Parting the Fog: SF Art Week 2025

Image credit: Kwame Brathwaite, Untitled (Couple’s Embrace), 1971. Courtesy the artist and Jenkins Johnson Gallery.

Wandering through the opening gala of FOG, along with the quiet wool suits and loud silky gowns, a few elegant freaks flowered the crowd — the rustle of see-through sequins and the thrush of feathers, red leather catsuits, and a dress like electric fuchsia origami folded, cut, and unfolded over matching boots and tights. The cold air licked the dark water surrounding the two piers at Fort Mason as the Bay shopped and preened and schmoozed.

A week after the fires consumed Los Angeles and days after the presidential inauguration, both felt almost far enough away. Though I heard sincere condolences of loss for the few Angelenos in the crowd and a few conspiratorial whispers about current politics. “Peter Thiel is here,” I heard one art dealer mutter sotto voce, “but he’s surrounded by bodyguards.”

After the wars in Ukraine and Gaza seemed to shred the grand coalition of nodding liberal agreement long maintained by the global art world, one wonders what scissors will come to it now that the tech overlords who’ve long called the Bay home—Elon, Mark, Sundar—all sit loyally in the Grand Rotunda as MAGA became our current reign.

But again, this was all, or mostly, invisible. The gala with its open raw bar and unlimited sushi felt joyously lavish. In referring to the title of Naked Lunch, sometimes San Franciscan William S. Burroughs wrote, “The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." I did not see any forks on hand.

FOG has the distinction of being a very serious art fair, meaning many of the most powerful galleries in the world come to town. Kurimanzutto from Mexico City, David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth from a dozen places, along with local heavies like Fraenkel and Anthony Meier, as well as a number of younger galleries from a larger world and a local scene from Herald St in London to pt.2 in Oakland. Fairs can feel scattered, especially on the opening night (the flash of people, the glut of sushi) but a few treasures always wink from the madding crowd—Tomashi Jackson and Brie Ruais from Night Gallery, heartbreaker collages from Jess at Hosfelt, Anoushka Mirchandani’s intimate moments in a suite of paintings at Jonathan Carver Moore, a still point in the swirl and thrush of the gala. Alongside the wave of soft chroma by Chris Johanson, Johanna Jackson, and Hiba Kalache at Altman Siegal, Joan Brown’s magnificent Let’s Dance (1976) presided, where a couple sits with one glass of wine spilled while another gets poured in the middle of a swirl of dancers.

Outside the fair, the city and its artists shone brightly in a dozen ways: The splayed velvet and polychromatic softness of Soleé Darrell at the Museum of African Diaspora, the landscape mystical cyanotypes of Meghann Riepenhoff at Haines, the incredible array of photographs shown by Jenkins Johnson in the former McEvoy Foundation for the Arts space at Minnesota Street Projects. The enduring grandeur of Ella Watson, a government charwoman in Washington DC from 1942 shot by Gordon Parks, alongside the lush beauty of the portraits by Kwame Brathwaite from the 70s and stunners by Renee Cox and Ming Smith. I had seen Parks’ photo before, but in this moment, it felt sharper and more important than ever. And the deft material play of Michelle Lopez and Ester Partegàs curated by new Wattis director Daisy Nam in the new jewel box CCA Wattis space still has me shuffling through its carpets in my mind.

I ended the week at Jessica Silverman Gallery for a cocktail party celebrating exhibitions by Julie Buffalohead and Davina Semo (the latter displaced from her home in the Eaton Canyon fire in Altadena). Watching a crowd navigate the peal of dozens of bells by Semo hung at different heights. Amidst the cacophony of the party, the clapper inside each wrapped just so with leather sounded like time—uneven, deeply resonant, and beautiful.