The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery presents

Isn’t It Obvious?
San Francisco Artists Consuming the Banal
January 21 – April 2, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, January 21, 6 – 8pm

Public Events

All Public Events will be held in the Main Gallery and are FREE to the public

Family Day, Saturday February 5 12-3pm

Brown Bag Lecture, Wednesday, March 9

Exhibition Locations and Artists:

SFAC Main Gallery
Artists: Matthew Kennedy, Kristina Lewis, Jasmin Lim, Brion Nuda Rosch, Chris Sollars, Lindsey White
401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister)
San Francisco, CA 94102
415.554.6080
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm

SFAC Gallery Window Installation Site
Artist: Daniel Nevers, You Can't Stop Progress
155 Grove Street, San Francisco, CA  94102
Gallery Hours: Viewable 24/7

Exhibition curated by: Aimee Le Duc

SAN FRANCISCO, November 29, 2010 The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is pleased to present, Isn’t It Obvious? San Francisco Artists Consuming the Banal an exhibition of newly commissioned work by Arthur/Allan, Matthew Kennedy, Kristina Lewis, Jasmin Lim, Daniel Nevers and Lindsey White.

Through the use of video, photography, performance, sculpture and site-specific installation, the exhibiting artists reconfigure both commonplace and iconic objects and images to create wry and humorous works that challenges a basic definition of the everyday. The exhibition critically examines how we organize and visualize our lives and surroundings, and in turn asks us to consider in what ways we consume the banal. By re-using common materials and re-photographing familiar landscapes – these artists are looking at the obvious in a less than obvious way. Exhibition curator and SFAC Gallery Manager, Aimee Le Duc notes, “The artists critically examine how we organize and visualize our day-to-day lives and surroundings, and in turn ask us to consider in what ways we consume the banal.”

In addition to the exhibition in the Main Gallery and the 155 Grove Street window installation space, Isn’t It Obvious will also have an online component, The Clog. A tongue-in-cheek combination of an exhibition catalog and a blog, The Clog will serve as a site for critical examination of the work in the exhibition and it will also serve as an outlet for all viewers responses to the question, “Isn’t It Obvious?”. This online project will also be a source to connect the public programs to larger dialogs occurring in the art community.

Matthew Kennedy (www.mattkennedyphoto.com) is creating an installation that includes a video and photographs of him in various stages of jumping up and down. Although the images and accompanying video seem to be capturing a very simple task, the visual and audio presentation ultimately breaks down the movement in a surprising and curious way.

Kristina Lewis (www.kristinalewis.com) is pushing the boundary of her practice by reconsidering an already existing piece, Rigging the Weather, a large scale installation of umbrellas broken down and reconfigured in a stunning, floor-to-ceiling, floating sculpture. Additionally, Inspired by the traditional number of triangular fabric pieces used for each umbrella, Lewis will be showing a series of abstract renderings of the myriad ways an 8-part circle can be represented.

Jasmin Lim’s (www.jasminlim.com) work is an exploration of the mediated experience. Lim takes iconic photographs of the American West, molds and sculpts them into various twisted forms and then photographs them in a way that obscures scale, depth and the very subject matter until the way of looking becomes the subject itself. Lim also uses this same strategy with water, plastic bags, computer monitors to position the viewer both inside the concepts of looking and outside of the act of seeing.

Daniel Nevers (www.danielnevers.com) installation in the 155 Grove Street site, You Can’t Stop Progress, is an collapse of dizzying over-consumption. By using home improvement supplies easily purchased from big-box chain stores, Nevers leaves no part of the space free from the glut of colorful, shiny objects that are assigned an imagined inflated value inherently tied into its owners’ own perceived self worth. Installed next to all of these items, Nevers is also building to-scale reproductions of some of these items until the simulated objects are wholly challenging the value of the actual items or perhaps it is the other way around.

Arthur/Allan (www.brionnudarosch.com, www.667shotwel.com) Through a series of actions artists Brion Nuda Rosch and Chris Sollars, who are collaborating under the moniker, Arthur/Allan, will investigate the unoccupied open space of San Francisco civic buildings. In this series of interactions the pair will make use of the banal and the mundane, producing video works and sculptures that investigate the civic aesthetic and its function.

Lindsey White’s (http://www.baerridgway.com/Baer_Ridgway_Exhibitions/Lindsey_White_-_Spilled_Milk.html) work explores the magical moments of the every day through photography and video. By showing the most simple representations of rocks and collapsing all of the favorite moments, best moments onto each other by creating a wall of monitors playing short-videos showing only the best part, White shows us that there is no way to be able to focus on every moment or the best rock, which begs the question, can we really ever focus or find the best moment of any time or thing?

Media contacts:
Meg Shiffler, 415.252.2568 or meg.shiffler@sfgov.org
Aimee Le Duc: 415.554.6080 or aimee.leduc@sfgov.org
Photographs available upon request.

About the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
Located in the heart of San Francisco’s Civic Center, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery makes contemporary art accessible to broad audiences through curated exhibitions that both reflect our regional diversity and position Bay Area visual art production within an international contemporary art landscape. By commissioning new works, collaborating with arts and community organizations and supporting artist’s projects, the SFAC Gallery’s programs provide new and challenging opportunities for contemporary art to engage with a civic dialogue. The SFAC Gallery was founded in 1970 and is the exhibitions program of the San Francisco Arts Commission, the arts agency of the City and County of San Francisco.

About the San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Arts Commission is the City agency that champions the arts in San Francisco. We believe that a creative cultural environment is essential to the City’s well-being. Our programs integrate the arts into all aspects of City life. The Commission was established by charter in 1932 (Charter sections 5.103 and 16.106).