FOG Art Fair 2024.
Photo: Nikki Ritcher
Where to See Stellar Design in the Bay Area During FOG Design+Art
A wealth of design-focused exhibitions are popping up within and beyond the Golden Gate City during the annual fair, which headlines SF Art Week
San Francisco transforms into a full-fledged art and design capital during SF Art Week, the annual festival celebrating the Bay Area’s dynamic creative landscape and headlined by the 11th edition of FOG Design+Art, which opens January 23–26 at Fort Mason Center. Beyond the fair, the Golden Gate City’s trove of museums, galleries, nonprofits, and project spaces are hosting timely exhibitions and pop-ups throughout the week that underscore the region’s stronghold of artistic ingenuity. There’s also a wealth of design to be discovered—especially by vanguard talents making sculptural furniture, functional one-offs, and memorable objects inextricably tied to their Northern California roots.
See below to explore 10 design-focused exhibitions that caught Galerie’s eye:
Installation view of “Works in Progress III.” Photo: Sahra Jajarmikhayat
1. “Works In Progress III” at CCA Campus Gallery | San Francisco
After debuting the “Works in Progress” series during FOG Design+Art last year and following it up with an installment investigating the humble screen, furniture designer Kate Greenberg and Office of Tangible Space founder Kelley Perumbeti return for round three. This time, their exhibition invites fresh insight into how public benches can transform into personal and provocative works of art. “Public benches are an everyday object, but they’re also deeply tied to memory, identity, and place,” Perumbeti says. Eight newly commissioned benches, each completed by Bay Area–based designers like Hanneke Lourens and Nick Polansky, beckon reflection on how lines between public and private blur when using a bench, enriching the experience for all.
Furniture by Kim Mupangilaï at Superhouse. Photo: Gabriel Flores
Furniture by Kim Mupangilaï at Superhouse. Photo: Gabriel Flores
2. Kim Mupangilaï at FOG Design+Art | San Francisco
Kim Mupangilaï rediscovered her African roots through design—the furniture maker was born in Antwerp to a Belgian mother and Congolese father—and employs natural materials like wood, raffia, and banana leaf fiber to make unforgettable, nuanced pieces that reflect her cross-cultural identity. For her debut FOG Design+Art showcase, with Superhouse, she developed seating that investigates the Congolese origins of Belgian Art Nouveau. It delves into how late 19th-century Belgian architects exploited the Congo’s raw materials and artistic motifs to develop a wide range of decorative arts. Evoking a fin-de-siècle parlor in a bourgeois Belgian residence, the booth features a fiber artwork by Maris Van Vlack that nods to the stained glass windows common in upper-class homes but whose stylistic origins lead to the Congo.
Installation view of “A Serious Celebration” by Davina Semo at Jessica Silverman. Photo: Philip Maisel
3. “Davina Semo: A Serious Celebration” at Jessica Silverman | San Francisco
Metal bells date back 4,000 years, but Davina Semo’s hanging mobiles resemble ancient relics, contemporary treasures, and space oddities found 4,000 years in the future. Credit her material experiments—one sculpture blends novel crocheted surfaces with colors long associated with oxidization. The menagerie also hearken to the bell as a musical instrument, embracing a chorus of chimes that ring at the quarter hours; Semo made six at a traditional bell foundry in pursuit of greater sonic variation. “The process is always a revelation,” Semo says. “I love the physicality and the sense of being grounded in realness.” They’re joined by bas-relief wall works consisting of eight gleaming bronze panels punctuated with patinated circles.
“Chair 02” (2024) by Rafael Triboli. Photo: Patricia Giufrida, courtesy of the artist, AGO Projects, and Anthony Meier
“Folding Screen” (2024) by Rafael Triboli. Photo: Patricia Giufrida, courtesy of the artist, AGO Projects, and Anthony Meier
4. Rafael Triboli at Anthony Meier | Mill Valley
The emerging Brazilian designer Rafael Triboli’s debut Stateside exhibition, presented in collaboration with Mexico City gallery AGO Projects, is a veritable showcase of his self-taught woodworking expertise. He reveals a true of soulful sculptural objects, from shaped chairs and hand-forged lamps to patterned folding screens, boxes, cabinets, and trays, all exactingly crafted in rich Brazilian mahogany. Each is adorned with intricate geometric carvings, painted motifs, wax applications, and expressive cast bronze inlays. Each is contextualized with works by Triboli’s artistic idols—JB Blunk, Josef Albers, and Donald Judd—that bring his modernist-inspired practice into focus.
Installation view of “El Listón Cafe.” Photo: Ely Dominguez
5. “El Listón Cafe” at Glass Rice | San Francisco
Of Threads, the curatorial collective founded by Alma Jimenez Lopez and Sergio Mondragón, makes a thought-provoking debut with a group exhibition reckoning with the nuances of the founders’ Mexican-American heritage. Staged in dealer Cecilia Chia’s art gallery Glass Rice, the show interprets two personal journeys—one rooted in Mexican heritage, the other in an American adolescence—through fashion, furniture, painting, sculpture, jewelry, and objects by California-based, Mexican-American talents. Vignettes intermingle found objects and personal belongings with artwork, forging a home-like atmosphere that brings in pieces by each participant: Alex Ortega, Juan Fernando Valdez, and Natalie Gavidia among them. “We wanted to create this feeling that you were walking into our own homes, as if it were my own, or my own mother’s,” Jimenez Lopez says. “We were driven by this idea of inheritance and a larger question of what it means to ‘inherit’ heritage, especially as an adult.”
“Khayalami II, Room 120 Art Hotel Navigli” (2023) by Zanele Muholi. Photo: Courtesy of Zanele Muholi; Southern Guild, Cape Town/Los Angeles; and Yancey Richardson, New York. © Zanele Muholi
“Tropism Mensa Humilis” (2018) by Charles Haupt. Photo: Courtesy of Nick Aldridge/Southern Guild
6. Southern Guild at FOG Design+Art | San Francisco
Cape Town collectible design stronghold Southern Guild continues to break barriers, this time by becoming the first African gallery participating at FOG Design+Art. It plans to showcase an array of contemporary art and collectible design from its burgeoning roster, spanning Cheick Diallo’s recycled metal works and hand-thrown ceramic seating by Chuma Maweni to an organic bronze-and-glass table by Charles Haupt. The visual activist Zanele Muholi, meanwhile, is presenting seven photographs from their defining series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail, the Dark Lioness), a statement of intimate queer representation through poignant self-portraiture. It foreshadows a major solo exhibition planned for the gallery’s Los Angeles location in May.
Installation view of “Same Blue As the Sky.” Photo: Ekaterina Izmestieva
7. “Same Blue as the Sky” at Et Al. | San Francisco
Homan Rajai and Elena Dendiberia, the co-founders of fast-rising San Francisco firm Studio Ahead, frequently lean on artists and designers to create custom pieces for their projects, which span pared-down Brooklyn wine bars to artfully moody residences across the Bay Area. They teamed up with Mariah Nielson, the daughter of late sculptor JB Blunk and founder of his estate, to curate a group show that thanks the artists who inspire their studio the most. Here, moods of freedom and independence endemic to Northern California permeate furniture, sculpture, and paintings by the likes of Elana Cooper, Nobuto Suga, and the late Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, all of whom create work inextricable from its place of origin. How architecture seems to carve into the Bay Area’s sloping terrain inspired Kate Greenberg’s inventive Lean Chair, made with locally sourced materials; a bodega tribute by Jeffrey Sincich nods to the resilience of his San Francisco community.
8. “Evan Kinori: Headlands” at Headlands Center for the Arts | Sausalito
Evan Kinori has cemented his brand as a less-is-more purveyor of stylishly durable workwear, but his showing during SF Art Week shines a welcome spotlight on his lesser-known furniture collection made from sustainably salvaged old-growth redwood. Presented in partnership with Francis Gallery at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the weekend exhibition pairs Kinori’s foray into furniture with pieces by the likes of JamesPlumb, Nancy Kwon, and Marina Contro, all of whom amplify Kinori’s ethos and collectively forge a serene setting. A selection of rare titles curated by San Francisco’s stalwart William Stout Architectural Books invites further contemplation. “There’s an effort to speak volumes through objects that are visually more quiet or subtle,” Kinori says of his design philosophy, which applies just as seamlessly to furniture and interiors as it does to fashion. “Maybe people leave with a different perspective or just with a good feeling. Success would be to share inspiration or to give others energy.”
Installation view of “ Leena Similu: Nyanga” at The Future Perfect, San Francisco. Photo: Sahra Jajarmikhayat
9. “Leena Similu: Nyanga” at The Future Perfect | San Francisco
The London-born ceramist Leena Similu was a longtime designer for fashion labels Stella McCartney and Jil Sander, but began making ceramics while pregnant with her son. This compelled her to reflect on her mother’s Cameroonian lineage—and reckon with the complexities of living in a Eurocentric society. It informs a new collection of clay sculptures at The Future Perfect named after the term in Cameroonian Pidgin English referring to charm, style, magic, and beauty. Her large-scale pieces plumb the nuances of natural beauty and bodily comportment, commenting on how the pursuit of perfection can edge into distortion and discomfort. Also on view is a series of one-of-a-kind luminaires by a stellar group of illustrious California talents: Eric Roinestad, Rachel Shillander, Jason Koharik, and Bianco Light + Space.
“Rio Kobayashi & Fritz Rauh” at Blunk House. Photo: Leslie Williamson
“Rio Kobayashi & Fritz Rauh” at Blunk Space. Photo: Chris Grunder
10. “Rio Kobayashi & Fritz Rauh” at Blunk Space | Point Reyes Station
Fresh off a Design Miami showcase that scooped Best Curio for combining JB Blunk’s sinuous wooden chairs with textiles, jewelry, and shelving by three like-minded contemporary makers, the gallery returns with a dual exhibition that seeks to unearth commonalities between furniture maker Rio Kobayashi and late painter Fritz Rauh. Here, the conversation focuses on organic forms, free intuitive expression, vigorous color, technical rigor, and relationships with Blunk’s legacy. The densely patterned paintings by Rauh, who befriended Blunk in the late 1950s, ripple with hallucinogenic colors and lifelike shapes that harmonize with sculptural works by Kobayashi, who sourced salvaged redwood from local sawyers while staying at the Blunk House last year. Details and dialogues emerge in unexpected places, such as a bench’s undulating underside echoing a canvas’s sinuous, forest-green brushstroke.
Cover: FOG Art Fair 2024.
Photo: Nikki Ritcher
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