I had planned a full conversation (with myself, mainly) over the state of San Francisco’s art scene, a treasured and historic place in the vernacular of American art, and what appears to be an ongoing crisis at the educational and institutional level, but I am saving that for another day. As a native Bay Area, and though have moved away for the past 5 years, it feels a bit like sports fandom: you root for your home team. I love the Bay, I believe the art that has come from the Bay (i.e., see the cover of Issue 01 of The Unibrow) is some of the most important in the world. I believe that the FOG Design + Art Fair, which opens this week, is one of the best in America. But I can’t help but read the post from Gallery 16 and not feel a bit of panic and the loss of something great. The city will come back, it always does, especially with the incredible people there and the innovation and ideas coming from the Bay all the time, but I struggle to find an American city more damaged by the pandemic and ensuing changes in the way we live our lives quite like San Francisco. I can’t wait, in the coming months, to be speaking to some of the greats who are there to give us some perspective… I’m just an outsider now rooting for his favorite team…
Another thing to note: congrats to Sayre Gomez. Holy shit. His new solo show, Precious Moments, that opened at David Kordansky Gallery in LA is an absolute blockbuster. After reading the NY Times profile on Sayre, which I must admit felt a little too distant from the artist himself, focused a bit too much on “he doesn’t always touch his own paintings” angle, and missed on some of the graffiti threads throughout the work and how Sayre sees a place. But he is a visual director who continues to better, and this show should be seen in person.
But I want to talk briefly about Linder. I walked into Linder’s Sex-Pol show at Blum Gallery a few years ago and was blown away not only in the imagery but the range of photomontages and the career she has had. Since the 1970s she has been transforming, reimagining and recalibrating the popular image, sort of Dada meets surrealism meets Punk meets Hollywood. Her new show at Modern Art in London is at the core of her life’s work: Greek mythology and the mythologization of popular icons. The title, Where the tongue slips it speaks truth, gets right into the heart of it, the same feeling you got from her retrospective at Hayward Gallery last year. She is reconstructing how we see the world and the effects of big Pop and collective History has on our lives.
What is fascinating is that Linder assumes you sort of know what you are looking at. You know the icons. You know the story you have been sold. And when she flips the narrative upside down in these collages, you are jostled. In this particular show, she manipulating our understanding of ancient sculpture, cinema, sport, and advertising, redistributing their original intent to fit a new dynamic. And for nearly 50 years now, Linder remains utterly original and fascinating in this practice.
So what is truth? What are we supposed to think about the visual culture we all have been handed and thrust upon? I think Linder is doing that thing that only the pre-Internet world offered but has been able to flourish in this post-digital landscape… it’s that the hand is still working at a speed that is vital and revolutionary. —Evan Pricco
—A few other things of note… loved our review on Christian Rex van Minnen in Tokyo…
—Read our interview with Jacopo Mazzonelli ahead of his museum show in Bologna…
—Speaking of FOG, we have copies of The Unibrow at the Park Life pop-up at Fort Mason… come get it.
