San Francisco Art Institute Presents West Coast Survey Exhibition of Gutai, 2/8

An Opening Reception will be held on Friday, February 8, 6:00-9:00 pm at the Walter and McBean Galleries. The opening reception of "Gutai Historical Survey and Contemporary Response" features live, site-specific performances by local artists and alumni Guy Overfelt and Jeremiah Jenkins.

Dr. Shoichi Hirai, Curator at the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art
Date: Thursday, February 21, 7:30-9:00 pm
Location: Lecture Hall

A noted authority on Gutai and the curator behind Tokyo's first major retrospective of the movement, Dr. Hirai discusses the artists' activities chronologically and their significance in history, exploring how Gutai opened a new phase in art through experimental methods.

Play It Again: A Screening of Performance Art Documentation 1954-1972
Date: Tuesday, March 5, 7:30-9:00 pm
Location: Lecture Hall

This evening of film documentation highlights Bay Area-based performance art from the '50s, '60s, and '70s with rare footage that chronicles the complicated history of performance documentation and the critical possibilities it raises.

Closing Reception, Catalogue Release, and Panel Discussion
Date: Wednesday, March 27, 6:30-9:00 pm
Locations: Walter and McBean Galleries and Lecture Hall

To celebrate the closing of the exhibition and the release of the exhibition catalogue, SFAI hosts a reception with drinks and light refreshments. Following the reception, Tony Labat, SFAI's Faculty Director of MFA Programs, leads a discussion on the curatorial legitimacy of reenacting past performances. This panel features Rudolf Frieling, Curator of Media Arts at SFMOMA; Constance Lewallen, Adjunct Curator at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; artist and curator TOM MARIONI; and Mayumi Handa, special assistant to Shozo Shimamoto.

John Held, Jr. is a specialist in postwar avant-garde art movements-having interviewed, written, lectured, and curated exhibitions about John Cage, Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow, and Shozo Shimamoto, one of the founding members of the Gutai group. Held performed with Shimamoto in Japan in 1988 and 1993, and his current interest in Gutai originates from his relationship with the artist. Held's collection of Mail Art is in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, and he has placed collections with The Getty Research Institute and MoMA, New York.

Andrew McClintock is the Interim Director of Exhibitions of SFAI, Editor-In-Chief & Publisher of SFAQ (San Francisco Arts Quarterly), and Director / Co-Owner of Ever Gold Gallery in San Francisco. He has organized over 30 exhibitions at Ever Gold Gallery and has served as an independent curator at several other galleries. McClintock has also exhibited his own mixed-media work internationally and holds a BFA in photography from SFAI.

The Walter and McBean Galleries on SFAI's 800 Chestnut Street campus house exhibitions, workshops, and other alternative and experimental avenues for presenting work by international contemporary artists. All SFAI's public programs and exhibitions are FREE and open to the public. They are supported, in part, by the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), a nonprofit art institution, is a vital convening place for arts communities and an international leader in fine arts education. A small school with global impact-notable faculty and alumni include Richard Diebenkorn, Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Enrique Chagoya, Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Pau, Paul Kos, George Kuchar, Catherine Opie, Lance Acord, Barry McGee, and Kehinde Wiley-SFAI enrolls approximately 650 students in undergraduate and graduate programs, and offers a wide range of continuing education courses and public programs.
http://www.sfai.edu