The holidays may be past us, but in the art world, there is plenty to celebrate right now. The art looking here is fine; be inspired to view. Presented here are some (outstanding) picks for the month of January.
Stephen De Staebler @ Dolby Chadwick Gallery, January 14–February 27
Presented will be a new body of work by this highly influential, accomplished Bay Area artist. Known for his harmoniously raw, vertical, multi-sectioned works, Stephen De Staebler draws out the unexpected beauty generated by chance and accidents, featuring cracks, roughness, unevenness, and warping as aesthetically pleasing attributes. His tactile, organic pieces display a soulful grounding. This new work draws from fragments from the past forty years.
Before moving to the Bay Area and earning his MFA at UC Berkeley—where he studied with Peter Voulkos—De Staebler studied at Black Mountain College with Ben Shahn and Robert Motherwell. Primarily a sculptor, De Staebler generally works in clay and bronze. He has played an important role in the California Clay movement and has been recognized nationally, receiving several National Endowment for the Arts grants, as well as a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; De Staebler’s work is held in the collections of numerous institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, SF MOMA, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
De Staebler’s work will also be featured in a major retrospective at the San Jose Museum of Art in 2012.
Emigre @ Gallery 16, through January 29, 2010
Gallery 16 presents a special exhibition celebrating the 25 anniversary of Berkeley-based Emigre, a multi-disciplinary source of design and creative output founded and run by husband-and-wife team Rudy Vanderlans & Zuzana Licko. Primarily a type foundry (it was one of the first independent type foundries to establish itself centered on personal computer technology), Emigre has (and does) also produced magazines, books, wallpaper, prints, photographs, T-shirts, ceramics, posters, and various other artful items.
The exhibition will present actual press sheets, posters, magazines, and ephemera from Emigre’s history, as well as the new Gingko Press publication Emigre #70: The Look Back Issue—25 Years in Graphic Design. The 512-page book is a best-of collection of Émigré magazine’s 69 issues, which were published sporadically from 1984 to 2005; the magazine is regarded as one of the most influential design publications, ever. In conjunction, a collection of Vanderlans’s photographs from the Supermarket and 13 Big Western Landscapes series will also be on view. An internationally recognized designer and artist in his own right, Vanderlans has shown twice before at Gallery 16.
Open Source Embroidery @ Museum of Craft & Folk Art, through January 24
Curated by Ele Carpenter, a HUMlab Research Fellow, in partnership with BildMuseet, Umea, Sweden, this exhibition explores the intersection of craft and computer technology, especially open source/public collaboration. Featuring a large number of works, Open Source is smart, fun, engaging, and diverse.
Detail of HTML Patchwork by Ele Carpenter, part of "Open Source Embroidery" at the Museum of Craft & Folk Art
Viewers can participate in weaving and embroidering, gaining insight into the unique results and unexpected outcomes achieved when these seemingly disparate worlds are fused. From poetic to straightforward; literal, figurative, and conceptual; refined to loose, this seriously playful exhibition will find you wanting to stick around to absorb its finer details and layered content.
Shannon Ebner @ Altman Siegle, January 7 through February 13
LA–based artist Shannon Ebner will present new sculpture, video, and photography in her exhibition “Signal Hill.” A conceptual artist, Ebner is known for her use of text and language, a la Ed Ruscha, with pieces often temporarily installed in site-specific locations; her works are ripe with clever, multiple possible interpretations. The central exploration of this body of work, which is part of an ongoing project, is “signal,” which also refers to the physical landmark of Signal Hill in Southern California (a location from which photographer Robert Adams has shot).
Ebner’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Tate Modern and 2008 Whitney Biennial as well as several solo exhibitions. She is featured in the upcoming book Creamier, and a recent monograph, The Sun As Error, was published by LACMA.
Taravat Talepasand @ Marx & Zavattero, through January 30
An exhibition of new work by SF–based, Iranian-American artist Taravat Talepasand, titled “Situation Critical,” includes egg tempera on panel paintings, graphite drawings, and a hand-painted MB5 motorcycle. These highly charged and beautifully executed works express Talepasand’s efforts to resolve the personal, as well as public, conflicts experienced between east and west.
Talepasand will also be featured in a solo exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in late 2010; her work has been written about and reproduced in numerous publications, including Alarm, Art in America, The Art Papers, Artweek, Planet, SOMA, and art ltd.
NEWS TO KNOW
Bay Area–based documentary photographer Ari Marcopoulos (represented by Ratio 3 Gallery in SF and currently featured in a retrospective at Berkeley Art Museum through February 7) was chosen to participate in this year’s Whitney Biennale, one of the nation’s most prestigious art exhibitions.
Selected from a group of 680 applicants in the Bay Area, Brion Nuda Rosch won a 2009 Artadia Award. Rosch is represented locally by Baer Ridgway Exhibitions. ‘Lucida Grande’;”
SFMOMA celebrates its 75 Anniversary. January 18 marks the museum’s official birthday and welcomes a year of associated events and exhibitions under the umbrella title 75 Years of Looking Forward.” Additionally, there will be a free weekend, January 16 through 18, to mark this notable achievement.
Among the highlights of “75 Years of Looking Forward” are: the anniversary exhibition featuring more than four hundred works from the archives (through Jan. 16, 2011); “Focus on Artists” (through June 6), which showcases SFMOMA’s in-depth holdings of work by and long-term relationships with such promient modern artists as Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Ryman, and Richard Serra, among others; “Long Play: Bruce Conner and the Singles Collection,” which includes the newly acquired video installation Three Screen Ray, and other special programming.
Also recently announced, and to premier during the celebratory period, is a sound sculpture by internationally recognized sound innovator and SF resident Bill Fontana; the artist was recently awarded the Bay Area Treasure award by SF MOMA’s Modern Art Council.
Chérie Turner is the editor of the Nob Hill Gazette.
