Enjoying the undercover street vibe of the Pheonix Hotel, we headed into the imaginative re-purposing of this Miami-esque hotel to report back on the ArtPadSF experience.

Pool installation

First off, let’s consider the location: the Pheonix hotel was a “pay by the hour” location that was bought by Joie de Vivre Hotels and renovated into a boutique hotel. Made famous for hosting raucous parties and rockstars, this is not the first time a hotel has functioned as an art fair (numerous references were made by visitors to ArtPad’s more extravagant and humid counterpart in Miami), not is it the first time this particular space has presented such an event.  The Pheonix hosted an art fair in 1996, organized by celebrated ex-San Francisco gallerist, Jack Hanley, that included many top-tier and critically exciting galleries. This version lacks it’s predecessors global and critical reach.

Hanley was one of only two galleries based outside the Bay Area to present at this fair, begging the question for locals of whether or not an art fair can be useful if they generally present what was already on offer here. However, the fair does give locals a forum to discover or re-acquaint themselves with a selection of local galleries that often work with emerging artists. Visitors to the preview opening were also made aware of a certain problem in the Bay Area considering the role, funding and circulation of “art”. The event was billed as a benefit for the Black Rock Arts Foundation, the organizer of the annual dust covered ritual of excess and expenditure, Burning Man. Though one must also remember that BRAF funds public projects outside the single week of their main event, such “benefits” (that are ubiquitous throughout the Bay Area) often exist only to raise money for self-professed “eccentrics” and rich hangers-on to party and decorate. This attempt to bridge two of the Bay Area’s art scenes that often compete for attention and public funds  demonstrates that both forms are not fully serving publics outside their own, are not only not in dialogue, but diametrically opposed, and each operate under certain myths of their usefulness.

People’s Gallery

Pushed by the organizers to use the spaces thoughtfully and not present overloaded liquidation sales, few of the exhibitors did so, and even fewer used the systems of display of the hotel itself to determine their choices. Many of the exhibitors treated their room like any other kiosk, a fact made most apparent by a portfolio of photographic prints that presented in situ images of more prominent art fair exhibitor’s displays.

Erin Riley and Ben Baumgartner

There were a few exceptions, however, where the gallerists and artists teased the context of the hotel. Guerrero Gallery, for instance, turned the anonymous hotel suite into almost a teenager’s dorm room: juxtaposing Erin Riley’s woven tapestries of internet-derived pornographic and party-heavy images with a bed outfitted with quilted Heavy Metal comforter and pillows by Ben Baumgartner. Other galleries filled their bathrooms with abject installations, Another notable use of the space was Jack Hanley’s bathroom.

Jack Hanley Gallery

Overall, ArtPad succeeded in slowing the art fair shuffle and allowing for more contact between the viewers and their surroundings. The gallerists themselves were more available creating a enjoyable atmosphere despite the close quarters of the hotel rooms.

Rachel Kaye at Triple Base Gallery

Dina Pugh of Triple Base Gallery and René de Guzman of the Oakalnd Museum of California

Mission and Oakland galleries seemed to be taking advantage of Artpad to show their wares including: Johansson Projects, Krowswork, and Swarm Gallery from Oakland and Steven Wolf Fine Arts, Galeria de le Raza, Triple Base among others from the Mission.

Daniel Tierney at Steven Wolf  Fine Arts

More Steven Wolf Fine Arts

Kimberly Johansson and Matthew Draving of Johansson Projects

Last but not least, the smaller and even Tenderloin and outer Market based (where the Pheonix Hotel resides) galleries made their presence known, like Ever Gold, Park Life, and Unspeakable Projects.

Ever Gold Gallery

Unspeakable Projects

This post was written by Emma Spertus and Post Brothers.

Guy Dill

Popular criticism of art fairs is hardly new, the supermarket like conditions and the favoring of blue chip, easy to sell work over experimental emerging artists. SF Fine Art Fair is no exception.   The exhibition space was adorned with all of the requisite  Picasso, Miro, Lichenstein, Warhol, Stella, and Calder. The environment was for the most part quite conservative. However, there were some gems for the dedicated viewer.

For instance, Cain Schulte Gallery presented the work of Midwestern drawer and printmaker, Justin Quinn, whose drawings recalled the work of conceptual artist, Hanne Darboven.  Quinn’s develops his drawings  by distilling the letter e from passages of Moby Dick, treating the English language’s most ubiquitous letter as a white whale that haunts his image. What results are strings of the single letter arranged in swirling waves that are at once funny and poetic, creating a stream that function as both graphological inscription and phonetic intonation.

Justin Quinn

Another opportunity came toward the end of Fort Mason’s pier from an excerpt of Cream from the Top, originally presented at Performance Art Institute this winter, this selection was a standout to the typical art fair drudgery.  The exhibition highlighted graduates from the Bay Area’s MFA programs, including CCA, SFAI, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, San Jose State, SF State, etc.

Favorites include Dana Hemenway’s Artificial Rocks: A Multimedia Slideshow, a banal slideshow featuring hundreds of artificial rocks, complete with a musical soundtrack by Yanni, which echoed beautifully across the stand from Wafaa Yasin’s work. Wafaa Yasin’s performance featured a bodily conversation between the artist and a rock, invoking both ritual and labor. The artist balanced herself upon the rock, stepped cautiously around it without looking, picked it up, and sat, cradling it. As she performed this series of gestures, a speech and slideshow played considering the Museum of Tolerance in Jeruselum, a controversial museum that has been approved to be built on former Muslim cemetery grounds, containing the graves of many important Islamic saints and scholars. Her deliberation on this topic, where rocks embedded with history are displaced and archoitectural and ideological projections are overlayed nto the body.

Wafaa Yasin

Hilary Wiedemann’s Brightest Light from the Darkest Day played out the shifting relationship of reality and fiction by presenting a solar powered music box powered by the projection of documentary photographs of the sunrise.

Hilary Wiedemann

Since it was preview night for all 3 fairs, we rushed over to artMRKT and the scene shift was palatable.

Charles Linder Gallery

From the noise and periodic glimpses of Bay at the SF Fine Art Fair at Fort Mason, to the quieter more intimate feeling artMRKT in the Concourse Exhibition Center, thanks to the dark-toned carpet that engulfed the space. From a quick read on the room, the crowd seemed hipper and in the know. However, the galleries still walked the line between old and obscure, yet in this second Fair of the night, there seemed more art to chew on.

Eleanor Harwood Gallery had a interesting presence with several younger painters, including the above painting, maybe by Paul Wackers.

This piece caught the eye in its incredible depth, perhaps the most 3-D painting ever.

Mel Blockner

On our way out, I passed Paulson Bott Press, with a lovely grid of Mel Blockner flower prints, which left a sweet note on an otherwise less then underwhelming preview. We made it to SF ArtPAd, but the description will have to await the next post.

This post was written by Emma Spertus and Post Brothers.