Surf’s Up at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery
Exhibition Explores Ocean Environment and Surf Culture
Where: SFMOMA Artists Gallery, Building A, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA 94123
When: July 16August 28, 2009.
Gallery hours: 11:30 a.m.5:30 p.m., Tues.Sat.
Opening reception: Thurs., July 16, 5:30–7:30 PM. featuring the music of The Eldorados, a four-piece surf band that includes Stu Brandt, Mark Scardello, Jeff Moon and Scott Culbertson.
Admission: Free!!
From July 16 to August 28, 2009, the SFMOMA Artists Gallery will present the exhibition “Pipeline: Art, Surfing, and the Ocean Environment.” The exhibition examines the influence of surf culture on Bay Area artists and will feature paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, film, and mixed media works alongside custom surfboards by Jeff Clark, one of the most noteworthy big wave surfers. Artists in the exhibition include Doug Acton, Anthony Bacigalupo, Jo Ann Biagini, Leo Bersamina, Charlie Callahan, George Corzine, Peter Shepard Cole, Keone Downing, Jessica Dunne, Jack Y. Ford Collection, Colin Gift, Dale Hope/Kahala, Terry Hoff, Max Lawrence, Ian MacLean, Reuben Margolin, Serena Mitnik-Miller, Linny Morris, Adrienne Keahi Pao, Frank Quirarte, Don Ross, and Charles Valoroso.
The title of the exhibition takes its name from the Pipeline, a wave that breaks at Ehukai beach on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii, the birth place of surfing. The sport was popularized by Olympic swimmer and Hawaiian waterman Duke Kahanamoku in the early part of the 20th century. It spread to the United States, catching on first in California, and reached new heights in the 1960s, when surfing as a phenomenon became a nexus between youth culture and expressions of personal freedom. In recent years, California surfers have become an important arm of the environmental movement, raising awareness about the condition of the shoreline and ocean.
Exhibition Highlights
In the exhibition are paintings by Charlie Callahan that reverse the typical roles in which nature and humans are cast. His vivid, large-scale works painted on beach debris, imagine humans as victims consumed by sea predators.
Reuben Margolin looks closely at water, observes its dynamics, and translates it into handcrafted forms using salvaged materials. The resulting kinetic sculptures are moving tributes to the unseen forces that move water.
Adrienne Paos series of color photographs evoke travel posters that have attracted tourists to the Hawaiian Islands since the advent of jet travel. Beachfront Property at Diamond Head/Leiahi Kapa depicts the Waikiki shoreline of today, overrun with tourists and encroached upon by concrete high rises. The Hawaiian title, Leiahi Kapa, refers to the origins of the site and calls to mind a past that cannot be retrieved. Pao re-frames the visitor experience and calls into question the practice of exoticizing other cultures, the natural environment, and women.
Charles Valoroso grew up surfing Kalapaki on the island of Kauai. He is noted as the first artist to pay homage to the Aloha shirt in a series of large-scale oil paintings. His work has been translated into textiles for the Kahala shirt line. For the exhibition he will present an installation piece that includes paintings of the ocean that verge on the abstract and as well as works from his Bikini Atoll series.
Linny Morris photographed environmental issues such as the struggle to preserve Midway Atoll and its wildlife. She also made photographs of the world that exists below the surface of the water. Her appreciation of the ocean and her eye for abstraction are showcased in the exhibition.
Peter Shepard Coles realist works evoke the early period of Hawaiian contact with the West. His references are haunting there are native women donned in layers of Victorian garb and hand-to-hand combatants. In the painting, Self-Portrait as Captain Cook, Cole imagines himself in the vulnerable position of the man who opened the door to the transformation of Hawaii and paid a high price for it.
Related Film
In partnership with The Surfers Journal, the exhibition will also include an education room featuring the Journal’s series 50 Years of Surfing on Film showcasing prominent surf filmmakers. The film surveys the history of surf films through interviews of the most influential filmmakers and the surfers in their films, along with clips from those historical features. In the process of covering the evolution of surf films it also depicts the surf culture in transition from 1940s to 2000s.
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Gee. What and original and unique idea!
Gee. Another negative and uninspired comment from VBVBVBVBVBVBVB!
I remain, “uninspired,” “negative” but at least honest. Please donʻt misunderstand; I suffer inside and I need help.
Pull yourself together man. Honesty is often uninspirational and negative, but it is just what we need. I am not going to be some sort of cling-on and slam everybody/thing you slam, but I freakin enjoy reading your comments. You should have your own section, this site would get even more hits. Keep up the good work.
its easy to play the critic….
No longer young enough to dabble and play in the arts we are now at the age where “critic” somehow makes sense and falls into place.
bvb lives in all us! poisoning your brainwashed minds
but some of the people in the show were old like you….
BVB is my hero if we had more people like him (like we used to), as opposed to these politically correct pansy ass east coast come late idiots who are afraid to speak their minds and think they have some right to surf here cause mommy and daddies money bought them a ticket to cali our beach would still be our beach.BVB offends anyone who is a transplant and if you really have been here for a long time you appreciate his take.So watch your critical voice on BVB he exemplifies what everyone is thinking and when you talk of his rousting as unfair you are just marking yourself as an outsider. Anybody who is critical of bvb can go and take a hike, your all kooks and go home. Back in the day you all would have had slashed tires and been sent out of here running, We need more BVBs because we have been over run by people just like you, complaining sniveling kooks that came from somewhere else and forced your ideals and cupcake frosting on the real locals. 4real love you BVB keep up the good work….at least someone has a backbone.. PS the surf report guy is the epitome of what is wrong with this beach these days!!!!!!!
I attended the cologne clone surf art opening last night. What fun! A review for the asking.
my comments were not in regards to localism, and transplants, and sons of transplants. and grandchildren of transplants.
it was just in regards to ‘critiquers’.
anyways…..
….if you want to get down to it, even the hawaiians came from elsewhere. in san francisco, if you are not a transplant yourself, then you are a son of a transplant. or maybe a grandson.
we all came form africa, so dont think yourself so sacred.
we are all part of the general populations…
but i agree, it is kind of screwed.
@ Get a life and go home: uh, what exactly are you talking about? Your little diatribe failed to make anything that resembles a point. Worse, you sound like a reject from the Bush administration: “anyone who is critical” is an idiot that should take a hike.
Nice one, jack-off.
Boys boys boys. Come on. We all know OB has the best surf in the world. What’s a little crowd?
Let’s all go surf VFWs. Surline’s webcam shows it being awesome and BlackAudi just twittered me and will meet us.
BVB: Can I borrow your Meyerhoffer? Mine got dinged at Mavericks yesterday.
@getalife, you don’t know what the f*** you’re talking about.
bvb is a transplanted kook from southern california who got his ass kicked off the north shore and landed here.
My family arrived here from Minnesota in 1912.
Alien. What is an alien? Is that ʻlike ʻum from Mars or Uranus?ʻ
The Decade of the Surf Doof is almost over. Iʻm headed back to Rincon 1980.
tags: southern california, doof. kclb. hawaii, kook, ju-jitsu, ASSNECK.
The decade of the surf doof will be over when you pass from this earth Bob. What a kook you are.