Fog Yields to Rich Art and Meaningful Co-Creation
Typically — and for obvious reasons — I prefer not to leave Florida in January.
Yet I’d been dreaming of spending all last week in San Francisco. So, I went and, of course, I had a blast.
Now that I’m back in Miami, I realize I’ve been building a mysterious bridge of transcendence… merely by helping other people to see art through my eyes.
Driving north across the most photographed bridge in the world, an icon of human engineering that needs no introduction.
Although San Francisco cannot compete with New York for size nor heft, nor with L.A. for glamour, nor with Miami for sex appeal, the flavor of art discernable there is a something of a dark horse: a soulful and intellectual vector for both the noteworthy and sublime.
Known by many monikers, the City by the Bay demonstrates a beautiful and serene complexity, layered onto a unique physical and sociological geography with complicated, multicultural history.
After all, nowhere else in the world could such steep and irregular topography be crisscrossed by a virtually laser-guided grid of streets, which today are prowled by futuristic, driverless taxis and bedecked with gritty and often appallingly unsightly sidewalks.
There is likely no more iconic painter of San Francisco’s urban grid structure than Wayne Thiebaud (1920-2021), as demonstrated in this masterpiece, Palm Ridge (1977-78), last seen at TEFAF New York in May of 2018 for sale at $7M.
The city’s intellectual capital promotes humanity to ever more technologically-advanced stages of maturity and consciousness (artificial intelligence, anyone?)
Thus the scene is set for a deeper exploration of consciousness.
Contemporary art isn’t created in a vacuum. It’s rooted in a context of centuries of human creativity and innovation.
Don’t miss out on future tours Charting Transcendence will offer throughout 2025 in Florida and cities across the U.S.
As CT’s advisory practice evolves, at some point later this year, these museum and gallery tours will be available by referral only.
SF’s Wholly Digestible, Accessible, Down-to-Earth “Mini-Art Basel”
FOG Design + Art is the marquee art fair of the crown jewel of the metropolis, hosted on the grounds of a former U.S. Army post directly on the banks of the San Francisco Bay.
In contrast with other major fairs, FOG is intimate and navigable, comprised of just 55 galleries’ booths. (Art Basel Miami Beach, by comparison, has over 280, and other major fairs such as NYC’s Armory Show and EXPO Chicago have 150-200.)
Nevertheless, FOG attracted two mega galleries (Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner), as well its usual retinue of understated (and generally underrated) Bay Area galleries showing both local, national, and international artists. And a dozen or two other galleries from New York, LA, Europe and beyond play into this mix.
Overall, the art on display was conservative compared to the flamboyancy one might see in New York, L.A. or Miami.
Not terribly surprising given the present circumstances, none of it was overtly political, although looking deeply at some artists’ work certainly revealed subtle political angles.
Below are some gems of art worth sharing from FOG Fair. These represent a decent slice of what one can see at a high-end contemporary art fair these days with several regional and international threads tied in.
All of Charting Transcendence’s tours of FOG touched on the tragic story behind the artist, Canadian painter Matthew Wong (1984-2019), who painted this treasure of a tiny 12” x 16” oil on canvas, Into the Night (2019), shown by Karma Gallery and priced at $1.2M. Wong’s impact as a spiritual doppelganger of the founder of CT has been addressed previously in a presentation available on YouTube.
Following trends in painting partly popularized by Matthew Wong, New York’s Venus Over Manhattan gallery, showed this oil, varnish, enamel and ink on canvas by John Pule, This way to reach the blue of the land (2024). Hailing from the tiny South Pacific island of Niue, Pule is one of the remote region’s most celebrated artists.
The geometrically abstract, mirrored works of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1924-2019) channel traditional Persian art into contemporary wonder. SF’s Haines Gallery had several of the late woman artist’s works at their FOG booth.
New York’s Andrew Kreps Gallery showed this humorous painting, Pink Peony Protest (2024) by Clare Rojas (b. 1976). The artist’s work caught my eye in a solo exhibition at the Austin Contemporary two years ago.
Sarah Blaustein (b. 1982) is a Bay Area artist on Charting Transcendence’s radar, who showed paintings at FOG both with LA’s Night Gallery and SF’s Berggruen. Floral patterns that stain the canvas are reminiscent of the work of women Abstract Expressionists.
Befitting of FOG Fair’s name, New York’s Tina Kim Gallery, specializing in contemporary Korean art, showed this misty landscape by Kibong Rhee (b. 1957), partly painted on canvas and partly on a polyester screen mounted less than an inch on top, creating an illusion of depth.
A lovely surprise spotted at the booth of Paris’s Galerie Maria Wettergren was this jacquard-style tapestry of an abstract photograph, created by veteran Danish artist and weaver Grethe Sørensen (b. 1947). Its threads conveyed vibrancy and its forms evoked the works of other popular modern and contemporary artists, such as Bernar Venet (b. 1941) and Walead Beshty (b. 1976).
Mushrooms are mysterious organisms with countless curious connotations. Appealing to the Bay Area’s sophisticated audience at FOG were these sculptures made of actual (dried) mushrooms rooted in a pot and displayed on a custom-grown fungal base. Their creator, Sam Shoemaker, who shows with L.A.’s OCHI Gallery considers himself a scientist and mycologist first and an artist second.
I’m an Art Nerd Myself, but What’s Not to Like About Sports Art?
Although I casually enjoy sports, I’m too much of an “art nerd” to devote much of my attention or time following them.
That being said, I manage to maintain playful and co-creative dialogues on contemporary sports art with several interested readers of this newsletter.
And, in fact, if sports are your passion, then there is definitely something in it for you at SFMoMA’s Get in the Game: Sports, Art and Culture, perhaps the best and most crowd-pleasing museum show currently on in the city (until February 18).
I found this exhibition remarkable for including such a wide swath of popular contemporary artists who I think are worth following and collecting (as your budget permits).
Charting Transcendence is always happy to consult with sports fans who would like to collect art that reflects their passions. (There’s a lot of very good sports art out there, not all of it wildly expensive, by the way!)
Paintings by Barbados-native Sheena Rose (b. 1985) are CT’s favorite choice for playful, iconic, 1970s-style depictions of women playing sports. Oakland’s Johansson Projects shows her work, which has been featured in several museum shows, including SFMoMA’s Get in the Game.
Open Swim (2021) by Derek Fordjour (b 1974), whose works are highly sought after on the contemporary art market, explores the fraught relationship that black bodies have to public pools, given the history of segregation in the United States.
Slow Clap (2022), a painting by Jake Troyli (b. 1990), a former NCAA Division I basketball player who creates works that often focus on the disturbing aspects of athletic competition. Here mostly naked athletes move like automatons through various stages required by elite sports.
Conceived of by the same artist who duct taped a banana to a wall, this elongated foosball table, Stadium (1991), large enough for two entire soccer teams to play against each other, was a major highlight of SF MoMA’s sports art show. Indeed, only Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) could have created such a work (IYKYK!)
San Francisco Gallery and Museum Highlights
As an aside — and I stress that I’m not trying to turn this newsletter into a “foodie” blog — what makes San Francisco even more appealing is its heavy concentration of Asian restaurants.
Besides the standard American breakfast served each morning in my hotel, a baguette sandwich at FOG Fair, and a plate of tacos, I ate exclusively Asian cuisine throughout the week, and it was all absolutely delicious.
Japanese, Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Vietnamese, Northern Thai, and Singaporean, nearly all of which are very hard to find good, reasonably priced, authentic examples at home.
True art lovers, after all, need rich, nourishing, and sometimes delicately spicy fuel to sustain them through hours of walking and exploration of a city throughout the day. Personally, I feel such meals reward me after long forays through dozens of galleries.
Anyway, what follows are just a few highlights culled from my favorite dozen or so San Francisco galleries and half a dozen or so art museums I visited last week.
Although the city remains well-connected with other art scenes around the world — Asia in particular — its art scene takes pride in locally grown and supported artists.
Still, much of the art one sees in San Francisco can be fully experienced nowhere else on earth.
New ink-on-paper drawings are now available from the country’s leading cartographic artist, Lordy Rodriguez (b. 1976), who shows with SF’s outstanding Hosfelt Gallery. This mash-up of the maps of Cuba and Florida is part of his newer Sea Monster series, featuring whimsical sea-monsters that Lordy meticulously copied from 17th and 18th century maps.
Soleé Darrell is a Bermudian artist working in the Bay Area who currently has an emerging artist solo show at SF’s Museum of the African Diaspora. Her colorful, abstract, dye on silk velvet works have magnificent texture and were shown by Oakland’s Pt. 2 Gallery at FOG. They are surprisingly affordable (for now) in the mid 4-figure range.
An underrated highlight of SF’s Art Week, this show of loom-woven sculpture by Kira Dominguez Hultgren (b. 1980) at Eleanor Harwood Gallery, located San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project, underscores the importance of women artists making fiber-based art that explores notions of indigeneity, femininity, and identity.
A pleasant discovery at downtown SF’s Rebecca Camacho Presents were abstract landscapes by Austin-based artist Claire Oswalt (b. 1979). Claire’s technique is to paint, cut, and sew various pieces of canvas together to form a landscape, evocative of Asian and abstract expressionist painting.
San Francisco’s most beloved piece of ancient art can be found at the Asian Art Museum: this ritual vessel in the shape of a rhinoceros from Shandong Province, China, dates from between 3000 and 3500 years old. The level of detail on this piece of art reveals a level of craftsmanship and artisanry that was unparalleled, for example, in Europe in that era.
SFMoMA is currently hosting a mid-career retrospective of the country’s leading woman Black portraitist, Amy Sherald (b. 1973). A recipient of numerous awards, including being selected to pain the official portrait of Michelle Obama, Sherald’s flat yet sensitive depiction of ordinary Black individuals, such as the late Breonna Taylor, is poignant and powerful.
San Francisco’s municipally-associated de Young Museum is hosting the first major U.S. retrospective of work by the Polish-born, cosmopolitan painter Tamara de Lempicka (1894-1980). Paintings of hers from the 1920s and 1930s, like Portrait of a Girl in Green Dress (1931) have influenced Hollywood’s contemporary reinterpretation of the Art Deco era of style.
Bay Area painter Chelsea Ryoko Wong (b. 1986) has garnered institutional recognition for her iconic, flat, cut-out style paintings depicting scenes of people at rest or at play. This painting, Mint Tea in the Sauna During Sunset (2022), is now in the collection of the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. Chelsea is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery and her paintings sell briskly for many good reasons.
