Category: Exhibitions
At War, February 3–29
What: At War
When: February 3–29, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, February 3, 6–9pm
Poetry & Dance Performance: Thursday, February 16, 7–9pm
Closing Reception & Panel: Saturday, February 25, 7–9pm
Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
Free Admission During Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 12–7pm, Saturday, 12–5pm.
At War, curated by and featuring artists Peter Max Lawrence and Truong Tran, explores identities in conflict, ranging from ethnic, gender, and sexual identity to conflicts of artistic identity indicated by disparate processes, practices, and mediums.
On display are hundreds of paintings, drawings, videos, and sculptures which incorporate religious elements, assumptive queer histories, and war iconography.
In preparation for the opening reception, Friday, February 3, 6–9pm, Lawrence and Tran initiate war by physically dividing the exhibition space into representational territory with a demilitarized zone line and complete a series of wall and free-standing sculptures utilizing found objects representing the refuses of moral and sexual wars. Dueling audio/visual installations will face off in the gallery annex.
Get Lucky: The Culture of Chance
What: Get Lucky: The Culture of Chance
When: December 17–January 26
Opening Reception: Friday, Jan. 6, 6–9pm
Community Conversation: Wednesday, Jan. 18, 7–9pm
Closing Reception & Panel: Thursday, Jan. 26, 6–9pm
Where: 934 Brannan St. between 8th & 9th
How much: Free admission to exhibition & all related events
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 12–7pm, Saturday,12–5pm. Closed December 24–31.
SOMArts Cultural Center will present a centennial birthday celebration of art icon John Cage, December 17 through January 26, 2012. Get Lucky: The Culture of Chance, curated by Justin Hoover and Hanna Regev, provides a multimedia and multidimensional look at a vast array of fine art practices investigating the implications of chance operation in the arts and across cultural beliefs, values and practices.
New works and site-specific installations created by more than 30 exhibiting artists hinge upon human interaction, explore varying levels of control in production, and experiment with structured randomness. Get Lucky includes works which conflate Wiccan-based Tarot practice and corporate culture, I-Ching with installation art, and the aesthetics of Zen pottery with Western abstract painting.
Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze
What: Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze
When: November 4–30, 2011. Closed Friday, November 11 for Veteran’s Day.
Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
How Much: Free admission during normal gallery hours
Gallery Hours: Tues–Fri 12–7PM, Sat 12–5PM
Man as Object: Reversing the Gaze is a traveling survey of 117 artworks debuting at SOMArts before traveling to the Kinsey Institute which place the male form in a position of objecthood and reverse conventional hierarchies in the culture of display. The exhibition includes an extensive collection of male adoration, male impersonation and male appendages, as well as works which probe contemporary expressions of feminism.
Illuminations: Día de los Muertos 2011
What: Illuminations: Día de los Muertos 2011
When: October 8–November 5, 2011. Closing celebration Saturday, October 5, 6-9PM.
Where: SOMArts Bay Gallery, 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
How Much: Free admission during gallery hours. $6-10 admission to closing celebration.
Gallery Hours: Tues–Fri, 12–7PM, Sat 11–5PM.
El Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, provides a way for people to embrace the beauty of life and to honor the spirits of the dead. Intricate, traditional altars and complex art installations created by more than 80 Bay Area artists from a breadth of cultural backgrounds are on display in Illuminations: Dia de los Muertos 2011. Altars and installations range from deeply personal to political and many invite contribution or interaction from visitors.
ArtSpan’s Annual SF Open Studios Exhibition
What: SF Open Studios Exhibition
When: September 30–October 29, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tues–Fri, 12–7PM, Sat 11–5PM, Sun 11–3PM.
Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
How Much: Free admission
Over 400 SF Open Studios artists will display their artwork during this month-long, free exhibition presented by ArtSpan in the SOMArts Main Gallery. Events accompanying the exhibition include an ArtLaunch Preview Gala on Thursday, September 29th, and a SOMA Saturday Mid-Way Party following open studios in the SOMA neighborhood on Saturday, October 15th.
Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Awards Exhibition
What: Frontrunners: The San Francisco Foundation 2011 Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Awards Exhibition
When: August 17, 2011 – September 16, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday, 12 – 7PM. Saturday 12 – 5PM.
Where: 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th)
How much: Free Admission
SOMArts Cultural Center and The San Francisco Foundation present a focused look at the future of the Bay Area visual and media arts landscape. Frontrunners is a survey of new work from the recipients of the competitive Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fellowships and the Edwin Anthony and Adelaine Bourdeaux Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts. The exhibition identifies young artists whose work connects directly to the pulse of emerging trends and showcases the work of promising visual artists from regional Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) programs working across disciplines.
The exhibition will include an accompanying artist talk & social, Lesser But Vital Practices (August 30th, 5:30 – 7:00PM). Moderated by SOMArts Curator & Gallery Director Justin Hoover, exhibiting artists will discuss the evolution of their artistic practice through the exploration of individual and cultural identity. A selection of these talks will be released on the SOMArts YouTube channel in early September.
The public is invited to celebrate with the Fellowship winners at a special closing reception (September 16th, 6:30 – 9:30PM) featuring a performance by the local band Yesway. During the awards ceremony at 7PM, $3,500 Fellowship tuition awards, plus one additional $3,500 Juror’s Choice tuition award, will be presented to all exhibiting artists. For more info about the closing reception, click here.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS INCLUDE
Andrew Chapman, Stanford University
Li Chen, San Francisco Art Institute
James Coquia, California College of the Arts
Christine Elfman, California College of the Arts
Joel Frudden, San Francisco Art Institute
Stephanie Halmos, California College of the Arts
Joey Izzo, San Francisco State University
Adam Katseff, Stanford University
Michael Koehle, Mills College
Senalka McDonald, California College of the Arts
Kate Nartker, California College of the Arts
Toyin Odutola, California College of the Arts
Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck, University of California, Berkeley
Kari Orvik, University of California, Berkeley
Maya Pasternak, California College of the Arts
Christine Peterson, California College of the Arts
Yulia Pinkusevich, Stanford University
Michelle Ramin, San Francisco Art Institute
Amy Rathbone, University of California, Berkeley
Helene Schlumberger, California College of the Arts
Sofia Sharpe, Mills College
Elia Vargas, San Francisco State University
Rachel Mica Weiss, San Francisco Art Institute
ABOUT THE MURPHY & CADOGAN FELLOWSHIPS
The Murphy & Cadogan Fellowships, administered by The San Francisco Foundation, provide a varying number of annual tuition awards of $3,500 to MFA students in support of exploring and developing their artistic potential in digital art, illustration, film/video, hybrid practice, installation, mixed media, painting, photography and sculpture.
ABOUT THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION
The San Francisco Foundation is the community foundation serving the Bay Area since 1948, granting more than $800 million over the past ten years. Through the generosity and vision of our family of donors, both past and present, The San Francisco Foundation awarded grants totaling $76 million in fiscal year 2010. By focusing on policy, advocacy, community organizing, and systems change, the Foundation addresses community needs in the areas of community health, education, arts and culture, community development, and the environment. In response to the economic downturn, The San Francisco Foundation is focusing funding on safety net partners, job creation and training, and foreclosure response and neighborhood preservation for the next two years.
The Book: Exhibition & Performance Series
What: The Book – a multimedia, installation-performance
Who: Avy K Productions/Erika Tsimbrovsky & Vadim Puyandaev (Commons Curatorial Residency Recipient 2010/2011)
Free Opening Reception and Performance: July 1, 6:00 – 9:00PM featuring dance installations by Avy K Productions and guest artist Carol Swann
Ticketed Installation-performances with guest artists:
- July 7 with Ken Ueno and Matt Ingalls, mingle with artists 7:30 – 8:00PM , performance 8:00 – 9:00PM
- July 14 with Jesse Hewit, PC Muñoz, and Tommy Shepherd, mingle with artists 7:30 – 8:00PM , performance 8:00 – 9:00PM
- July 21 with Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney and Philip Huang, mingle with artists 7:30 – 8:00PM , performance 8:00 – 9:00PM
Free Closing Reception & Performance: July 29, reception 6:00 – 9:00PM, featuring dance installations by Avy K Productions
Exhibition Dates: July 1 through 29, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday 12:00 – 7:00 pm, Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 pm
Where: SOMArts Main Gallery (934 Brannan Street, between 8th and 9th)
SOMArts Cultural Center presents The Book, a multidimensional, multimedia installation and the the first Commons Curatorial Residency of the 2011-2012 season. The Book, an installation-performance based in experimental non-theater dance that allows the viewer to freely move within the work and willingly participate during, before, after and between performances, addresses the investigative process of a meditation on the inner world of the artist and the artist’s relationship with a rational society and a technological age.
In The Book artists and audience members allow their personal stories to enter the performance space, creating a collective public diary. The Book is a kaleidoscope of sketches, snippets of thought, debris of feelings, traces of movement, and echoes of sounds that were once heard.
Each performance is a random page from The Book, and each invites a different guest artist to enter the structure, created by Avy K and collaborators, in order to destroy it and give it new life. Guest artists include: Jesse Hewit, Philip Huang, Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney, PC Muñoz, Tommy Shepherd, Carol Swann, and Ken Ueno with Matt Ingalls, along with Avk K collaborators/performers: Aleksey Bochkovsky, Daniel Bear Davis, Sean Feit, Izmail Galin, Kristen Greco, Grundik Kasyansky, Kristina Kirshner, Vitali Kononov, Lucas Krech, Rob Kunkle, Mihyun Lee, Justin Morrison, Daisy Phillips, Vadim Puyandaev, Erika Tsimbrovsky, Ronja Ver, Andrew Ward, Paul Clipson, Andrew Way and Elena Zhukova.
The Book and Avy K Productions is one of four recipients of a 2011-12 Commons Curatorial Residency at SOMArts. Selected artists and curators receive funding support and access to one of the largest and most beautiful gallery spaces in the heart of the city in order to expand their practice, engage the Bay Area’s many cultural communities, and turn vision into reality. Avy K Productions was awarded the SOMArts Commons Curatorial Residency for July, 2011.
Advance tickets the The Book performances can be purchased here.
About Avy K Productions
Founded by long-time collaborators Erika Tsimbrovsky (choreographer/performer) and Vadim Puyandaev (visual artist/performer), Avy K Productions brings together artists of different media to create improvisational multidisciplinary performances involving contemporary dance, live painting, evolving installation, video projection, and live music. Avy K employs improvisation to unite different artists under a common idea and to achieve real communication among media, as opposed to one medium serving another. Avy K’s work has strong visual elements—sets and costumes take on a life of their own, breathing and dancing with the performers as the space evolves, and aesthetic principles from painting composition are used in developing movement codes. Avy K uses the principles of visual art but the tools of physical movement and improvisation; Avy K can be described as an experimental visual non/theater of dance. Avy K premiered their work in the Bay Area with The Garden (2007) at NOHspace, San Francisco, and Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, followed by Scrap-Soup (2008) and Nocturnal Butterflies (2009), at Theater Artaud, San Francisco. More information on Avy K can be found at www.avyk.org.
Erika Tsimbrovsky (Choreographer/performer) is an innovator in the field of improvised dance performance. Born in Kazakhstan, she studied modern and contemporary dance in Belarus, Moscow, and Amsterdam. In Israel, where she lived for twelve years, she co-founded the award-winning experimental performance group EVM Laboratories to research the interaction between diverse media structures and to develop specific improvisational performance techniques. Avy K Productions is the San Francisco-based incarnation of her and visual artist Vadim Puyandaev’s 16-year collaboration.
Vadim Puyandaev (Visual artist/performer) has worked as a painter, sculptor, and designer for over twenty years and has been participating in multi-media dance performances since 1998. His fine art has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Russia, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, France, Spain, Canada, and the US. Puyandaev has also produced numerous pieces of monumental art, including a commission to design a bridge over the Red Sea as well as to design a sculpture ensemble for the entrance to the city of Eilat in Israel. With Tsimbrovsky, he is a founding member of the creative collectives EVM Laboratories (Israel) and Avy K Productions (US), dedicated to investigating what emerges in performance at the nexus of different genres. http://www.puyandaev.net
QIY: Queer It Yourself – Tools for Survival
What: QIY: Queer It Yourself —Tools for Survival
Opening Reception: Saturday June 4, 1–5pm
Exhibition Dates: June 4–24, 2011
Where: SOMArts Main Gallery, 934 Brannan Street (between 8th and 9th)
What Else: Free admission. More information at http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/
QIY: Queer It Yourself – Tools for Survival
Inspired by the late 1960s utopian builders’ guide A Whole Earth Catalog, QIY: Queer It Yourself – Tools for Survival presents a forum for queer do-it-yourself culture and alternative world making.
QIY is envisioned as a laboratory for creating a sustainable queer culture and demonstrating the power of self and community organizing, re-creation, speculation, and transformation. As an antidote to anti-sociality theories of queerness (that suggest queerness can only be rendered as a negation of heteronormativity), Queer It Yourself invites artists to forge their own tools for surviving the everyday challenges of contemporary queer existence.
The exhibition is built around artists’ workstations, participatory spaces, hands-on training sites, maps, and user-friendly art that uses immersive and interactive experiences to demonstrate the idea of art as a tool, as having active agency within the totality of a meaningful lived world.
The QIY curators have queered the index of the original “Whole Earth Catalog” and adapted its thoughtful and useful categories to frame our own QIY space.
