January a picture-perfect month at Bay Area galleries
Though Sonya Rapoport (1923-2015) was the first woman to receive a master’s degree in art from UC Berkeley, in 1949, and had been included in the prestigious Whitney Biennial in 2006, she received little Bay Area attention in her lifetime and her work had
Photography, it’s been widely recognized, is inherently surreal. The world is composed entirely of energy, from the bouncing molecules that we sense as the temperature of the air, to the ever-shifting relationships of bodies to one another and to the spinning Earth. The photograph was invented with the single aim of halting all that.
Unlike the products of fully mature picture-making strategies — painting and drawing — the lens-captured image greatly restricts the imagination of the artist, reducing the act of creation to mere manipulation. At most, artists can change the scene, say by moving objects or adjusting lighting and exposure or dressing up models. Or they can cut-andpaste and colorize after the fact. In the end, however, the very thing that makes a picture a photograph is its tether to an event in the real world.
Yet that picture — flattened, restricted in tonal range and color, reduced or enlarged, plucked from the stream of life — is false in every way but photographically.
Seven images by British photographer Chris DorleyBrown, on view at Robert Koch Gallery through March 2, look at first like nothing more than technically proficient documents of daily life on the quiet streets of East London. Figures stroll nonchalantly, shadows fall convincingly. Yet there is an unsteady quality to DorleyBrown’s pictures, as if they were dollhouse sets, charmingly precise but subject to toppling at even the slightest jostle.
He makes them by digitally stitching together multiple exposures — the gallery calls them “captures” — of aspects of
For a guide to this season’s two biggest art fairs, go to date book.sfchronicle.com.
a given scene over the course of up to an hour. We are left with not the typically uncanny vision any photograph presents, but an experience more like the string of loosely connected dreams that fill our nights. Anniversaries of note: Celebrations of significant milestones for two San Francisco galleries are under way, and both exhibitions are worthy of attention.
Fraenkel Gallery, known internationally for an impeccable program that has shaped photography’s interpretation and its market, is being feted by the much younger Adrian Rosenfeld Gallery as Fraenkel enters its 40th year. Rosenfeld’s exhibition “Each With the Other,” selected from Fraenkel holdings, runs through Feb. 23.
The show is heavy on portraits, and there are both famous and surprising examples of the genre. Among the first group are several works by Diane Arbus, represented by rare examples printed in her lifetime — “vintage” prints. The surprises include two images made on the same day, one by Richard Avedon describing Lee Friedlander as a comically sloppy loner with a Hasselblad camera hanging from his neck, the other by Friedlander of a white-maned Avedon, backed by three strapping assistants, all centered on a giant view camera and tripod.
Meanwhile, the ever-energetic Ever Gold Projects looks back on 10 years with a show that spreads across three spaces in the Minnesota Street complex. “Gold Standard” (Saturday, Jan. 12, through Feb. 23) has no tight theme, but it does a fine job of reviewing owner Andrew McClintock’s eclectic program of genuine discoveries, historic recoveries and collaboration with dealers outside the Bay Area. A digital native: For many who saw the 2012 exhibition “Spaces of Life: The Art of Sonya Rapoport” at Mills College Art Museum, the work was something of a revelation. Though Rapoport (1923-2015) was the first woman to receive a master’s degree in art from UC Berkeley, in 1949, and had been included in the prestigious Whitney Biennial in 2006, she received relatively little Bay Area attention in her lifetime and her work had virtually no commercial success.
Yet, beginning in 1976 with drawings and mixed-media works she made on found computer paper, she built a prolific late career out of an idiosyncratic mix of formal manipulation, design research and computer programming. The drawings, paintings and installations she produced place her among the early pioneers of digital and computer art.
The photography gallery Casemore Kirkeby steps outside its normal confines with a pop-up exhibition in a large gallery across the atrium from its main space at Minnesota Street Project. The exhibition “Sonya Rapoport: An Aesthetic Response” comprises painting and computer art from the 1970s, but you may think it was made 20 years later. The show runs for only two weeks, from Saturday, Jan. 12, through Jan. 26.
“Chris Dorley-Brown: The Corners”:
10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. TuesdaysSaturdays. Through March 2. Free. Robert Koch Gallery, 49 Geary St., S.F. 415-421-0122. www.kochgallery.com
“Each With the Other”:
10 a.m.-6 p.m. TuesdaysFridays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays. Through Feb. 23. Free. Adrian Rosenfeld Gallery, 1150 25th St., S.F. 415-285-2841. https://adrianrosenfeld. com
“Gold Standard”:
Noon-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Saturday, Jan. 12, through Feb. 23. Ever Gold Projects, 1275 Minnesota St., S.F. 415-254-1573. www. evergoldprojects.com
“Sonya Rapoport: An Aesthetic Response”:
11 a.m.-6 p.m. TuesdaysSaturdays. Saturday, Jan. 12, through Jan. 26. Free. Casemore Kirkeby Gallery, 1275 Minnesota St., S.F. 415-851-9808. https://casemore kirkeby.com