Though I've driven past it on the freeway a million times until this weekend I'd never stopped in at the San Francisco Antique and Design Mall, but leave it to some clever curators to entice me inside for a visit. The Mall itself is an open showroom divided into spaces where antiques dealers can display and sell their wares, and the items for sale include everything from furniture to jewelry, scientific instruments to political memorabilia, paintings to porcelain. Most of the objects are concentrated into glass cases that are rented out individually to dealers, and curators Chris Fitzpatrick and Post Brothers have nabbed one of them (#SC13 to be exact) and turned it into a rotating art display. It is not hard to find SC13, and not just because Zarouhie Abdalian has filled a nearby crack in the floor with gleaming aluminum foil tape that seems to point right to it. In contrast to the packed cases around it SC13 literally glows, the few pieces in its interior arranged on glass shelves against a spare lacquered particle-board backdrop. And the artwork in there right now is wonderful. Emanuele Becheri's series of charred objects takes on added poignancy given the recent explosion in nearby San Bruno, while Gintaras Didžiapetris solidifies negative space in his metal sculpture of a violin's f-hole. The exhibition raises the question of what distinguishes the art in SC13 from the knick-knacks in the surrounding cases, as with the wine bottle Nicolas Boulard has carved with holes, Juozas Laivys's A traveling bird's nest (and the box said nest traveled in), an unsettling face mask by George Maciunas. Though completely surrounded by commerce the pieces in SC13 are not for sale, and only the didactic panel discreetly attached to an interior panel gives the casual viewer/shopper any clue what is going on. The show will be up until the end of the year with the artwork rotating every week or so, and I will be stopping by as often as I can to see how it evolves.
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