This 12 months’s FOG Design+Artwork Transcends Generational and Geographic Boundaries


FOG Design+Artwork, San Francisco’s annual worldwide artwork and design truthful, by no means fails to exhaust me. It’s in the best way you would possibly develop into exhausted after an enormous, scrumptious meal—without delay satiated and in some way nonetheless hungry for extra. Your abdomen can’t be as huge as your eyes when there’s this a lot to take a look at. Introduced within the 50,000-square-foot Pageant Pavilion at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Heart for Arts and Tradition, the ninth version of FOG hosts over 45 exhibitors from as shut as down the block to so far as Milan, and gives a snapshot of the worldwide state of the humanities, confirming the Bay Space as a significant pressure inside it.
The truthful additionally boasts a strong programming schedule all through the lengthy weekend, which mirrors this cut up emphasis on the native and world. Notable occasions on this yr’s slate embody a dialogue between 5 native museum administrators from SFMOMA to the Museum of the African Diaspora about their efforts to maintain museums related, a solution-oriented examination of local weather change and the humanities, a glance again on the legacy of late native icon Joan Brown, and a deep dive into the way forward for artwork and synthetic intelligence.
San Francisco’s personal Hosfelt Gallery spotlights native artwork historical past with alternatives by luminaries Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, and more moderen main figures equivalent to Jim Campbell, recognized for his public works just like the video piece Day for Night time that crowns town’s Salesforce Tower. Alternatively, Jessica Silverman is showcasing native up to date expertise, together with multimedia artist Sadie Barnette and sculptor Woody De Othello, in addition to the gallery’s most up-to-date addition to their roster, Chelsea Ryoko Wong, whose colourful work provide scenes of communal leisure. The sales space additionally features a large, modular sculpture, Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks, 2022, by feminist progenitor Judy Chicago.

Different SF galleries are increasing out from their Bay Space roots. Fraenkel Gallery presents a star-studded choice of worldwide photographers, from canonical fixtures equivalent to Bernd and Hilla Becher and Hiroshi Sugimoto to 2019 Venice Biennale artist Martine Gutierrez, whose performative self-portraits riff on promoting tropes to discover trans id. First time FOG exhibitor Casemore Gallery has teamed up with the returning Andrew Kreps Gallery from New York to current a solo present of work by the Oakland and Paris-based artist Raymond Saunders, recent off a profession retrospective on the Sonoma Valley Museum of Artwork. The artist’s frenetic work mix abstraction and figuration in a jazzy maelstrom.
This yr’s design highlights show to be research in duality. Hostler Burrows sports activities an identical pair of hand-carved, oak credenzas circa 1960 by Danish mid-century designer Henning Kjærnulf, which is complimented by a darker and extra delicate suite of plates by Finnish ceramicist Birger Kaipiainen circa 1970 adorned with floral designs in black and burgundy glazes. At Quantity Gallery’s sales space from Chicago, weight meets lightness in Ross Hansen’s chandeliers and sconces, shaped from hemp material solid in resin and suspended with lengths of chain.
I left the primary night time of FOG having seen all the pieces twice and nothing totally. However a necessary a part of the fun of the truthful is that this sense of complete overwhelm, of being submerged in the most effective artwork and design from legendary and rising makers alike. There’s nothing fairly like glimpsing the present of historical past—and feeling like part of it.
Fog Design+Artwork is on view January 19-22, 2023 on the Fort Mason Pageant Pavilion in San Francisco.
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