Between ICA San Francisco and Jessica Silverman, there are some moving, complicated, intimate exhibitions on display in San Francisco right now. We’ve compiled some of our favorites below to help you navigate.
“Saif Azzuz: Cost of Living” at ICA San Francisco
January 16-May 19, 2024
View of the exhibition “Saif Azzuz: Cost of Living,” Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, 2024, courtesy of Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, photo by Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography.
Bay Area artist Saif Azzuz brings his first institutional solo exhibition to ICA San Francisco with “Cost of Living,” a mixed-media installation that both centers and interrogates the gentrification process. Here, a collection of readymade sculptures, large-scale wood assemblage, found objects, and paintings utilize the very materials of gentrification—barbed wire, construction fencing, and semi-private mesh—to criticize it.
“Hayv Kahraman: Look Me in the Eyes” at ICA San Francisco
January 16-May 19, 2024
Hayv Kahraman, “Loves Me, Loves Me Not,” 2023, oil on linen, 100 x 80 inches, courtesy of the artist, Pilar Corrias Gallery, Jack Shainman Gallery, Vielmetter Los Angeles and The Third Line.
Iraqi artist Hayv Kahraman delivers her largest solo museum exhibition to date with “Look Me in the Eyes,” a collection of paintings and sculptures that have never been seen before. Centering on Kahraman’s experience as an Iraqi/Kurdish refugee in Sweden, this exhibition examines which bodies are hypervisible and which are rendered invisible by the processes of colonialism. “Look Me in the Eyes” offers up the artist’s first-ever audio installation, which is a deeply personal look at her family’s refugee experience.
“Enthroned” at Jessica Silverman
January 11-March 2, 2024
Frida Escobedo, “Creek Chair,” 2022, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman.
Jessica Silverman presents an assortment of works by ten female designers, each playfully mocking the masculine angularity of Modernism. Co-curated by gallerist Marc Benda of Friedman Benda, “Enthroned” comprises chairs, ottomans, side tables, and standing lamps. Some pieces are more mannerist in style, like Anna Aagard Jensen’s Jensen—a six-foot-tall pink sculpture offering a playful, suggestive interpretation of the female body. Others are sensuous, like the chair draped with nickel ball chains that is architect-trained Frida Escobedo’s regal, extravagant, Creek Chair. Many works in this exhibition have a feminine feel to them, too, with vibrant pink and red hues and soft, rounded edges.
“Loie Hollowell: In Transition” at Jessica Silverman
January 11-March 2, 2024
Loie Hollowell, “Three Centimeters Dilated,” 2023, oil, acrylic medium, aqua resin and epoxy resin on linen over panel, 45 × 52 1/2 × 8 inches, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman.
In a set of paintings that ceremoniously unite the sensory and spiritual, Jessica Silverman delivers a stunning solo exhibition of new bas-relief paintings by Loie Hollowell. Each of the ten pieces showcased in “In Transition” depicts a luminous orb, with color palettes ranging from sunny yellows to more melancholic, nocturnal blues. With titles like One Centimeter Dilated and Ten Centimeters Dilated, Hollowell’s exhibition leaves no question about her exhibition’s themes of pregnancy, evolution, and birth. Each work almost appears to evoke an apple, too, suggesting a more matriarchal retelling of the story of Genesis.
