WINTER FOG
JANUARY 2024
Happy New Year! As we begin 2024, there are some wonderful gallery shows and fairs welcoming us back as we launch in to the new year and re-focus our attention. In San Francisco, the FOG Design+Art Fair held its tenth edition. The fair brought together 45 international galleries and design dealers with strong showings of contemporary art and design. It is synonymous with a unique spirit due to its bold hybrid approach and intimate setting, dynamic programming on-site and its community-led mission to champion art and design in historic Fort Mason.
To mark its first decade, FOG launched a new platform to spotlight art and design by young and underrepresented artists. Housed in the adjacent Pier 2 building, once home to the San Francisco Art Institute, FOG Focus had a great first outing, which presented nine galleries—and a pop-up bagel shop made entirely of felt. British artist Lucy Sparrow’s Feltz Bagel installation was an undoubted smash feature at FOG Focus, drawing an unceasing flow of visitors eager to get their hands on felted babkas, felted bags of chips, felted packs of cigarettes, felted caviar tins, and the like. Sparrow was also on hand to build customized bagels; buyers had their choice of fillings from felted arugula, lox, mushroom slices, and more.
A selection of noteworthy artworks can be seen below that captured our attention both at the fair and at various shows across the country this month. Read on for some of our favorite picks ...
CLAUDIA WIESER
A solo booth by Claudia Wieser at the FOG fair was conceived as a total environment, featuring polished stainless steel mirrors, turned wood sculptures, ceramic tile furniture, a woven tapestry, drawings and wallpaper. Titled “Echoes of Life,” the installation flirted with functionality while being highly formal with a big-picture perspective on art history. Wieser’s work spans debates in architecture, design, and fashion.
Based in Berlin and trained as a blacksmith before she studied art, Wieser’s proficiency in a range of materials from copper and gold leaf to wood and clay informs the broad-ranging tactility of her work, particularly her coupling of cool and warm, hard and soft materials. In the mirrored and tiled wall work, seen above, the ethereal, airy, reflective stainless steel of the top half of the work contrasts with the grounded evocation of land and sea below.
Wieser was born in 1973 in Freilassing, Germany and has an MA in Painting and Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. Her work is collected by prominent institutions, including the Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany; Deutsche Bundesbank Kunstsammlung, Frankfurt; and Zabludowicz Collection, London. In July 2021, Wieser unveiled her first outdoor public installation at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York commissioned by Public Art Fund. In 2023, she presented work in collaboration with historic Yves Saint Laurent couture, designing a set within the Museé Yves Saint Laurent, Paris.
ALEX PRAGER
Alex Prager's photograph, Twilight (shown at FOG), draws inspiration from the peculiar and isolating period defined by the Covid-19 pandemic. The work portrays a solitary figure tumbling against a twilight sky, situated atop a mountain. The ambiguity of whether the subject is falling or flying adds an intriguing layer. This composition is part of the artist's series 'Part One: The Mountain', which captures the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in a unique and compelling way. In a 2022 interview with the Financial Times, Prager explained, 'The idea of a mountain is of a primal place where we go when we are isolated and alone ... It is representative of the out-of-control reckoning of life and love.'
Alex Prager lives and works in Los Angeles and is a photographer and filmmaker who creates elaborately staged scenes that draw inspiration from a wide range of influences and references, including Hollywood cinema, experimental films, popular culture, and street photography. She deliberately casts and stages all of her works, merging past and contemporary sources to create a sense of ambiguity. Each photograph captures a moment frozen in time, inviting the viewer to 'complete the story' and speculate about the narrative context. Prager’s work often makes the viewer aware of the voyeuristic nature of photography and film, establishing the uneasy feeling of intruding upon a potentially private moment. In her images of both crowds and individuals, she examines conflicting emotions of claustrophobia and isolation, revealing an ominous and perpetual anxiety. The highly choreographed nature of her photographs and films exposes the way images are constructed and consumed in our media-saturated society.
Her work is in numerous international public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Australia; Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.
ANNIE LAPIN
Digital histories and analog mark-making come together to form Annie Lapin's landscapes. Initiating each painting with generous pours of paint and liquid graphite, Lapin’s trompe l’oeil forms, photographic blurs, and references to the imagery of Western landscape painting and photography, create a sense of mystery in her work. Seemingly representational and highly rendered imagery such as forests or figures merge with the abstract.
Annie Lapin was born in 1978 in Washington, D.C. and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2007, her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University in 2001. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; Santa Barbara Museum; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; and Zabludowicz Collection, London, England.
CAMMIE STAROS
Appropriating tropes of Greco-Roman antiquities, Cammie Staros references images and symbols that have been strategically utilized to create, maintain, and reinforce cultural identity throughout the history of Western civilizations. Uniting this historic imagery with contemporary materials and processes, Staros explores notions of time, both on a cultural and geological scale. She anthropomorphizes her sculptures through references to armor and dress—often a gendered divide—as traditionally depicted on Greek figure vases. Her works remind us that historical narratives are told through visual languages as much as written ones.
Cammie Staros was born in 1983 in Nashville, TN and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BA from Brown University, Providence, in 2006 and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, in 2011. Staros has been awarded residencies by the Headlands Center for the Arts and the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She was also awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship award in 2020 and has a forthcoming solo exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art in 2024.
MARISA ADESMAN
Marisa Adesman’s surreal and thought-provoking paintings often depict ordinary objects in bizarre contexts and striking states of mystical transformation. She composes tableware, candles, house plants, flowers, linens, kitchen utensils, and furniture into strange and unusual arrangements that destabilize our notions about the proper order of a house and home. These settings are often centered around the female form and are guided by Adesman’s visionary poetics of interior space. She examines the art historical meaning of the female figure as a pliable body designed for amorous desire and protection, but also sinister and capable of deception and corruption.
Adesman received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2018 and her BFA from Washington University, St. Louis, MO in 2013. Her first museum solo exhibition, The Birth of Flowers, is currently on view at KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville, KY. Adesman lives and works in St. Louis, MO.
ROBERT RUSSELL
Robert Russell is a conceptual painter whose work returns to ideas of memory, iconography, and mortality in a painting language that is attentive to beauty, the history of art, and the role of photography. His newest series depicts Allach porcelain figurines produced by forced labor in Nazi concentration camps and factories. Touching on something more personal, these hauntingly still and breathless figurines are marked by Russell’s distinct soft focus indicative of the tenderness and emotional depth with which he approaches these loaded objects. On the surface the beautiful imagery provides viewers with the opportunity for quiet reflection, while the reality of their origin turns thoughts to the nature of evil.
Russell was born in 1971 in Kansas City, MO and completed his MFA at The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
TONY MATELLI
Tony Matelli is known for his conceptual range and material dexterity, moving deftly from uncanny, life-size figurative works to exacting and miraculous reorientations of common objects. For 25 years, Matelli’s artistic concerns have centered around the human condition, imbuing his sculptures with a surprising and deeply human vulnerability. Incorporating figurative, botanical, and abstract forms in his sculpture, Tony Matelli creates uncanny objects that are both unsettling and comical. Across his oeuvre, Matelli discards traditional genre categories in favor of experiential concerns.
Tony Matelli lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is in public collections worldwide, including ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark; Kunstmuseum, Bergen, Norway; Cranbrook Art Museum, Cranbrook, MI; The Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA; MIT Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Musee d’arte Contemporain Montreal, Canada; Museum Ludwig, Cologne Germany; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands; and the State National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia.
LILIANE TOMASKO
Drawn to representing liminal spaces and states of consciousness, Liliane Tomasko’s canvases comprise arrangements of sweeping, curvilinear brushstrokes that fluidly intertwine. Her recent works develop her interest in powerfully atmospheric evocations of psyche. Her abstract acrylic paintings are searching for the subconscious through color. In such emotionally magnetic works, Tomasko pushes beyond the sensuality of the material world to explore the world of dreams.
Liliane Tomasko lives and works between New York and London. She earned her BFA at the Chelsea College of Art & Design, and her MFA at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Her work is collected by public and private collections, including the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin; Kunstmuseum Bern, among others.