Exhibition Dates: October 5, 2011 – January 6, 2012
Location: SFAC Gallery, Art at City Hall
Submissions Due: Saturday, August 13, 2011, 6pm (This is NOT a postmark deadline.)
For more information: contact the SFAC Gallery at 415.554.6080 or aimee.leduc@sfgov.org. Click here for more information about PhotoAlliance.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: You Look Familiar
We are inviting submissions of photographic works that explore what it means to be part of a group, culture or association. Submissions can depict groups of people who share activities, identities, locations or some form of common ground. How do we look familiar to the people who share our passions and interests? From fashionistas to sports fans, and from mountain climbers to rockabilly swing dancers, we are looking for submissions of people who look familiar to each other. We will also accept images that reveal the evidence of group activities. If familiar faces are not present in the photographs, what kind of residues do groups leave or what objects could be attached to a place as a signifier of a shared activity or event?  What kind of places or objects define a group? (You do not have to be a part of the association depicted.)

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.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

• Eligibility: All living artists over the age of 18 who are residents of the greater San Francisco Bay Area are eligible to apply. All work should have been completed in the past five years.  (San Francisco Bay Area counties include: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma Counties)
• No entry fee required
• Medium, framing, Delivery: All two-dimensional works using any photographic process including digital and/or analog are eligible for exhibition. All chosen works should be delivered to the Gallery framed behind glass or Plexiglas. All selected artists need to be able to deliver and pick up their work from San Francisco City Hall on designated installation and de-installation dates. Works that need to be shipped will not be considered.
• Portfolio: Only digital submissions will be accepted. Submit three to ten images. Files should be on a CD in JPEG format. Image size should be no larger than 2MB or 8 inches in one dimension with a resolution of 150dpi.
• Image files should be titled: Lastname_Firstname_imagenumber.jpg
• Please submit an accompanying inventory sheet with the image number, your name, title, date, medium and unframed dimensions of each piece. You may also include a one-page statement about the work and a one-page bio.
• Please include a cover sheet with the following information:

Full name
Address
Phone number
Email address

• Mail submissions to: San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery 401 Van Ness Avenue San Francisco, CA  94102
  Attn: That Looks Familiar Jury
• No emailed submissions will be accepted. Hand delivered or mailed applications only.
• Submissions Due: Must be received by Saturday, August 13 by 6pm. No late entries will be accepted under any circumstance. Please plan ahead. Traffic and parking can sometimes be time consuming around the Civic Center. We will not be able to accept any late submissions for ANY reason.
• Submission materials will not be returned.

JURORS for You Look Familiar
Meg Shiffler, Gallery Director, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery
Thom Sempere, Executive Director, PhotoAlliance
Darius Himes, Fraenkel Gallery
More jurors announced soon!

CALENDAR
August 13                  Submissions due by 6pm
August 23                  Jury panel meets to make decisions
August 24                  Notify selected artists (emails will be sent)
Sept. 22-24               Artists deliver artwork
October 5                  Opening reception at City Hall, 5:30 – 7:30pm
January 6                  Exhibition closes
January 12-14          Artists pick-up artwork

Amy Balkin +Alicia Pozniak

Event Date: Wednesday, June 29, 12:30 pm
Event Location: SPUR 654 Mission Street, San Francisco Click here for a map.
Admission: Free for SPUR members, $5 non-members
Please feel free to bring your lunch.

Join San Francisco-based artists Rebar, Amy Balkin and Sergio De La Torre as they discuss their projects for the inaugural Sister City Biennial exhibition, Urbanition, co-presented by the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) and CarriageWorks of Sydney, Australia.

Their proposals range from improving immigrant rights and revamping the Sutro Baths to re-envisioning BART as a more human-centric system. Learn about the artists’ roles as activists and instigators of civic change. Moderated by Urbanition co-curators Meg Shiffler of the SFAC Gallery and independent curator Justine Topfer.

Click here for more information about Urbanition.

Ernest Jolly, Natural Reaction

Exhibition Dates: May 12 – June 18, 2011
Location: 155 Grove Street Window Installation Site
Hours: Viewable 24/7

Special event dates and times to be announced soon.

The SFAC Gallery presents Natural Reaction, a new site-specific work by Bay Area artist Ernest Jolly. Natural Reaction is an installation created in response to recent disasters resulting from tsunamis and floodwaters. Jolly explains, “The coast has always been a place where I have sought refuge from internal and external noise. More often than not the coast is a reminder of transition and change. It is also a place where the abrupt violence of nature can all at once change lives forever and minutes later recede back into its self.”

Taking full advantage of the space, Natural Reaction fills the 400 sq. ft. storefront with large sculptural elements that actively disrupt more serene installation components such as a shallow reflecting pool filled with water, and an expansive backlit scrim complete with whispy white clouds. Jolly worked with musician/sound artist Chris Evans to create a soundtrack that will catch the attention of passersby.

Ernest Jolly's Artist Statement:

My work involves the re-contextualization of lived experience, of both the individual and the group, in comparison to environmental change in nature. Through sculptural forms and video/sound installation I’m pulling together these lived experiences into a hybridized practice.

My most recent body of work explores the architectural entropy of failing urban environments in relation to stresses on nature such as erosion of coastal lands and the depopulation of honeybee hives. The works compares and contrast such natural phenomenon as Colony Collapse Disorder to the decline of the industrial city. The cities I’m most interested in are former auto and steel manufacturing towns in the mid-west. These cities whose economies have rest largely on heavy industry production have, within the past decade, experienced huge economic and population decline. This decline has left many cities abandoned, without a sustainable infrastructure and deteriorating architecture. Colony Collapse Disorder is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive abruptly disappear. There is no definitive answer for this disorder at this time. Some attribute the problem to biotic factors, environmental stress, and malnutrition. Others suggest that it’s not one single factor but many factors that are the cause. My work is both a meditation and a call to action in addressing the factors of urban industrial decline and disappearance of species in nature.

Ernest Jolly is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA. (link)

Chris Fox, Salon Jetpack, 2011

About this project:

Salon Jetpack is a fictional city transport network where each neighborhood salon provides a style of hair and corresponding hydrogen peroxide powered Jetpack. The attached hair protector helmet maintains your hairstyle while blonding your hair as you and your tribe traverse the cityscape. The Salon Jetpack project proposes a system where you are bound by a salon that provides you with a hairstyle and a refueling site for your Jetpack. Each pack only carries enough fuel for a maximum of about 30 seconds of flight, after which you would need to find one of your styles salon (Mohawk, Quiff, Bob, etc) to refuel your pack. The amount of hair treatment that you get dictates the amount of Hydrogen Peroxide fuel you receive, e.g. 5.5hrs of treatment would get 32 seconds of flight. Flight height is also determined on hair treatment; how blond your hair is determines how high you can fly, e.g. Ash Blond would enable you to fly up to 10 meters of altitude allowed versus Platinum Blond which would enable you to fly at 50 meter altitude.

Rather than finding direct sustainable options, the Salon Jetpack project looks at amplifying the characteristics that seem directly linked to a predominantly extrinsic goal related value system, that has shaped our society over the last few decades to what is has become today. The Salon Jetpack project highlights these elements and takes these unsustainable characteristics to another level, demonstrating a possible future scenario based on our current behavior and the choices we make accordingly. This amplification is framed as taking these elements to an unthinkable unsustainable position, used as a way to trigger people’s thinking around their own value systems and what this might lead to in the future.

Chris Fox combines the architectural and the artistic with his sculptures, interventions, hybrid objects, drawings and models. Skating a fine line between folly and practicality, the various projects devised by Fox draw from their own physical manifestation as sculptures and installations. His formal training as an architect and visual artist is acutely visible in his projects, as he investigates biographical, historical and cultural narratives through large sculptural notional machines. These futuristic yet nostalgic machines or systems are configured using specific components and materials, often from a prior or existing use.

Chris Fox has exhibited nationally and internationally in over 40 exhibitions and has received a number of awards and scholarships. Fox has work held in collections in Australia and has been commissioned for a number of large-scale projects including private and public art commissions. http://www.chrisfox.com.au/

Acknowledgements:

Salon Jetpack is generously supported by ZipCar and the Handlery Union Square Hotel.

Click here to return to the 2011 Sister City Biennial: San Francisco and Sydney.

Arthur/Allan

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is thrilled to present, The Clog, an online experimental site that intersects the valuable documentation and exploration of an exhibition catalog with the spontaneous descriptions and interpretations found on many blogs.

The Clog is the online component for the current SFAC Gallery exhibition, Isn’t It Obvious? San Francisco Artists Consuming the Banal curated by Aimee Le Duc and featuring 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 challenge a basic definition of the everyday. The exhibition critically examines how we visualize our surroundings and in turn asks us to consider in what ways we consume the banal.

The Clog will serve as a site for a critical and a tongue-in-cheek examination of the work in the exhibition as well 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.

The intent of The Clog is not to hinder or obstruct the thoughts inspired by the SFAC Gallery’s exhibition, Isn’t It Obvious? Instead, the site will act as a location to slow down, to stop and reflect and observe the myriad banal and fantastic objects and images moving toward and over us on a daily basis.

New writing and projects will appear on the Clog weekly. Please check back soon and check back often. You’ll never have any idea what you will find in The Clog!

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Arthur/Allan, Shaking Hands, 2011

SFAC Gallery Brown Bag Lunch Discussion featuring Isn’t It Obvious? artists, Jasmin Lim and Chris Sollars
Moderated by SFAC Gallery Manager and exhibition curator, Aimee Le Duc

DATE and TIME: Wednesday March 9, 12:15-1:15 PM, SFAC Gallery
FREE light snacks will be served
RSVP by March 8 to Aimee Le Duc, aimee.leduc@sfgov.org or 415.554.6080

Join us at the SFAC Gallery for a lunchtime discussion between Isn’t It Obvious? exhibiting artists, Jasmin Lim and Chris Sollars as they discuss their past and most recent projects both as artists and curators. During the discussion, Lim and Sollars will also consider if the artist and curator distinctive labels are useful or even present in their own work.  This is a wonderful opportunity to get to know two Bay Area artists and participate in a discussion about the current climate of the local arts community. The talk will be moderated by Aimee Le Duc, SFAC Gallery manager and Isn’t It Obvious? exhibition curator.

San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery

Exhibition Dates: April 28 - July 2, 2011
Public Reception: April 28, 7 - 9pm. Free and open to the public

Brown Bag Lunch discussion with Sydney based artists Chris Fox and Josephine Starrs

Event date and time: Friday, April 29, 12:30-1:30 PM
Location: SFAC Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue at McAllister
Free, light snacks will be served

RSVP by April 28 to Aimee Le Duc, aimee.leduc@sfgov.org or 415.554.6080

Click here for more information

CarriageWorks, Sydney
Exhibition Dates: August 4 - September 3, 2011
Opening Reception: August 4, 6 – 9pm, Free and open to the public.

Project Pages: San Francisco Artists
Click on the artists names for expanded project information.

Amy Balkin + Alicia Pozniak

Sergio De La Torre

Rebar

Project Pages: Sydney Artists

Chris Fox

Makeshift

Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski

The SFAC Gallery has partnered with the dynamic, Sydney-based, multi-disciplinary art center CarriageWorks to produce the 2011 Sister City Biennial. For this inaugural Biennial exhibition, Urbanition, the curators tasked the selected artists to create works addressed to the Mayors of San Francisco and Sydney that propose visionary solutions to make each city more humane, green and livable. The artists’ proposals range in subject matter from improving immigrant rights to commuting by jetpack, and from revamping the Sutro Baths to making BART a more human-centric system! The exhibitions will feature the proposals, (which will be presented in a wide variety of media including video, sculpture, drawing and performance), and a catalog which will be handed to officials from each City government. Educational programs, free and open to the public, will play a substantial role in both cities.

Co-curated by Meg Shiffler and Justine Topfer

Every two years the SFAC Gallery will partner with an arts institution in one of our Sister Cities around the globe. The collaborative efforts will result in a visual art exhibition in each location, featuring some of the best and brightest artists each city has to offer.

This project is supported by the following: San Francisco Arts Commission; the San Francisco Arts Commission, CarriageWorks; the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Protocol; the City of Sydney; Arts New South Wales; Zip Car; Greg Norman Wine Estates and the Handlery Union Square Hotel. Many thanks to: the Australian Chamber of Commerce (SF office); the Sydney Sister City Host Committee in San Francisco; the San Francisco Office of the Australian Consul General; the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery Advisory Board; and Philip Black, the Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney.

Jasmin Lim, digital c-print

I would like to sincerely thank the following people for making this incredible exhibition, Isn’t It Obvious? and online component, The Clog possible.

I would like to thank the support of Director of Cultural Affairs Luis Cancel; Director of Programs, Jill Manton and the San Francisco Arts Commission Public Art and Civic Art Collection staff. Thank you to the San Francisco Arts Commission advisory board for their passionate dedication to the SFAC Gallery. A special thank you also to SFAC Gallery Director Meg Shiffler for giving me this opportunity and providing endless support throughout this process and my career as a whole and this exhibition certainly would not have been possible without gallery assistant Shannon Green and the terrific Team SFACG, Tanner Borskey, Rebecca Fox, Zara Katz and Jess Young. Thanks also to our graphic designer Josh Singer and our vinyl maker extraordinaire, Courtney Sexton.

Thank you to Colleen Burke-Hill and John Caldon and the staff at the Veterans Building and to the staff at the San Francisco Public Library for being so supportive and accommodating to the ARTHUR/ALLAN crew.

I would also like to thank our recent donors, Paule Anglim, Graue Family Foundation, Chreyl Haines, Barbara J. Herbert, Jill S. Manton, Anthony Meier, Jeannene Przyblyski, Steve Stone, TomKat Fund, Joanne Vidinsky and Dede Wilsey.

On a personal note, I would also like to thank my partner Dana Younkin, and my other two partners Chuck Mobley and Anna Schooley.

I would like to dedicate this exhibition to my brother, Clayton Le Duc. This Clog's for you.

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Lindsey White, install

Is It Obvious?
by Zachary Royer Scholz

The artworks in the exhibition Isn’t It Obvious employ everyday elements and actions that are often overlooked.  Each piece straightforwardly embarks on its own unique investigation, but collectively, they embody something that is anything but obvious.  Built from simple sources—such as collapsible umbrellas, plastic bags, rocks, or even the artists’ own bodies—the artworks suggest endless, overlooked possibilities within the materials, actions, and situations that populate daily life.  By alchemically transforming their base materials, each artwork reveals some unexpected, latent potential in our workaday surroundings.  Together, they trace an alternate understanding of the world whose ramifications are transformative.

No consistent technique or material unites the artworks.  Instead, they are bound together by their inventive curiosity and humble means. Not only are the works made from ubiquitous materials, but each piece is also produced using simple, honest, and accessible techniques.  There are no virtuosic skills on display or endless hours of labor to marvel at.  Viewers may not be willing to jump until they no longer can, like Matthew Kennedy in Jumping, 2010; use their bodies as bookshelves, like the collaborative Arthur/Allan in one of their videos from City Hall, 2011; or edit video down to its best moments, like Lindsey White in Common Senses, 2009-11; but they could if they wanted to.

Though made by transforming familiar stuff through uncomplicated actions, the included artworks prove strangely profound. The simple materials and actions invite us to look beneath the presented surfaces and consider each piece’s deeper and less apparent implications. There are no tricks to puzzle out; everything is just what it seems, and yet, not. Like poetry, the artworks take familiar elements and make them surprisingly new.  At times beautiful, intriguing, and funny, the results are always as much about their means as their meaning.

The various strategies employed by the artists in Isn’t It Obvious are not unprecedented.  Their aims and techniques are shared by numerous practitioners and draw on traditions from throughout the past century.  They are richly informed not only by the self-critical aims of conceptual art and the quotidian directness of ready-mades, but also by the immediacy of performance art and the ingenuity of experimental photography. The artworks do not simply rehash old forms, but successfully adapt past strategies to interrogate present concerns.  They are not only explicitly contemporary, but also directly engage our current condition.

Understandably, most of us pass through our hectic, tech-enhanced lives in a state of partial blindness. We are capable of observing the various details that color the world, but we have trained ourselves to cull out only the information that we need to function.  We filter the world based on our prior experiences using sets of assumptions that allow us to categorize and label seemingly familiar locations, individuals, and situations, and set them aside. Without this ability, we might spend our days marveling at the enthralling way light reflects in our coffee and never leave the house. While we need to filter to operate efficiently, filtering distances us from the very world it allows us to navigate. The process veils our experience and counteracts any dissonance we encounter.  We look for what we expect and so see only what we already know.

The artworks in Isn’t It Obvious combat this constructed blindness by probing the mundane.  Taking the expected and making it unexpected, they reveal overlooked meanings and new potentials.  These unexpected discoveries undermine our previous understanding and challenge us to look more closely at the world. However, the artworks in the exhibition do not simply illuminate things that are unseen.  More radically, they suggest other ways to interpret and use what we already think we know. This rethought understanding is not necessarily more accurate than any previously held one.  Instead, it is one among many alternatives that constitute coexistent, parallel fields of understanding.

Beyond merely expanding what we see to be possible, the artworks in the exhibition Isn’t It Obvious suggest an epistemological shift. The included pieces do not simply offer new ways to view the world, but rather reveal that ours is just one among a multitude of potential perspectives.  Furthermore, the artworks suggest that to change our perspective we need to do more than just think about things differently: we change our understanding by interacting with the world differently. This materialist revelation not only illuminates that the subjective world we inhabit is a construction, but posits that we have the capacity to determine this structure for ourselves through our actions.  If reality were merely perception, we could each hide in our own deluded fantasy.  But, as the artworks in this exhibition reveal, reality is what we make of it, or perhaps more correctly what we make out of it.

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