Armand Emmamdjomeh, Alone on the Roof, 2010

SFAC Gallery and PhotoAlliance present:

Night/Light: Bay Area Photographers Take Aim After Dark
Supporting Organizations: San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and PhotoAlliance

Exhibition: Night/Light: Bay Area Photographers Take Aim After Dark
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 16 5:30-7:30 PM
Exhibition Dates: September 16, 2010 – January 14, 2011
Location: SFAC Gallery, Art at City Hall, ground floor

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Jay Ach, Barbara Collins, Tamara Danoyan, Armand Emamdjomeh, Miguel Farias, Linda Fitch, Andy Frazer, Terri Garland, Lenny Greenwald, Sandrine Hermand-Grisel, Daniel Konhauser, Oren Lukatz, Vanessa Marsh, Geneviève Massé, Kristopher Parra, Keith Petersen, Shawn Peterson, Jesse Pollock, Chris Rochelle, Greta & Manu Schnetzler, Jeff St. Andrews, Stephen Thomson, Lena Tsakami, Don Whitebread, Cynthia Wood, Nina Zeininger, Mark Jaremko

THE EXHIBITION: Night/Light: Bay Area Photographers Take Aim After Dark
The work selected for the exhibition explores what happens after sunset and before sunrise. The 28 Bay Area artists selected submitted nighttime images ranging from landscapes to portraits, from photodocumentary essays to fantastical narratives. More information on the exhibition coming soon. Please check back.

THE LOCATION
The City Hall ground floor exhibition space can accommodate up to 100 photographs. The jury will choose between three and ten images from each selected artist. Please do not submit less than three images. There will be no stipend for selected artists.

Please be conscious of the fact that the exhibition space at City Hall is a multi-use area that acts as a busy intersection for City employees, tourists, children and arts patrons. It is both a municipal cross roads and a place where individual concerns may be expressed. Please note that exhibited works will not be insured.

JURORS
Aimee Le Duc, Gallery Manager, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
Thom Sempere, Executive Director, PhotoAlliance
Tim Baskerville, Founder, The Nocturnes

from the series, Women on Top by Samyukta Lakshmi

Picturing Power & Potential
Exhibition dates: June 15 - August 27, 2010
Opening reception: Tuesday, June 15, 2010,  5:30-7:30
Location: City Hall

Artists: Anne Hamersky (USA), Ariko Inaoka (Japan), Alex Kamweru (Kenya), Brenda Paik Sunoo (USA), Dana Whitaker (USA), Elizabeth Colton (USA), Isabela Senatore (Brazil), Jennifer Samuel (USA), Joanna Lipper (USA), Margaret Silverman (USA), Mark Tuschman (USA), Mathilde Jansen (The Netherlands), Mehran Afshar Naderi (Iran), Michelle McCarron (USA), Miranda Mimi Kuo-Deemer (China),  Pattabi Raman (India), Rocio Russo (USA), Samyukta Lakshmi (India), Sanaz Mazinani (Canada), and Selvaprakash Lakshmanan (India).

Jurors: Catherine King (IMOW), Jasmina Bojic (United Nations Association Film Festival), Linda Connor (Artist/Curator/Educator), Meg Shiffler (SFAC Gallery)

The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Gallery’s Art at City Hall program has teamed up with the International Museum of Women (IMOW) to coordinate and present a large-scale juried photo exhibition at San Francisco City Hall and online at the IMOW web site. Over 50 extraordinary and moving works by artists across the globe celebrate women as economic participants and agents of change. Picturing Power & Potential is project of Economica: Women and the Global Economy, an extensive and multi-faceted online exhibition presented by IMOW.

The jury reviewed works by 150 artists who responded to an international call for submissions. In the end twenty artists were selected: six artists from the Bay Area, four additional US artists, and artists from Japan, Kenya, Brazil, The Netherlands, China, India, Iran and Canada. The subject matter ranges from teen community leaders in Richmond, CA to entrepreneurs in Ghana. And from opera singers in Brazil to seaweed farmers in Zanzibar.

The exhibition is divided into two distinct sections: ten artists exhibiting multiple images from large bodies of work, alongside a single remarkable portrait from ten more artists. Note that we will be exhibiting seven images from Joanna Lipper’s Seaweed Farmers, nominated for a Prix Pictet award. Launched in 2008, the Prix Pictet is the world’s first prize dedicated to photography and sustainability. (see her work here)

Read Press Release

SFAC Gallery 40th Anniversary Celebration and Exhibition Openings

40th Anniversary Season: A Year of Artist-Driven Projects

Opening Reception: Friday, February 12, 2010
5:30 – 7:30pm, San Francisco City Hall, Ground Floor
6:00 – 9:00pm, Main Gallery and Grove Street

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Director of Cultural Affairs, Luis R. Cancel are proud to announce the opening of our 40th Anniversary Season. Since 1970 the SFAC Gallery, originally Capricorn Asunder Gallery, has been a vibrant part of the Bay Area art scene and a champion of regional emerging and established artists. In the past 40 years we have exhibited over 4000 artists in over 500 exhibitions. This year we’re commemorating the past, celebrating the present and looking toward the future with a series of exhibitions that positions Bay Area artists at the front and center of our upcoming exhibition programming.

Please join us on February 12 at all three at our exhibition spaces to celebrate our long and cherished history as well as all of the thrilling programming coming up in the future!

Replay: The San Francisco Arts     Commission Gallery 1970 - Present
Exhibition dates: February 12 - May 14, 2010  Opening reception: Friday, February 12,  5:30-7:30
Location: City Hall

Curated by Kelly Lindner, Replay is a diverse array of historic posters, photographs and artwork come together to illustrate the impact of the SFAC Gallery on the local arts landscape from its founding in 1970 as Capricorn Asunder Gallery, a space that championed local under represented artists, to today’s three-sited Gallery program that features emerging and established regional artists alongside artists from across the globe. (Photo: SFAC Gallery archives)

The 2010 exhibition season and forthcoming book are supported by the Do a Little Fund, Paule Anglim, Robert and Elizabeth Fisher, The Graue Family Foundation, Jeannene Przyblyski and Eric Jaye, Joanne Vidinsky, Dede Wilsey and Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

Read Press Release

Richard T. Walker

Transplanted: Three commissioned projects by Bay Area newcomers Pawel Kruk, Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe and Richard T. Walker.

Dates: September 24 - December 18, 2010
Opening Reception:  September 24, 6-8 pm
Location: Main Gallery, 401 Van Ness (@ McAllister) Wed-Sat 12-5pm, Free
155 Grove Street installation space, Available viewing 24/7

How long do you have to live in the Bay Area to be considered a local artist? How quickly do new arrivals influence our cultural landscape and help establish defining regional aesthetics? How quickly does the Bay Area influence the artistic production of newcomers? These are a few of the underlying questions posed in Transplanted.

For Transplanted, each of the exhibiting artists was asked to create new work that reflects on how living in the Bay Area has influenced their artistic practice. Kruk, a performance artist, Suarez-Wolfe, a sculptor, and Walker, a video artist, each arrived with extensive, international exhibition experience, and in the past three years have caught the attention of local critics, philanthropic organizations and major institutions.

In the Main Gallery

Richard T. Walker

attempting to define parameters of wanting

SFAC Main Gallery

401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister)

Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm

This exhibition continues Richard T Walker’s ever-evolving investigation into the natural landscape and its use as a contextual tool to mobilize thoughts and self-reflection. With strong nods towards the European and American Romantic periods, Walker uses spoken dialogue, music and performance to facilitate engagement and analysis that is both contemplative and active. The work questions how we perceive nature as well as how we imagine nature perceiving us. attempting to define parameters of wanting features works in media including video, photography, sculpture, and site-specific installation.

Richard T. Walker arrived in San Francisco from London in 2007 to become an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts and a 2008 Fellow at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. Over the next twelve months he will attend the Djerassi Artist Residency Program, the Headlands Center for the Arts Residency and also be a resident at the Montalvo Art Center. In 2009 he received the coveted Artadia award, given to artists living in the Bay Area. He is currently a finalist for the 2010 SECA Award at SFMOMA. Walker exhibits internationally and is represented by Christopher Grimes Gallery in Los Angeles.

Special thanks to Rick Mellor.

At 155 Grove Street

Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe

Forward-Looking

Grove Street Window Installation Site

155 Grove Street

Gallery Hours: Viewable 24/7

Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe’s site-specific installation takes as its point of departure the physical inaccessibility of the gallery space. The Grove St. Site is never open to the public, which forces the viewer to look into the space from the sidewalk.  Forward-Looking plays off of the gallery’s limited or focused range of viewing to question and draw attention to the public’s curiosity to look into the work – both literally and figuratively. The work reflects on the experiential aspect of relocation by emphasizing the act of looking into.

With a background in both architecture and visual art, Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles. Prior to his arrival, his works had been seen at ACE Gallery in LA and New York, and Blum & Poe in LA as well as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and High Desert Test Sites. From 2005-08 he co-edited the InterReview Journal, a publication on conceptual art. Recently Suarez-Wolfe has been awarded a commission from the SFAC Public Art Program, is teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute, and has had a solo exhibition at the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, VA.

Public Performance

Pawel Kruk

Winning the Water

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Aquatic Park, 890 Beach Street, San Francisco, CA 94109

Event Summary: Performance in which the artist will enter the water at Alcatraz (9 AM) and swim to Aquatic Park (anticipated arrival 10AM) while accompanied by the band Coconut. The public is invited to gather at Aquatic Park.

Continuing his artistic inquiry into the heroic nature of athletes and athletic feats, Pawl Kruk will swim from Alcatraz to Aquatic Park surrounded by a group of friends contributing to the performance in various ways. As the public cheers from the shore, Kruk’s swim will be accompanied by the two-person band Coconut performing live music on a small vessel propelled by oars, a videographer and photographer documenting the sounds and scenes of the performance, and another vessel carrying a group of spectators, whose presence will also contribute to the work. San Francisco’s South End Rowing Club’s history and their role in the dynamics of the interaction between people and the Bay will underlie the entire event. Documentation will be posted on the SFAC Gallery web site.

Kruk, a performance artist originally from Warsaw, spent a short time at the Headlands Center for the Arts in 2002, and then returned as an Affiliate Artist in 2007. In 2008 he was a Fellow at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. Kruk exhibits internationally and in 2003 was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s major exhibition The American Effect. He had a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at San Francisco’s David Cunningham Projects in 2009 and is currently a finalist for the 2010 SECA Award at SFMOMA.

Acknowledgments: David Cunningham, Buck Delventhal, Justin Limoges, Airyka Rockefeller, Richard T. Walker, Members of the South End Rowing Club and Electric Works.

40^th Anniversary Season: A Year of Artist-Driven Projects

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Director of Cultural Affairs, Luis R. Cancel are proud to announce the opening of our 40^th Anniversary Season. Since 1970 the SFAC Gallery, originally Capricorn Asunder Gallery, has been a vibrant part of the Bay Area art scene and a champion of regional emerging and established artists. In the past 40 years we have exhibited over 4000 artists in over 400 exhibitions. This year we’re commemorating the past, celebrating the present and looking toward the future with a series of exhibitions that positions Bay Area artists at the front and center of our upcoming exhibition programming.

Gallery Director Meg Shiffler says, “The SFAC Gallery has had an incredible impact on the cultural landscape of the Bay Area over the past 40 years. It seems fitting for a gallery that has remained focused on engaging the cultural production and topics of the day, to create an anniversary season with exhibitions full of newly commissioned works that will provoke dialogue around current art practice and the evolution of the SFAC Gallery as the City’s municipal arts gallery.

Chain Reaction 11

Location: Main Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister) and 155 Grove Street storefront space
Dates: February 12 – May 14, 2010

Chain Reaction 11 features thirty regional artists occupying all three of the SFAC Gallery sites by reviving a signature SFAC Gallery exhibition series. The first Chain Reaction exhibition opened in 1985, and continued as an annual exhibition through 1991, after which it became a much-anticipated but more limited event. For this version of Chain Reaction ten arts luminaries influential in the Gallery’s past were each asked to select one artist to participate in the exhibition. The ten selected artists each chose another artist to participate in the show, and finally the third group of artists each chose a final artist to be included. All of the participating artists will exhibit side by side, and the chain of selection will be clearly noted. Chain Reaction 11 gives the public an opportunity to both see what currently interests these artists, and to take the pulse of the current Bay Area art scene.

The ten chains include:
(The initial selector does is not a participating artist.)

Main Gallery at 401 Van Ness Avenue:

SFAC Staff – Anne Colvin – Ginger Wolfe-Suarez – Lordy Rodriguez

SFAC Advisory Board – Walter Logue – Alexander Cheves – Paul Clipson

Glen Helfand – Christine Wong Yap – Pablo Guardiola – James Tantum

Enrique Chagoya & Kara Maria – Justine Lai – Emily North – Angie Wilson

Desiree Holman – Joshua Churchill – Jasmin Lim – Cameron Soren

Judy Moran – Michael Arcega – Suzanne Husky – Amy Balkin

SFAC Gallery Window Installation Site at 155 Grove St.

Kamau Amu Patton – Chris Bell – Elaine Buckholtz – Floor Van Herreweghe

SFAC Gallery at City Hall, Ground Floor

Abby Chen –  Hui-Ying Tsai – James S. Kang – Scott Polach

Rupert Jenkins – Gabriela Hasbun – Karna Kurata – David Paul Morris

Kari Orvik – Robyn Twomey – James Chiang – Josh Kirschenbaum

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About 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.

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).

SFAC Gallery Day Proclamation

The 40th Anniversary Exhibitions Opening was a tremendous success. In fact, it was so successful, that Mayor Gavin Newsom proclaimed February 12, 2010 to be San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery Day! The full text of the proclamation is below.

Proclamation City and County of San Francisco from Mayor Gavin Newsom

WHEREAS, located in the heart of San Francisco Civic Center, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (SFAC)
makes contemporary art accessible to broad audiences; and

WHEREAS, for the last 40 years, the SFAC through its curated exhibitions has reflected our City and our region’s diversity
and has firmly established our position in the Bay Area as a leader in contemporary art on an international level; and

WHEREAS, by commissioning new works, collaborating with arts and community organizations, and supporting artists’ projects, the SFAC Gallery’s programs provide new and challenging opportunities to foster a greater civic dialogue on contemporary art and artist; and

WHEREAS, the SFAC Gallery was founded in 1970 and is entrusted to provide meaningful exhibition programs for the
San Francisco Arts Commission, the agency of our City; now

THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED, that I, Gavin Newsom, Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco, in celebration of 40 years of making art accessible to the public, do hearby proclaim February 12, 2010 as…

SAN FRANCISCO ARTS COMMISSION GALLERY DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO!