Bay Area Now 7
July 18–October 5, 2014
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Downstairs and Upstairs Galleries
701 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
www.ybca.org
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In its seventh edition, Bay Area Now is experimenting with a new approach to curating that highlights collaborations with our region’s artists and arts organizations, and pushes beyond presentation toward a multidisciplinary season-long festival of diverse artistic practices in the Bay Area. BAN7′s core idea is to decentralize the curatorial process by inviting regional arts organizations to program projects at YBCA, and to centralize the public presentation of some of the most exciting artistic voices in the region today through a strong, shared platform that makes visible the rich complexity of our many arts communities. This platform is rooted in the belief that a decentralized curatorial process opens up an opportunity for a wider range of voices and create spaces for dialogue beyond the arts.
As the Bay Area goes through enormous technological, environmental, and social change, YBCA is also in the midst of a transformation under the new leadership of Deborah Cullinan, who began her tenure as Executive Director in September 2013. YBCA is located near much of the city’s oft talked about turmoil and shift, and finds itself in a central role of being a creative space for art, dialogue, and even recalibration of high relief social and political contrasts and opposites. Initiated in 1997, at each turn of Bay Area Now YBCA has had the opportunity to revise its understanding of how the arts play a powerful role in communicating a nuanced experience of life of the region. In this edition, the platform is significant: the exhibition demonstrates how artists and the local community lead us into new territories of understanding during periods of change, and to even bigger questions about the work art does for the social realm.
The 15 organizations working with YBCA—featuring more than 200 artists throughout our galleries—were selected out of 50 proposals submitted to an open call conducted in fall 2013, and were reviewed by a distinguished panel of curators, scholars, and writers.
Working closely with their artists, each partner curated an exhibition that expresses the spirit and purpose of their unique mission and vision: n/a focuses on queer experience in contemporary art practice, queer theory, historiography, abstraction and difference; Creativity Explored, which assists developmentally disabled artists, showcases new installations exploring personal experience, pop culture and nature. Publication Studio installs a print-on-demand workshop that will give visitors a look inside their production process, while the Mission District cultural mainstay Adobe Books Backroom Gallery creates a cozy environment through ambient sound, colorful geometric forms and text. Montalvo Arts Center features the work of two former residents from their residency program collaborating on a distributed audio and sculpture project about health and well-being, and the Estria Foundation exhibits winning murals produced during the 2013 edition of their acclaimed graffiti competition.
Exhibiting organizations and artists include: [ 2nd floor projects ]: Daniel Case, Nicolaus Chaffin, Johnny Ray Huston, Curt McDowell; Adobe Books Backroom Gallery: Aaron Bray, Kristin Farr, Lori Gordon, Marc Kate, Jeff Meadows, Erik Otto, and Brian Tester; Bay Area Art Workers Alliance; Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco: Summer Mei Ling Lee; Creativity Explored: Christina Marie Fong, Tony Gomez, Marilyn Wong; di Rosa: Floris Schönfeld; the Estria Foundation: Bounce, Joker, Kufue, Irot, Agana, Griffin, Pemex; FOR-SITE Foundation: Nathan Lynch; Important Projects: Jason Benson, Joel Dean, Edgar Mojica, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts staff; Montalvo Arts Center: Susan O’Malley, Leah Rosenberg; n/a: A.K. Burns, Esra Canogullari, k. r. m. mooney, Bryan Morello, Joel Parsons, Lawrence Rinder, Lorna Sung, Nicholas Andre Sung, Tina Takemoto; Pied-à-terre: Teresa Baker; Publication Studio: Joel Dean, Matthew Endler, Kevin Killian, Oki Sogumi; San Quentin Prison Arts Project: Peter Bergne, Khalifah Christensen, Dennis Crookes, Isiah Daniels, Justus Evans, Bruce Fowler, Roy Gilstrap, Thomas Grider, Gary Harrell, John Hoskings, David Johnson, Darryl Kennedy, Joshua Locke, Samuel Marquez, Scott McKinstry, Omid Mokri, Gerald Morgan, James Norton, Eric Phillips, Steven Smith, Mark Stanley, Paul Stauffer, Fred Tinsley, Tan Tran, Kurt Von Staden, Wesley Washington, Michael Williams, Thomas Winfrey, Noah Wright and former inmates Henry Frank, Ronnie Goodman, Rolf Kissmann, Felix Lucero, Brendan Murdoch; and Stairwell’s: Amy M. Ho, Mike Rothfeld.
Full public program list here.
