We are only four days into 2012 and already the galleries and museums are sending notices of fascinating shows. Two that open this month focus on the human face, with portraits of the famous and the "just regular folks."
SFMOMA Artists Gallery Portrait Show: Artists Kim Frohsin, Claire Pasquier, Winni Wintermeyer Explore the Portrait Opening Jan 12
Portraits of the Iconic and the Mundane comprises Kim Frohsin’s most recent paintings, exploring instantly recognizable numbers, symbols, and commercial packaging for branded products. The work expands on the artist’s thesis that the detritus of everyday life can be a source for telling portraiture.
Portrait Landscape has been a yearlong project by artist Claire Pasquier, in which individuals were encouraged to connect with the artist via Facebook to have their portrait painted.
In what can be read as a relational aesthetics piece, the artwork draws attention to the encounter – an opportunity often missed in our modern world, as Pasquier describes it: “San Francisco is a small-big city, where people from all over the world seem to crisscross. The idea of this project came to me in Paris after I opened my workshop gallery. The window overlooked a tiny busy street. I watched all the people go by but never stop; it was like the halls in the metro. I felt the need to communicate with all these people and break the protective and indifferent walls that we build when we live in big cities.” The portraits are also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SFMOMAportrait.
Winni Wintermeyer's photographic portraits range from the constructed to the emotional, some of them carefully crafted, others captured in a passing moment. At the core they all deal with the same question of what makes a portrait.
The SFMOMA Artists Gallery is located in Building A at Fort Mason Center. Gallery hours are 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Admission to gallery exhibitions is free of charge.
Visit the website at http://www.sfmoma.org/visit/artists_gallery or call 415/441-4777 for more information. Become a fan of the Gallery on Facebook facebook.com/ArtistsGallerySFMOMA and follow them on twitter (@SFMOMAArtistsG). Check out their blog at: sfmomaag.blogspot.com.
The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents ANDY WARHOL: POLAROIDS
Philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto's book on Warhol suggests that "what makes him an American icon is that his subject matter is always something that the ordinary American understands: everything, or nearly everything he made art out of came straight out of the daily lives of very ordinary Americans. . . . The tastes and values of ordinary persons all at once were inseparable from advanced art."*
You will have a chance to judge that evaluation for yourself when the Berkeley Art Museum opens the exhibit on Jan 27th. Few have worshiped celebrity like Andy Warhol. Armed with his Polaroid Big Shot camera, he captured a wide range of individuals—the royalty, rock stars, executives, artists, patrons of the arts, and athletes who epitomized seventies and eighties high society, but also as many unknown subjects.
At Matrix. From January 27 through May 20, 2012,
*http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300135558
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/visit
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