The closest thing San Francisco has to Art Basel, the FOG Design + Art Fair opens at the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture for four days this weekend (Jan. 19-22). With 48 international galleries setting up eclectic booths, it’s a fun way to see a broad cross-section of contemporary art in bite-size chunks.
With its numerous bars and dim sum stations and an appearance by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and her black fedora-clad husband, Paul, the jet-setting affluence was conspicuous at Wednesday night’s opulent preview party. But whether or not some attendees were bitter they didn’t get an invite to Davos this weekend, the quality of the work speaks for itself. Here are five trends The Standard picked up on.
Quin's art approaches the limit of maximalism. | Peter-Astrid Kane/The Standard
The Use of Color Approached Total Fearlessness
People have said painting is dead for approximately a century, but if FOG is light on anything, it’s photography—or much of anything black-and-white. Intensely polychromatic painting is everywhere, with some spectacular pieces from Lauren Quin (whose first U.S. solo show is approaching) and Eamon Ore-Giron.
Equally colorful but acrylic-free is Angelo Filomeno’s series Islands, a set of 18 vibrantly hued depictions of rocky outcroppings jutting up from the ocean. Look closely, and you’ll see they’re actually embroidered!
Instagrammable Neon Is Swallowing Its Own Tail
Neon and its cousin, cold cathode, have always been huge in San Francisco, from the Castro Theatre marquee to the “You Are Safe Here” sign at Jolene’s. Lurid and fun, neon is also extremely seductive to anyone with a smartphone.
Rare is the person who can resist assembling the entire squad in front of a cheeky neon sign for a group pic, but the trend in statement neon is clearly eating itself. Simple pieces like Erica Deeman’s Being are outright existentialist, a far cry from influencer catnip like “Hello gorgeous” or “Please don’t do coke in the bathroom.”
If you thought fluorescent-light pioneer Dan Flavin was a capital-M Minimalist, FOG snuck in under him like a $1 bid on The Price Is Right.
Aggressive Furniture Is Everywhere
“This is my art, and it is dangerous!” Catherine O’Hara’s pretentious pomo sculptress Delia Deetz screams in the original Beetlejuice, not long before some of her abstractions come to life and ensnare several characters. Home furnishings are often exquisitely beautiful, although they’re chiefly intended to be useful—yet FOG has plenty of pieces that dare you to put a coaster down and see what happens.
You might need Opener, Julia Phillips’s demonic pair of tongs, to pick up your glass.
The trend is witty and playful—think a humongous, fuzzy floor lamp that looks like a wuvable Dr. Seuss character, a geometrically deconstructed rattan chair or the Jasper-Johns-but-make-it-fun Pop Art of Elmgreen & Dragset’s On Target, Fig. 12. A mirrored surface that draws your attention to itself rather than your own reflection? In our narcissistic age, that’s basically a dare, too.
Not Many People Are Feeling Especially Provocative
Sarah Lucas has several haunting photographs of tentacle-like legs wrapped around each other, a middle finger to the male gaze. Otherwise, the Young British Artists, this is not. Chalk that vibe up to a timidity that comes from hoping nobody is ever offended, but spiky social critiques are in short supply. There are exceptions, like an American flag expertly bedazzled with anti-theft retail security tags.
A defiant trio of vases depict Malcolm X and Allen Iverson plus a ton of iconography paying homage to Black culture—the bubbly graffiti at the base is really, really clever—but the jabs are mostly tongue-in-cheek, like the litany of mindless exclamations in Mel Bochner’s Amazing.
Jessica Silverman Remains SF’s Most Creative Gallery
San Francisco’s own Jessica Silverman deserves credit for mounting small-scale companion exhibitions to the major museum’s shows. The gallery’s "Judy Chicago: Making Advances" was a particularly great counterpoint to the de Young’s 2021 retrospective, and visitors to FOG can see a few of the peerless feminist Chicago’s pieces along with those by Sadie Barnette, Woody De Othello and others. The whole thing is called “Elsewhere Over the Rainbow,” and it’s like a group project where everyone did the work, so everyone gets an A.
📍 Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, SF
🗓 Through Sunday, Jan. 22
🎟️ $30-$35