Still from Laurel Nakadate’s Stay the Same Never Change (2009). Courtesy of the artist.

Visiting artists and scholars are of decisive importance to SFAI’s educational mission. By providing the students and faculty at SFAI—as well as the wider Bay Area public—with direct access to the major practitioners and theorists of contemporary global art and culture, the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series creates an open forum through which SFAI’s students are challenged both to go beyond basic canonical approaches to the study of art and to discover a global perspective that is enabled by, and further encourages, conceptual and comparative approaches. In addition to the public lectures they give, visiting artists and scholars, whether on campus for several days or for an entire semester, regularly engage with students, in an immediate and active way, by teaching intensives or by participating in seminars, critiques, or colloquia.

The Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series is coordinated by SFAI faculty member Glen Helfand.


Friday, September 11, 2009 — 7:30pm
Lorna Simpson
Pilara Foundation
Distinguished Visiting Photography Fellow

Receiving her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and her MFA from UC San Diego, Lorna Simpson first gained critical notice in the mid-80s for large-scale photograph-and-text works that challenge conventional views of gender, identity, culture, history, and memory. In subsequent work, she expanded upon similar themes through a variety of mediums: large multipanel photographs printed on felt; film and video works; and drawings. Venues at which her work has been exhibited include MoMA in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA). She participated in the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and Documenta 11 in Kassel (Germany) and is the subject of a number of articles, catalogue essays, and a monograph. A mid-career survey of Simpson’s work was exhibited at such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. lsimpsonstudio.com

Monday, September 14, 2009 — 7:30pm
Sterling Ruby and Robert Hobbs in dialogue

Exploring a number of major contemporary aesthetic problems, Sterling Ruby utilizes a profusion of mediums to create richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, hypnotic videos, poured-urethane sculptures, inscribed Formica monoliths, nail-polish drawings, and various forms of collage. His work often invokes minimalism to point to systems and social-power structures and alludes to such subjects as body builders, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, transgender dynamics, and gang members. Venues at which he has had solo exhibitions or screenings include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Drawing Center in New York City; Bergen Kunsthall in Bergen (Norway); Marc Foxx Gallery in Los Angeles; and MoMA in New York City. Group shows include such venues as Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing; the 2nd Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art; the 2006 California Biennial; and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

Art historian Robert Hobbs holds the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and is a visiting professor at Yale University. Before VCU, he was a lecturer at Yale and an associate professor at Cornell University. His work joins social history with literary criticism, aesthetics, and feminist and postcolonial theory. In addition to his academic work, he is a museum curator who specializes in both late modern and postmodern art. He has organized exhibitions for the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn (New York), the Drawing Center in New York City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Hobbs’s publications include monographs on Milton Avery, Alice Aycock, Edward Hopper, Lee Krasner, Mark Lombardi, Robert Smithson, and Kara Walker. An essay on Sterling Ruby is included in a forthcoming monograph. roberthobbs.net

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 — 7:30pm
Lisa Yuskavage
Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation
Distinguished Visiting Painting Fellow

By way of a candy-colored palette, visual stereotypes, and modernist, renaissance, and pornographic aesthetics, Lisa Yuskavage’s paintings address the cultural position of the female body, often deploying exaggerated images to evoke misogynistic impulses and conflicting desires. Venues at which she has had solo exhibitions include the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, and the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA). Major group shows include, or are upcoming at, such venues as the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf (Germany), the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville (Tennessee, USA), and the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Her work is collected at such venues as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, MoMA in New York City, SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA). Yuskavage earned a BFA at Tyler School of Arts at Temple University and an MFA at Yale University School of Art.

Saturday, September 26, 2009 — 8:00pm
Sunday, September 27, 2009 — 6:30pm
Performances by domizil and ICST

There will be a reception in SFAI’s Café from 7:00 to 8:00pm before the Saturday, September 26 performance.

Launched in 1996 on the initiative of Marcus Maeder, who was soon joined by Bernd Schurer, domizil is a platform for coordination, presentation, production, interchange, and cooperation among a network of artists. Based in Zurich, Switzerland, and focusing mainly on publishing and distributing work—whether online, as record releases, via live media, or through the organization of events—domizil presents in-depth explorations of digital culture (in particular, sonic art)—its sounds, methods, and social context. It is also committed to linking the work of its artists to a wide range of artistic genres.

ICST (the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology) was founded in 2005 by Gerald Bennett and Daniel Fueter as a research institute of the former Zurich Conservatory to establish itself as a specialist center in Switzerland for research in the area of music and new sound technology. The research projects of the ICST comprise three-dimensional sound projection; digital sound generation and control, together with psychoacoustics; generative art; composition; e-learning; and the archiving and documenting of electroacoustic music.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 — 7:30pm
Kan Xuan and Jewyo Rhii in dialogue with Britta Erickson and Hou Hanru

Kan Xuan and Jewyo Rhii—two of the four artists whose work comprises phase 1 of Everyday Miracles (Extended), the exhibition on view in SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries from October 1, 2009 to January 30, 2010 and at REDCAT in Los Angeles from November 22, 2009 to January 17, 2010—join Bay Area art historian and curator Britta Erickson and SFAI’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs Hou Hanru in conversation. Curated by Hou, in collaboration with Clara Kim at REDCAT, Everyday Miracles (Extended) presents women artists from across Asia and seeks to expand the dialogue on feminism, Asia, and the everyday that has emerged as a new context for creating the extraordinary in art. The opening reception for phase 1 of Everyday Miracles (Extended), from 5:30 to 7:30pm at the Walter and McBean Galleries, will immediately precede this conversation. Phase 1 is on view in the Walter and McBean Galleries from October 1 to October 31, 2009. For more information on this exhibition, please go to www.sfai.edu/current.

Monday, October 5, 2009 — 7:30pm
Fred Tomaselli
Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation
Distinguished Visiting Painting Fellow

Through complexly layered compositions that use high-gloss resin encasings, Fred Tomaselli’s intricately detailed paintings combine a variety of hybrid objects—from plants to pills—with cut-out images from fashion magazines, medical texts, and ornithological guide books. A reflection on artificial or overmediated realities—in particular, those induced by street drugs and over-the-counter or controlled pharmaceuticals—his work engages visually oversaturated beholders where they live and thus offers a kind of critique of their overstimulated visual appetites. His generation of a profusion of images works to transform the banal into the ecstatic. Venues at which Tomaselli has had solo exhibitions include the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen (Colorado, USA); White Cube, Mason’s Yard in London; and James Cohan Gallery in New York City. Group exhibitions include such venues as Prospect.1 New Orleans in New Orleans (Louisiana, USA); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the 2004 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the 2002 Liverpool Biennial in Liverpool (UK); and the 2nd Berlin Biennial.

Monday, October 12, 2009 — 7:30pm
Xu Tan

The stated aim of Xu Tan’s work is to develop critical strategies for negotiating the rapidly changing economic and cultural life of China. Drawing inspiration from the teachings of the philosopher Zhuangzi (circa 250 BCE), who questioned the tenets of empiricism, he reflects upon the social and architectural means for dividing up reality, in particular, the site-specific changes rapidly occurring in Chinese cities in the Guangzhou region. Venues at which his work has been exhibited include P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (MoMA) in Long Island City (New York), the Venice Biennial, the Berlin Biennial, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane (Australia), the Guangzhou Triennial, and De Appel in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions include such venues as the DAAD Gallery in Berlin, Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou, and BizArt in Shanghai. Xu’s project Keywords School at YBCA will be presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco from September 26 to November 15, 2009.

Monday, October 19, 2009 — 7:30pm
Allan Sekula
Pilara Foundation
Distinguished Visiting Photography Fellow

A photographer, writer, and critic, Allan Sekula devises many-leveled critiques of what he calls the imaginary and material geographies of the advanced capitalist world. An exponent of a critical realism that examines the economic, political, social, and cultural changes of globalization, he constructs work out of concrete life situations. Books by or on him include Photography against the Grain: Essays and Photo Work, 1973–1983; Geography Lesson: Canadian Notes; and Dismal Science: Photoworks, 1972–1996. He has had solo exhibitions at such venues as Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), the Berkeley Art Museum, Witte de With in Rotterdam (The Netherlands), Moderna Museet in Stockholm (Sweden), Kunstverein München in Munich (Germany), the Centre for Fine Arts (“Bozar”) in Brussels (Belgium), and the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Getty Research Institute, DAAD, and Atelier Calder. Sekula is on the faculty of the Photography and Media program at the California Institute of the Arts.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 — 7:30pm
Panel discussion: Global Art in the Downturn
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Jens Hoffmann, Hou Hanru, and Dominic Willsdon

Internationally known curators Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Jens Hoffmann, Hou Hanru, and Dominic Willsdon come together to discuss the world of contemporary art in the wake of last year’s global financial collapse. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is chief curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Rivoli (Italy) and artistic director of Documenta 13 in Kassel (Germany). Jens Hoffmann is director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco and co-curator of the 2nd San Juan Triennial in San Juan (Puerto Rico). Hou Hanru is SFAI’s director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, chair of its Exhibition and Museum Studies program, and curator of the 2009 Lyon Biennial in Lyon (France). Dominic Willsdon (moderator) is Leanne and George Roberts Curator of Education and Public Programs at SFMOMA.

Monday, November 2, 2009 — 7:30pm
Film screening and discussion:
Stay the Same Never Change (2009; 93 min.)
Laurel Nakadate (director), in person

Laurel Nakadate is known for powerful video and photographic work in which artist, subject, and viewer are entangled in an unsettling blend of seduction, power, trust, tenderness, loss, and betrayal. Such psychological complexity is likewise evident in her first feature-length film, Stay the Same Never Change (2009). Blurring documentary, narrative, and performance art traditions, the film comprises a series of naturalistic vignettes that portray everyday Middle America by following the solitary lives of distantly connected young women. It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and screened at this year’s New Directors/New Films festival at MoMA in New York City. Nakadate received a BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and an MFA at Yale University. Venues at which Nakadate has exhibited include El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Berkeley Art Museum, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (MoMA) in Long Island City (New York), the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 — 7:30pm
Darby English

Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, Darby English teaches Modern and Contemporary American Art and Cultural Studies. He is affiliated faculty in the university’s Department of Visual Arts, the Center for Gender Studies, and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture; he is also a member of the board of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture. Author of How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness and coeditor of Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress, he has received fellowships and awards from the College Art Association, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. English’s current book project, tentatively titled Abstracts of Intimacy, is a study of cultural experiments with modernist abstraction at the end of the 1960s.

Monday, November 9, 2009 — 7:30pm
Alexander Ross
Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation
Distinguished Visiting Painting Fellows

Likening the making of art to playing games, deciphering puzzles, and doing experiments, Alexander Ross purposefully limits his painterly concerns to as few colors and materials as possible in order to open up serendipitous areas of exploration. Starting his process off by constructing elaborate models from Plasticine, he then photographs the models and bases his paintings, as though photo-realistically, on the photos. A recurring feature of his style is the enmeshing of seeming antitheses: classic themes from the history of art converge with popular science-fiction illustration, the abstract converges with the figurative, and the specific converges with the general. Recent venues at which he has had solo exhibitions include David Nolan Gallery and Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City, Nolan Judin in Berlin, Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Los Angeles, and Kevin Bruk Gallery in Miami (Florida, USA). A recipient of a Lewis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in Painting and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 — 7:30pm
Panel discussion: Everyday Miracles (Extended), Phase 2
Hamra Abbas, Ringo Bunoan, and Chen Hui-chiao

This panel discussion brings together in conversation the three artists whose work comprises phase 2 of Everyday Miracles (Extended). Everyday Miracles (Extended) is on view in SFAI’s Walter and McBean Galleries from October 1, 2009 to January 30, 2010 and at REDCAT in Los Angeles from November 22, 2009 to January 17, 2010 (phase 2 is on view from November 13, 2009 to January 30, 2010 at SFAI). Curated by SFAI’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs Hou Hanru, in collaboration with Clara Kim at REDCAT, Everyday Miracles (Extended) presents women artists from across Asia and seeks to expand the dialogue on feminism, Asia, and the everyday that has emerged as a new context for creating the extraordinary in art. The opening reception for phase 2 of Everyday Miracles (Extended) will take place on Thursday, November 12, 2009 from 5:30 to 7:30pm at the Walter and McBean Galleries. For more information on this exhibition, please go to www.sfai.edu/current.

Monday, November 16, 2009 — 7:30pm
Marlene McCarty
2009 Richard C. Diebenkorn Teaching Fellow

Generally focusing her work on sociopolitical subjects, Marlene McCarty is both an artist and a commercial designer. In 1989, she founded the design studio Bureau, where, among other design projects, she devised film titles for such movies as American Psycho, Far from Heaven, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Ice Storm, and Velvet Goldmine. Her noncommercial art explores such topics as sexuality, obscenity, and the violence inherent in everyday familial relationships. In one long-running project, she collected news accounts of murder-committing teenage girls and assembled large-scale portraits in graphite and ballpoint pen based on them. Venues at which she has had solo exhibitions include Metro Pictures, Bronwyn Keenan, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co in New York City. Group exhibitions include such venues as El Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Secession in Vienna, and Galerie Nosbaum & Reding in Luxembourg. In 2002–2003, McCarty received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has taught at such institutions as New York University, Yale University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Cooper Union.

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SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs—a component of which is the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series—are supported in part by the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. The Distinguished Visiting Painting Fellowships are funded by the Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation, and the Distinguished Visiting Photography Fellowships are funded by the Pilara Foundation. The performances by domizil and ICST are presented by SFAI’s Exhibitions and Public Programs in conjunction with Swissnex San Francisco. Everyday Miracles (Extended) is presented in collaboration with REDCAT, where it is made possible with the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Arts Council Korea, the George and MaryLou Boone Fund for Artistic Advancement, and the Taipei Cultural Center in New York City. The Richard C. Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship was established in 1998 by the generosity of Richard Diebenkorn’s family. The $25,000 fellowship makes it possible for the contemporary artist to whom it is awarded both to teach at SFAI and to pursue studio work.