Engineer's Daughter

notes from the weekend

• I took myself on an SF art tour on Saturday that started at SFMOMA with Janet Cardiff's 2023 reworking of her immersive video walk The Telephone Call, which I first experienced at the museum in 2001 and remains one of my favorite artworks of all time. I was also there to see the Anna Sew Hoy exhibit after following her work for years, and it is maximalist in the best possible way.
• After my traditional downtown lunch of a veggie Reuben at Wise Sons, I plunged into the delightfully demented mind of Mika Rottenberg at the CJM, where the entire second floor is devoted to her installations and video work. Annie Albagli also has a beautiful installation on the main floor featuring Headlands footage used to great effect.
• While I was in the neighborhood I peeked in on Ramekon O'Arwisters's show at MoAD, in which recent sculptures are paired with some of his black-and-white photography. The work he's been doing since pandemic has really been exploding his own boundaries, and it's wonderful to see.
• Then I was off to Fort Mason for an exhibit about the SF Opera in honor of its 100th season at the Museo Italo Americano, which relates the opera company's history through the lens of the city's Italian immigrants and includes a wealth of fascinating details. Don't miss the QR codes that allow for a multimedia experience in the galleries too.
• Next door at Haines their current Elemental show features the work of four West Coast photographers who use a variety of unusual techniques to create their images and who actively engage with nature and landscape. Meghann Riepenhoff's dynamic cyanotypes really grabbed me in particular, swirling abstractions created by letting her materials directly interact with the environment.
• Last but definitely not least: I loved SF Camerawork's annual juried exhibition Forecast 2023 and especially the series of prints by Shao-Feng Hsu who somehow photographed his own breath underwater as it floated up to the surface, while swimming at night. I'm still thinking about those photos.

image gardeners

Through April 30 - Image Gardeners at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts

This group show of portrait photography by women and non-binary artists is full of gems. Alongside familiar pieces by the likes of Nan Goldin, Francesca Woodman, and Lynn Hershman Leeson the Foundation also commissioned Bay Area photographers Marcel Pardo Ariza, Carolyn Drake (pictured above), and Chanell Stone to create new work for the exhibition. As the title implies these are creators who employ photography as a generative practice, not offering bodies for consumption as in Susan Sontag's famous quote about photography as a "voracious way of seeing" but instead as a means of connection and documentation. Gina Basso has also curated the short film program seen only, heard only through someone else’s description to run concurrently that takes its title from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and further expands the conversation about presentation of identity.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Movement of Things by Manuela Serra. This lyrical 1985 documentary is a time capsule of everyday life in a rural Portuguese village where the older women perform the rituals of farming, cooking, and cleaning, while a young woman goes off to work in a factory.
• Parallel Mothers by Pedro Almodóvar. It is always such a pleasure to spend a couple hours in the worlds Almodóvar creates, and Penélope Cruz is at the height of her powers here as a single mom who befriends another in the birthing suite.
• Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades. Brilliantly written in a collective voice that nevertheless allows for a vast multiplicity of lived experience, this novel follows a group of young first-generation women from the "dregs of Queens" as they come of age and find their way out into our current version of the world.
• New Conservatory Theatre Centre's Gently Down the Stream was the perfect production to stream on V Day, with Donald Currie particularly affecting as older gentleman Beau recollecting his life to his (much) younger lover Rufus.
• And later in the week I chose another sweet romance to watch at home in the form of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. That last scene gets me every time.

the violets in the mountains have broken the rocks, part two

Edited to add: The show has been extended through the end of June! Go see it!

Through June 12 - The Violets in the Mountains Have Broken the Rocks, Part Two at Gallery 16

I'm so glad I got to see this group show before it closed, especially because it's looking like Gallery 16 won't be much longer in the SOMA space where I've attended so many exhibitions and performances. But while they're still there, they're going to keep putting on great shows. With a loose theme of resilience some of the artworks speak directly to the pandemic, as with Tucker Nichols's incredible free-associative wall installation, while in other cases it's just interesting to see what artists were able to create in the last year. Cliff Hengst's series of intimate watercolors are real beauties, and they seemed to be having a conversation with Wayne Smith's ink-on-hardwood sculptures from across the room. Basically this exhibition felt like a wonderful conversational gathering with old friends and new. While I was in the city I also had a lovely bayside bento from Delica in the Ferry Building and took in the gorgeous Diane Arbus show at Fraenkel Gallery curated by Carrie Mae Weems. Just a fantastic day all around.

Other things I liked this week:

• Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization by Joe Scarborough. With a title (and an author) like that I was of course reading this book with a fairly critical eye, but though Scarborough is no historian this is an absorbing account of a part of American history I knew little about. I just could have done without the partisan potshots, and the alarming amount of typos.
• I thought Marin Theatre Company did an excellent job with Denmo Ibrahim's online play Brilliant Mind, a mix of live Zoom and pre-taped scenes and with the added fun of receiving texts during the action from one of the characters. I just really miss seeing Ibrahim onstage in front of me.
• SF DocFest is doing a few screenings at the Roxie this year but the whole thing is also virtual, so I chose to watch Keeper of the Fire about local poet and activist Alejandro Murguia from the comfort of my kitchen table. This is one of those festivals where every film is a gem.
• In one of the more brilliant pandemic adaptations, Robert Moses' KIN are currently rehearsing and performing a new piece called The Vital Heart of S.F. behind the windows of the old Gap store on Market for passers-by to observe at their leisure. I caught just a snippet of the dancers at work and it was divine.
• The Wattis just launched a new book called Why are they so afraid of the lotus? and to celebrate the occasion Astria Suparak gave a Zoom talk called Asian Futures, without Asians that was absolute fire.
• I caught another incredible performance from the ODC Theater Festival, this time Unheard: Deaf Refugees in America by Antoine Hunter (Purple Fire Crow).
• Until I can see them again in person, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater program from Cal Performances At Home was completely transcendent.
• And Tanya Diamond and Ahiga Snyder of Pathways for Wildlife taught me a ton about wildlife tracking in the first part of a virtual program presented by Peninsula Open Space Trust. Watch their presentation on YouTube and get ready for part two on July 9.

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. I took a lovely mini road trip to Pescadero last week: Stayed at the Pescadero Creek Inn, had a picnic lunch at Arcangeli Grocery, poked around the Pigeon Point Light Station, dined at Duarte's, coffeed up at Downtown Local, visited the goats at Harley Farms. The perfect fall getaway.
2. The book I took along with me was a slim volume of Vasko Popa's potent poems, translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Charles Simic. It's hard to beat sitting in the sun by the sea and reading poetry rich with folkloric and surrealist imagery.
3. Terry Fox: Resonance is a major retrospective of the artist's work, curated by Dena Beard and Constance Lewallen, taking place right now across multiple venues around the Bay Area. It all kicked off last Friday at Grace Cathedral with Fox's 1977 piece The Labyrinth Scored for the Purrs of 11 Different Cats, and visitors were indeed invited to walk the labyrinth while the kitties rumbled away. I found a spot on the outskirts and just sank into the sound.
4. I also recommend the group show currently at the Mills College Art Museum, In Plain Sight, curated by Daniel Nevers and featuring work by Weston Teruya, Dario Robleto, castaneda/reiman, and Kathryn Andrews. The artists in the show encourage you to question your own perceptions and look more closely, mainly through objects constructed from a whole variety of materials.
5. I was chilled to the bone watching Alison Klayman's 2019 documentary The Brink, in which she closely follows (and interacts with) Steve Bannon in the time after he leaves the White House. That man is clearly evil embodied, as he stokes hate amongst Americans and meets with far-right leaders in Europe, but you also see the innate charm that makes him so dangerous.
6. Meanwhile thanks to the Criterion Channel I spent a wild week with the films of Lina Wertmüller, the first woman nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Honestly they contain way too much coercive sex/outright rape for me, but are still well worth a look if only to watch stellar actors (and regulars in her films) Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini do their thing. I'm not the first person to notice that the excellent fights in her films are actually better than the sex.
7. Photographer Jonathan Calm was at CCA Wednesday evening to give the Larry Sultan Photography Award lecture (he's also currently a resident at Headlands), and I'm fascinated by his ongoing project in which he is documenting the current state of sites listed in the Green Book. It's an epic undertaking, and as a black man traveling through the America of today he's finding all sorts of resonances with the past.
8. And a quick plug for two great new local businesses: Darling Electric Salon, where my stylist (and good friend) Lindsay will expertly minister to your coif, and Mela Bistro, where you should order the vegetarian platter.

public matters

Janet Delaney

Through December 22 - Janet Delaney: Public Matters at Euqinom Gallery. Back when I moved to San Francisco in 1997 the Mission was my stomping-ground, full of scrappy storefront galleries and bookshops, independent performance spaces and theaters, local bars and restaurants (I still miss you, Ti Couz!). Today gentrification has completely changed the tone of the neighborhood, though the old Mission is still there if you know where to look, and if you avoid the hipster takeover that is Valencia Street. Or transport yourself to mid-80s San Francisco with this exhibition of Janet Delaney's extraordinary street photographs, and remember a time when Reagan was president but the Bay Area remained an oasis of radical thought and action. Delaney celebrates the city's diversity in her images of marches and weekend celebrations, capturing the faces at SF's first MLK parade or a couple cruising down 24th Street. The photographs serve as a fascinating time capsule, but also link us to our present-day struggles and joys. The Euqinom show coincides with the publication of a monograph of Delaney's photographs by Mack Books, and in a deft move the gallery has copy out for visitors to write in as a kind of guest book, with an invitation for anyone to add commentary or their own memories. Delaney will be at the gallery in person on Thursday, November 29, for an artist lecture and signing, and also don't miss a "La Mission" poetry reading with Tongo Eisen-Martin, Cathy Arellano, Valentina Lopez Cortes, and Josiah Luis Alderete on Saturday, December 1. 

the radical camera

Sol Prom

Walter Rosenblum

Marvin E. Newman

Through January 21 - The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951 at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.  I can't remember ever having heard of the Photo League before this show, but it's quite an introduction to the influential group.  These were photographers that pushed street photography from strict documentary into something more ethereal, into art.  Weegee was perhaps their most famous member, but photography fans will recognize a number of other names besides like Aaron Siskind, Consuelo Kanaga, Berenice Abbott, and Lisette Model, who explained her photographic philosophy: 

The thing that shocks me and which I really try to change is the lukewarmness, the indifference, the kind of taking pictures that really doesn't matter...

I was impressed at how many women were in the League and how fearless they were about capturing their subject matter.  I was also quite moved by the story of one of the League's founders, Sid Grossman, and how after the League was forced to shut down when it was declared a Communist front during the Red Scare he never quite recovered.  He retired to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to take pictures of gulls.  But oh what pictures of gulls.  The show closes with a poignant quote from Grossman:

A photograph is as personal as a name, a fingerprint, a kiss.  It concerns me intimately and passionately.

See also:

• Contemporary Jewish Museum
• Redeeming a Life in Photography

lightning appears for a clear sky

Thobias Fäldt and Klara Källström

Thobias Fäldt and Klara Källström

Thobias Fäldt and Klara Källström

Through September 7 - Thobias Fäldt and Klara Källström: Lightning Appears For a Clear Sky at The Popular Workshop.  Swedish duo Fäldt and Källström transcend your average hipster photography by allowing elements of the fantastical and the squalid and sometimes even the outright grotesque to coexist in their work.  Their use of color is intense, reminiscent of the saturated hues of William Eggleston, and their keen eye for composition and light reshapes an otherwise banal still life of an old television perched atop stacked suitcases or a tree arched across a pathway.  Fäldt and Källström fluidly move from the realms of art photography and book publishing into fashion and editorial work as well.  I was particularly drawn to the back room of the gallery, which contains a series of images from when they found themselves near where Julian Assange was under house arrest.  Instead of taking pictures of the man himself they captured photos of his personal belongings and of the media spectacle outside the house, brilliantly avoiding making the man into any more of a messianic figure than he already is to his devotees even as his possessions take on added significance once you find out whose they are.  Fäldt and Källström find the details that make the story.

See also:

• The Popular Workshop
• Thobias Fäldt and Klara Källström

here.

I recently made another appointment at Pier 24, aka our own local climate-controlled photography wonderland, this time to see their current group show that focuses on Bay Area photographers and images of the Bay Area.  Many of the gallery's 20+ rooms are given over to a single photographer, and it is really wonderful to get to spend time with (for instance) a whole suite of Henry Wessel's humor-inflected studies of suburbia or Richard Misrach's intimate pictures of Telegraph Avenue street life.  Larry Sultan (pictured here) brings classical formalism and a subtle sense of mystery to his large-scale images, shot just where nature meets man-made development, while Jim Goldberg makes visible the secret lives of runaways trying to survive in the city.  The natural landscape is well-represented too, from early images of mountains and waterfalls by Carleton Watkins to Eadweard Muybridge's famous panorama of the San Francisco Bay (cleverly paired with a more recent series of photos by Mark Klett of the exact same vista).  I was sad to find the gallery's projectors down for maintenance during my visit, so I was unable to see either work by Kota Ezawa or the scenes from Bullitt that are normally part of the show.  But those should be up by the time you go, and if you get stumped by the lack of wall labels feel free to tap one of the helpful docents who will happily explain what you're looking at. 

See also:

• Pier 24

agenda 07.20.2011

My picks for your Bay Area weekend

Thursday, July 21:

• Open Show Bay Area #27 at SF Camerawork

Friday, July 22:

• Angry Samoans, Boats!, Battle Flask, Cashed, Moderate Excess at 924 Gilman
• FITTED at SJMADE Market Hall
• Live At The Plough Palace: Bart+Band, Aerosols & Montra

Saturday, July 23:

• New Art Economy Summit at Macarthur b arthur Gallery
• Record Swap at The Knockout
• Jeff Armstrong's B-day- Dan P., Unko Atama, Chump Change, Drinking Water at 924 Gilman
• Garrincha & the Stolen Elk ++ Excavacations ++ Ava Mendoza & Nick Tamburro at Fingerling's Grotto
• DEBASER | Sexxx Rhymes Edition at The Knockout

Sunday, July 24:

• Summer Open House at Headlands Center for the Arts
• DYS, Wolves & Thieves, Short Changed, Bare Minimum at 924 Gilman

from the collection of randi and bob fisher

Collecting runs in the Fisher blood.  While Doris and Donald got plenty of press in the Bay Area when they chose SFMOMA to house their massive art collection, their son Bob and his wife Randi seem to be the photography buffs in the family.  Some weeks back I made an appointment to be granted access to Pier 24's secure, climate-controlled galleries and spend a couple quiet hours looking at the pictures the couple have acquired over the years, a genuinely impressive array by greats like Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, William Eggleston, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Andres Gursky, Helen Levitt, John Gutman, Richard Misrach, and many many more.  If those names look familiar it's because almost all of them have had major retrospectives in Bay Area museums and galleries over the last decade and a half, and if I have any complaint about the collection is that it houses few surprises for anyone who pays attention to photography at all.  That said, the Fishers collect in-depth so you are pretty much guaranteed to see pictures that feel like old friends: Bernd and Hilla Becher's industrial architecture, vintage American signage by Evans, Eggleston's giant tricycle.  Being the contrarian I am I started at the very back of the space, in the gallery pictured above, where I found one absolutely perfect and unexpected juxtaposition, Gutman's depiction of a boy caught mid-stride in his leap off a diving board directly across from a whole series from Aaron Siskind's Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation.  And I do like Pier 24 itself, the Pilara Foundation's gift to San Francisco photography-lovers.  Admission is always free, the appointment system guarantees there's never more than a dozen other people in there with you, and no one bats an eyelash if you spend ten solid minutes staring at Allan Arbus's extraordinary portrait of his wife.  The Foundation is clearly committed to photography, and I just hope they are not afraid to allow some adventurous curation too.

See also:

• Pier 24
• KQED visits the show