San Francisco Pop-Up

MARIANNE BOESKY GALLERY POP-UP IN SAN FRANCISCO

Opening Reception: January 17, 2023, 5–8 PM
On View: January 17 – March 17, 2023
Gallery 181, 181 Fremont, San Francisco

Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present a pop-up exhibition at Gallery 181—The Art Program at 181 Fremont—in San Francisco featuring works by Pier Paolo Calzolari, the Haas Brothers, Sarah Meyohas, and Frank Stella. The gallery's first presentation of this scale in San Francisco will coincide with the city's beloved FOG Design+Art Fair. Both Frank Stella and the Haas Brothers have been shown and collected extensively in San Francisco-Stella's work is in the collection of SFMOMA, and his most recent career-spanning retrospective was on view at the de Young Museum in 2016. The pop-up will also feature Pier Paolo Calzolari and Sarah Meyohas-for both artists, this will be their first time showing in San Francisco. 

Positioning Frank Stella in dialogue with Sarah Meyohas, the central installation highlights the formal and conceptual links between the two artists' practices, reflected in their shared interests in color theory and the utilization of cutting-edge technologies. Playing with algorithms and chance, new sculptures by the Haas Brothers blur the boundaries of art, design, and engineering. Rounding out the presentation is a selection of Pier Paolo Calzolari's recent salt works-juxtaposing the technological interests of Stella, Meyohas, and the Haas Brothers with the insistent hand-made nature of the Arte Povera pioneer's work.

Frank Stella, whose practice often interrogates the boundaries between painting and objecthood, was an early adopter of digital modeling and 3-D printing in the 1990s, processes he continues to use in his recent work, including Model for K.40, Model for K.123, and Model for K.144. Part of Stella's Scarlatti Kirkpatrick series, these objects are inspired by the Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti and Ralph Kirkpatrick, the renowned musicologist who cataloged Scarlatti's work. For each work in the series, Stella creates an initial prototype-a swirling, polychrome form based on the melodies and rhythms of Scarlatti's scores-that is then scanned into 3D modeling software, where Stella develops it into a complex sculpture. Stella also employed computer-aided design in the creation of Blue Hat I-a painting that appears at first glance to be a two-dimensional rendering of a Scarlatti K sculpture. Considered at close range, the canvas reveals a surface clearly built by hand-brushstrokes and smudges, exacting cuts and delineations, and translucent and opaque layers of acrylic are all visible. 

As an early adopter of the blockchain as a conceptual medium, Sarah Meyohas's Speculations were initially conceived as a backing for Bitchcoin, the artist's groundbreaking cryptocurrency. Launched in 2015 while Meyohas was an MFA student, Bitchcoin was the first tokenization of art on the blockchain. As the source of value for the currency, the works are meditations on the production and cultivation of value, using mirrors, tunnels, and voids as potent metaphors for exchange. While the Speculations conceptually occupy a space of emerging technology, the photographs themselves are in fact analog C-prints. Meyohas, who studied photography at Yale, creates these images in a studio-utilizing lighting, smoke machines, and two-way mirrors. With her holographic Interferences series, Meyohas seeks to mimic the experience of augmented reality through analog technology. While the holographic technology she employs was developed in the mid-20th century, Meyohas has pushed the medium by combining multiple holographic masters to creating a complex array of close-cropped images of plant matter, making visible the rhizomatic nature of flora and highlighting the artist's interest in structural color. The installation will also include Meyohas's ambitious 16mm film Cloud of Petals, which investigates relationships between beauty, nature, digitization, and exchange. Shot in the former Bell Labs, Cloud of Petals documents the selection of 100,000 petals from 10,000 roses. Each petal is methodically catalogued and photographed in order to create an artificial intelligence capable of producing new, unique petals ad infinitum. 

The Haas Brothers' new series, Emergent Zoidbergs, unveils anthropomorphic new expressions in bronze utilizing the artists' iconic "Zoidberg" forms. To create these sculptures, the artists generate a series of complex algorithms in a simulated virtual environment in which calculus, physics, and chance commingle to create an animation of suggestive biomorphic forms as they change shape. The series was borne out of a desire to involve the viewer in the work's ultimate creation-prior to fabricating the sculpture, the viewer is invited to watch the animation and select the moment in which the morphing sculpture appeals to them most. New design work from the Haas Brothers featuring the "Zoidberg" form will also be on view, highlighting the artists' nimble application of forms and materials across boundaries of art and design. 

Recent salt works exemplify Pier Paolo Calzolari's deft handling of organic materials-salt, tin, gold, lead, egg tempera, pastels à I'écu-to illuminate the poetic beauty of the natural world. Employing salt as a medium, the artist builds texture and depth within contemplative and atmospheric compositions that explore themes of life, death, and, ultimately, regeneration-a potent and hopeful reflection on the cyclical state of nature. Not to be overlooked, Calzolari's poetic investigations also call to mind the awe-inspiring landscapes within and around the city of San Francisco. 

 The pop-up installation will be open January 17 through March 17 at Gallery 181, 181 Fremont. Viewing is by appointment only. To schedule an appointment, contact Director Beryl Bevilacque at beryl@boeskygallery.com or 212-680-9889.