel Gallery (Image courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery).

GALLERIES

Fraenkel Gallery
Spanning three decades of his career, Adam Fuss’s ninth solo-exhibition with Fraenkel Gallery, Liquids 1987–2017, explores the expressive potential of liquids in a variety of dynamic states. Made without a camera, Fuss’s photograms and daguerreotypes are distilled to the fundamental components of the medium: light, subject matter, and photo-sensitive paper or metal. Through varied photographs of glycerin drops, waterfalls, and snakes rippling along the surface of still water, Fuss magnifies the versatile and volatile nature of liquids when manipulated and when in motion.

John Chiara’s Cabrillo Highway At Pescadero Creek Road, Variation 1 (2017) is among the works included in “Lands End: California At Larkin” on view at Haines Gallery (Image courtesy of Haines Gallery).

Berggruen Gallery
A solo-exhibition of new works by Sam Messenger  features a selection of works on paper created throughout 2017, as well as paintings from 2014. Messenger’s recent works demonstrate the artist’s continuing engagement with intricate, geometric patterns that convey a sense of materiality and an illusion of depth through their interlacing, web-like designs.

Berggruen also presents an exhibition of new paintings by American artist Christopher Brown, entitled The Waters Sliding, which demonstrates Brown’s engagement with themes tied to history and memory.  A Selection of Color Prints from the 1980s and 90s, featuring works by Richard Diebenkorn is also on view at the gallery.

HR.24.17 (2017) by Sam Messenger is on display at Berggruen Gallery through December 23rd (Image courtesy of Berggruen Gallery).

Haines Gallery
Lands End: California at Larkin, a solo-exhibition by San Francisco-based photographer John Chiara, is now on view at Haines Gallery. Coinciding with the release of “John Chiara: California,” the first monographic publication dedicated to his work, Chiara’s third exhibition with the gallery continues his exploration of the Bay Area’s natural and manmade environments. In addition to his landscape works, the show features a series of cityscapes representing San Francisco’s urban landscape.

Barbara Vaughn’s PRIDE (2017) is among the works featured in her solo-exhibition “Unchartered Waters” presented by Dolby Chadwick Gallery (Image courtesy of Dolby Chadwick Gallery).

Other Notable Exhibitions:

Installation view of La Mère La Mer, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts inaugural exhibition at Minnesota Street Project (Image courtesy of McEvoy Foundation for the Arts).

MUSEUMS/ ART SPACES

McEvoy Foundation for the Arts 
McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, a nonprofit arts space located in the Minnesota Street Project, was established by the chief executive of Chronicle Books, Nion McEvoy, and opened to the public on October 28th. Highlighting the breadth of the McEvoy Family Collection, the inaugural exhibition La Mère La Mer, features works from the collection of Nion McEvoy and his late mother, Nan Tucker McEvoy. The show pays tribute to Nan McEvoy’s devoted, life-long interest in and support of California artists including Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, Ed Ruscha, and David Hockney, while showcasing Nion McEvoy’s interest in works by artists such as Anne Collier, Carsten Höller, Roe Ethridge, and Ragnar Kjartansson. 

Robert Rauschenberg’s Persimmon (1964) will be on view at SFMOMA November 18 20, 2017 – March 25, 2018 (Image courtesy of SFMOMA).

Legion of Honor  
Klimt and Rodin: An Artistic Encounter is on view at the Legion of Honor through January 28, 2018. The exhibition, which marks the centenary of Auguste Rodin’s death in 1917 and the death of Gustav Klimt in 1918, explores the relationship between the artists and their profound impact on the art world. Rodin, regarded as the “father of modern sculpture” and Klimt, a founding member of the Viennese Secession movement, both departed from conventional aesthetics to alter the course of art in the 20th century and beyond. 

 

SFMOMA 
New Work: Kerry Tribe, a two-channel video installation by the Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker, is on view at SFMOMA. The show, Tribe’s first solo-exhibition at a major U.S. museum, explores questions of empathy, communication and performance, offering insight into the work of Standardized Patients–professional actors who portray patients in a simulated clinical environment as part of medical students’ training. Developed through close collaboration with professionals at Stanford University and the University of Southern California, the installation builds upon her history of engaging individuals from the acting and medical communities and exploring the willing suspension of disbelief.

Also set to open this month at SFMOMA is Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules, a retrospective celebrating the artist’s continual experimentation with materials and collaborative working processes. Featuring more than 150 prints, sculptures, paintings, and Combines (works incorporating painting and sculpture), the exhibition demonstrates how Rauschenberg broke down boundaries between disciplines, anticipated many of the defining cultural and social issues of our time.

 

Additional Exhibitions: