Sharon Stone's Eternal Failure Is An Eternal Success

Courtesy Gallery 181 Fremont Residences San Francisco/Moanalani Jeffrey Photo Agency

John Steinbeck once said, “San Francisco is a golden handcuff with the key thrown away.” Indeed, San Francisco is a beautiful prison of imagination—a city so unusual it seems unreal. For the inimitable actress and now esteemed painter Sharon Stone, San Francisco was a place to die and be reborn as an artist. In her new exhibition, “My Eternal Failure,” on view at Gallery 181 at San Francisco's 181 Fremont Residences until August 31st, these days of vulnerability are explored in a series of large-scale, abstract paintings that exemplify Stone’s adeptness at shape, color, and composition.  Heartbreak and a 2001 brain injury in San Francisco allowed Stone to see colors in a whole new way—her prismatic kaleidoscopic palette is like a psychotropic wellspring. “I want this exhibition to serve as a vehicle for self-forgiveness, and I hope it can help others do the same by letting go of societal stigmas and imposed perceptions,” says Stone. “In this way, failures become sources of strength, and to face them is to keep growing. The exhibition’s title My Eternal Failure is freeing for me.”

 

Jester, by Sharon Stone, 2023 (acrylic on canvas), 36” x 18”

 

Autre Magazine Co-Hosts A Fog Art Fair Dance Party In San Francisco With On Approval and Friends

Last Friday, AUTRE magazine cohosted a hot and sweaty late night dance party to celebrate Fog Art Fair in San Francisco with On Approval, Altman Siegel, Value Culture and Exhibited.At. A mix of tech and art worlds collided with locals at the Lions Den Lounge in Chinatown with music by Eugene Whang and Jeremy Costello. photos by Oliver Kupper

Read Our Interview of Gallerist Jonathan Carver Moore On His Exhibition With Zanele Muholi →

Sanibonani is a Zulu greeting used to welcome or address a group. The word crawls up the wall of the Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery, the title of the current show, featuring Zanele Muholi and various students from their art institute. In Jonathan Carver Moore’s SF Gallery, Sanibonani embodies pride: an unconditional, celebratory welcome. Self-portraits of Black, Queer, South African artists line the walls. Monochromatic San Francisco sun streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows that occupy one wall, matching the grays in the mostly black-and-white images, adding a cool cast to the large, bronze bust of Muholi. Moore’s Gallery is in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood in the world’s first Transgender District. The location makes sense: Moore has a clear passion for highlighting unheard voices and unseen perspectives, and since the gallery’s premier exhibition, The Weight of Souls, with artist Kacy Jung in March, his gallery has developed a reputation for doing just that. I sat down with Moore to talk about his experiences as the first Black, gay, man to own a gallery in the SF Bay Area, the intersection of marginalization and creativity, and the artists with whom he’s worked. Read more.

7 Never-Before-Seen Works By Rosie Lee Tompkins @ Anthony Meier Fine Arts In San Francisco

American artist, Rosie Lee Tompkins (1936–2006) is considered one of the greatest quiltmakers of all time and one of the century’s greatest artists. The seven artworks on view at Anthony Meier Fine Arts date from 1974 to 2006, the year of the artist’s death. This significant exhibition coincides with a major retrospective of her work at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and includes a newly commissioned essay by Lawrence Rinder, the longtime champion of Tompkins and former Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Rosie Lee Tompkins is the pseudonym of quilter Effie Mae Howard, who carefully guarded her privacy after her rise to national prominence in the late 1990s. Born on September 6, 1936 to a sharecropping family in southeastern Arkansas, she learned quilting from her mother as a child but did not begin to practice the craft seriously until the 1980s, when she was living in the Bay Area city of Richmond. Tompkins was a devout member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and credited God with her uncanny sense of color. Many of her quilts were made with family members or friends in mind, and can be seen as prayers on their behalf, including her sons.

Few of Tompkins’ quilts conform to the traditional scale of a bed covering, a byproduct of the conceptual logic inherent in each piece. Her quilts are characterized by the variation in scale of the triangles and squares used in her patterns, creating “asymmetrical forms that pull, crumble, and bend,” says Rinder. Tompkins “transformed everything she touched with her improvisatory piecing and unerring sense of color, composition and scale,” notes critic Roberta Smith. “In the still-unfolding field of African-American quilt-making, she has no equal.”

Rosie Lee Tompkins is on view through February 19 @ Anthony Meier Fine Arts 1969 California Street, San Francisco

Gagosian Presents MAN RAY "The Mysteries of Château du Dé" in San Francisco

During his storied career, Man Ray, a multidisciplinary artist with a rare breadth, worked in a variety of mediums, including painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, film, poetry, and prose. While for him photography and painting were paramount, his work in early film and cinema is often overlooked.

Man Ray’s first experience in making film was in New York, in 1920, when he worked with Marcel Duchamp on an unsuccessful attempt to create a three-dimensional film. After moving to Paris, in 1921, his diverse experimentation in the medium of photography eventually led him back to the moving image.

the exhibition also includes objects, drawings, and photography. Moving fluidly between media, Man Ray often made several iterations of a work—photographing it, assembling and disassembling, or making multiples—reproduction being crucial to his concept of the art object. Throughout his vast body of work, Man Ray alluded to relationships between the real and the fictive, the literal and the imaginative, with a deft mastery over the liminal territory between the abstract and the figurative form.

The Mysteries of Château du Dé will be on view throughout February 29, 2020 at Gagosian 657 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA. photographs courtesy of the gallery

Ariane Vielmetter: The Rose Garden @ Ever Gold [Projects] In San Francisco

In new paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Ariane Vielmetter explores representations of the female body in relation to fruits and flowers, and the ways these visual metaphors relate to lived experience. The female body, as a vessel for new life, is a natural structure for this kind of projection, and Vielmetter is particularly interested in the way this kind of imagery relates to the experiences of pregnant women. In a culture overloaded with information about best health practices, and a political climate that is very unpredictable with regards to women’s rights, the pregnant body has become an increasingly political site.The Rose Garden is on view through December 21 at Ever Gold [Projects] 1275 Minnesota Street #105, San Francisco. photographs courtesy of Ever Gold [Projects]

Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon @ ICA In Los Angeles

For her first solo museum presentation in Los Angeles, Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette (b. 1984) will reimagine the Eagle Creek Saloon, the first black-owned gay bar in San Francisco, established by the artist’s father Rodney Barnette, founder of the Compton, CA chapter of the Black Panther Party. From 1990–93 Barnette’s father operated the bar and offered a safe space for the multiracial LGBTQ community who were marginalized at other social spaces throughout the city at that time.

Barnette engages the aesthetics of Minimalism and Conceptualism through an idiosyncratic use of text, decoration, photographs, and found objects that approach the speculative and otherworldly. Barnette’s recent drawings, sculptures, and installations have incorporated the 500-page FBI surveillance file kept on her father and references to West Coast funk and hip-hop culture to consider the historical and present-day dynamics of race, gender, and politics in the United States. Using materials such as spray paint, crystals, and glitter, she transforms the bureaucratic remnants from a dark chapter in American history into vibrant celebrations of personal, familial, and cultural histories and visual acts of resistance. The New Eagle Creek Saloon is a glittering bar installation that exists somewhere between a monument and an altar, at once archiving the past and providing space for potential actions. During the run of the exhibition at ICA LA, the installation will be activated by performances, talks, and other social events. The New Eagle Creek Saloon is on view through January 26, 2020 at ICA LA 1717 E. 7th Street, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of the gallery

The Pleasure Ground: Matt Savitsky Presents Two Video Installations @ Cloaca Projects In San Francisco

Matt Savitsky’s new installation, ​The Pleasure Ground​, contains two video installations Savitsky conceived this year while on a self-created residency in his hometown (Lancaster, Pennsylvania). ​Crop Circles​ and ​Turn Bridge​ (2019) construct viewpoints by way of a fixed configuration between a sculptural element to a single camera. In both video images a disconcerting interplay of figure and ground is produced by the movement of each sculptural device relative to the camera’s position, which turns each in a continuous 360 degree rotation. Before becoming video objects, the images prompt a deconstruction of their viewpoint into a relationship defined by the coexistence of subject, object, and support.

The Pleasure Ground is on view through October 26 @ Cloaca Projects 1460 Davidson Avenue San Francisco. photographs by Andreas Tagger

Ever Gold [Projects] Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary With "Gold Standard" Exhibition

Ever Gold celebrates its 10th anniversary with an exhibition titled "Gold Standard" featuring works from artists Zachary Armstrong, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Mario Ayala, Sadie Barnette, Chris Burden, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Petra Cortright, Mark Flood, Kate Groobey, Brian Harte, Marc Horowitz, Paul Kos, Jasmine Little, Mieke Marple, Shaina McCoy, Barry McGee, MOCA (Museum of Conceptual Art), Oscar Murillo, Guy Overfelt, Cameron Platter, Kour Pour, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Tom Sachs, Adam Parker Smith,  Takis, and Christine Wang. Gold Standard will be on view through February 13 at Ever Gold [Projects] 1275 Minnesota St. Suite 105, San Francisco. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper


Mike Kelley's "Pushing and pulling, pulling and pushing" @ 500 Capp Street In San Francisco

Pushing and pulling, pulling and pushing brings together artworks from Mike Kelley’s Educational Complex (1995) and Day Is Done (2004–2005) into the uncanny environment of 500 Capp Street. With a wide range of media, Kelley’s work explores themes as varied as punk politics, religious rituals, social class, and repressed memory. Using architectural models to represent schools he attended, Educational Complex presents forgotten spaces as frames for private trauma, both real and imagined. These works are intended to evoke not only Kelley’s own memories but also broader social issues concerning childhood. Pushing and pulling, pulling and pushing brings is on view through February 16 at 500 Capp Street San Francisco. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Rosha Yaghmai Presents "Miraclegrow" @ The Wattis Institute In San Francisco

Miraclegrow is a supersized disruption, an exaggerated shift in scale and perception. Yaghmai’s magnification of a bathroom floor reimagines reality and asks us to consider a new perspective, possibly one of a small household spider. A 17-foot “hair” fashioned from a bent, fused, rusted pipe sits awaiting inspection. A castaway hair, an expended shred of biomaterial carries evidence of unique genetic information, of past drug use, of cheap shampoo. An unnaturally close look at this particle of life is on offer. We see its scales, made from castings and detritus, reminiscent of sedimentary stone, tide pools, and the sand dunes of Mars. The hair reflects onto giant glossy tiles lining the walls, showing some undefined landscape in the process of disappearing or reappearing. It’s hard to tell which. Click here to read our interview with the artist.

Miraclegrow is on view through March 30 at CCA Wattis Institute 1111 Eighth Street San Francisco. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Diamond Stingily: "Doing the Best I Can" @ The Wattis Institute In San Francisco

While Diamond Stingily’s work speaks to broader socio-cultural themes like class, race, and gender, it is always rooted in her own life. She grew up playing volleyball and softball. Both of her brothers are former professional football players. The family trophies were kept on a bookshelf in the living room. She used to bury her dolls in the backyard. She has been a poet and artist for most of her life. She is doing the best she can. Doing The Best I Can is on view through March 30 at CCA Wattis Institute 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Highlights From FOG Design+Art Fair @ Fort Mason Center In San Francisco

Celebrating today’s most significant creatives and leading contributors to the worlds of design and visual arts, FOG Design+Art Fair assembles 45 leading international galleries; prominent 20th-century and contemporary design building on FOG’s longstanding commitment to cultural institutions, the fair’s Preview Gala is honored to continue its crucial support of SFMOMA’s exhibitions and education programs. photographs by Bradley Golden

Highlights From Untitled Art Fair In San Francisco

Untitled, Art is an international, curated art fair founded in 2012 that focuses on curatorial balance and integrity across all disciplines of contemporary art. Untitled, Art innovates the standard fair model by selecting a curatorial team to identify and curate a selection of galleries, artist-run exhibition spaces, and non-profit institutions and organizations, in dialogue with an architecturally designed venue. Untitled Art, San Francisco took place January 18 – 20 at Pier 35, 1454 The Embarcadero. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Clifford Ross's Digital Waves @ "COAL+ICE" In San Francisco

 

Free and open to the public, COAL + ICE visually traces the trajectory of climate change — from coal mines and the burning of fossil fuels to the melting Himalayan glaciers, rising sea level and  extreme weather events — bringing the environmental and human costs of man‐made climate change to life through images, videos and thought‐provoking events. The exhibition is on view through September 23 at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco.

Tom Sachs "Space Program: Europa" @ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts In San Francisco

Tom Sachs and his team of astronauts set their sights on the next frontier of space exploration in Space Program: Europa. Targeting Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, this expansive sculpture exhibition offers an unprecedented view into Sachs’ extraordinary artistic output and advances his quest to find extraterrestrial life with bricolaged sculptures. The exhibition will fill YBCA with everything his astronauts need to successfully complete their voyage—including the Mobile Quarantine Facility, Mission Control, the Apollo-eraLanding Exploration Module (LEM), and special equipment for conducting scientific experiments—immersing the audience in a universe of sculpture occupying the entire downstairs galleries in addition to YBCA’s public spaces. Sachs has also created a new site-specific installation, Logjam Café. Logjam Café will be open to the public as a neighborhood coffee shop, occasional bar, and OCD rehab center, where visitors can experience firsthand the artist’s obsession with the tools of his craft. Space Program: Europa will be on view until January 17, 2016 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. photographs by Annabel Graham