2.23 / Best Of: Year Two

Best Of: Spencer Young

Image: Installation view, Milieux Sonores, 2010, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco. Courtesy of ICST/Zurich University of the Arts, GAFFTA and swissnex, San Francisco.

Best Excuse to Skip Saturday Brunch with Your Ex: Kadist Reading Room

It's difficult to find specialty art publications in San Francisco. I used to bike to a small cigarette/magazine shop in Russian Hill just to get UOVO, a tome-size Italian art journal now out of production. Thankfully Kadist San Francisco has lassoed this lacuna with its Reading Room, an open invitation to browse its excellently curated collection of art mags from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Browsing Room would be a more appropriate title, as these types of art publications—mostly international and esoteric—tend to be difficult for reading and better for skimming. Plus, Reading Room takes place during what are usually the hours of hazy hangovers, when untangling the complexities of an essay about bidets through the critical lens of Badiou might not be very productive, but rifling through these magazines' rich visual features and designs would be. Unfortunately you can't purchase anything at Reading Room, but perusing the smart pages of titles like Kaleidoscope, OPEN, and Nero while enjoying the complimentary tea and cake will do just fine. However, a word of warning to others with a penchant for rarefied objects: the exotic origins and seductive images of these easy-to-fetishize titles can lead you toward obsession.

Best Way to Get an Art School Education Without Paying for One: Public Lecture Series at California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute (and occasionally Mills College Art Museum)

The lecture series hosted by local art schools continue to be an invaluable resource for staying abreast of recent trends in the art world and a friendly reminder of who's sparking them. Thanks in part to Grants for the Arts and the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, these lectures and readings by noteworthy professors and practitioners in art, architecture, and literature are free. Often there are complimentary drinks and refreshments, too. Sometimes the lectures are oddly underattended, which can allow for direct discussion with the lecturers; other times they're excessively crowded, which can stir memories of college 101 classes and spur consequent bouts of melancholy. Either way, I've found many of them inspirational. Memorable moments from this past year's series include an epic evolutionary narrative of Africa's ecology by Sanford Kwinter, professor of Architectural Theory and Criticism at Harvard, and a meandering yet brilliant glimpse into art critic Jan Verwoert's notion of the "pure profane" by way of Italian Renaissance paintings.

Best New Arts Space: Gray Area Foundation for the Arts

Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) recently switched venues from its previous space on Jones Street to the corner of Sixth and Market Streets.

The distance between the two is tiny—literally a stone's throw—but the architectural and aesthetic differences are immense. The old space had all the familiar components of a traditional gallery: clean white walls, small yet comfortable sectioned-off display rooms, and clean toilets. It was nice but borderline sterile.The new site has a basement that used to serve as a speakeasy with underground tunnel access to Jones Street back in the 1920s. This lairlike space is ideal for the experimental tech art GAFFTA hosts. It lends legitimacy to a mad scientist sensibility by looking and feeling like an authentic medieval laboratory, the kind of place in which one might imagine Frankenstein being brought to life.

Best Audacious Title for a Museum: International Art Museum of America

Among the garage stores selling cheap Chinese-made goods on Market Street stands a palatial building with the bold name "International Art Museum of America" emblazoned in a gold Roman typeface on its stately façade. Opening this past March, the International Art Museum of America (IAMA) has continued to confuse and intrigue me every time I walk by. Initially I, like most, thought it was some elaborate joke, but after a walk-through with the director, I realized IAMA takes itself quite seriously. Ironically, IAMA also boasts a large Chinese collection—Chinese art, Chinese architecture, and a Chinese garden that's visible from the building's Market Street windows—but these are of a more austere and spiritual variety than the utilitarian and gimmicky hodgepodge being sold nearby. The museum’s raison d’être, like most of the other art projects’ and institutions’ in the area, is to help "clean up" and "beautify" San Francisco's Central Market district. One might imagine that blending in with an environment would be a more effective way to subtly change it from within. But I suppose with a name like that, anything is possible. 

Kadist Foundation Reading Room. Courtesy of the Kadist Foundation, San Francisco. Photo: Scott Oliver.

Best Gallery to Keep It Real, Real Fun: Kitsch Gallery

Kitsch was a DIY art gallery and music venue run by young artists in a warehouse at Seventeenth and Capp Streets from fall 2009 to May of this year. It staged ambitious art shows, eclectically literate music acts, and lively parties. But like all good flings, its flame was destined to fizzle. Fortunately, two of Kitsch's founders will be resuscitating a few beams from its framework with a new gallery this fall, this time under the name Parse—a sophisticated title that suggests a more refined repertoire. This gallery's agenda will reflect an increased effort to showcase international artists and other art forms, including performance, digital, and sound art. Like Kitsch, Parse (located at 701 Folsom Street) will continue to host several artist studios, but it will also be adding public art facilities, such as a black-and-white darkroom and screen- and block-printing areas, with weekly access; occasional sound performances instead of monthly music shows; and a more varied events schedule involving lectures and peer learning. I'm looking forward.