FOG Design+Art Announces Programming Highlights For 6th Edition of Fair

For the sixth edition of FOG Design+Art, visitors will be invited to attend a robust series of panel discussions, conversations, screenings, and events that bring together a wide variety of designers, artists, curators, collectors, and dealers. The events take place throughout the run of the fair, providing a platform for engagement and fostering conversations between leaders in design and art, the Bay Area’s creative community, and the public. Program tickets are free with admission to the fair, which takes place January 17–20, 2019, at the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture.

FOG Design+Art’s 2019 programming will celebrate the cultural vitality of the Bay Area through a series of events that explores ideas and issues that resonate with today’s cultural climate and speak to relevant social and political issues.

Programming highlights include conversations with contemporary artists that touch on timely social and political issues, such as:

• A conversation with performance and video art pioneer Joan Jonas; David Gruber, Presidential Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Baruch College, City University of New York; Chrissie Iles, the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz curator at the Whitney Museum of American Artand Markus Reyman, Director of TBA21-Academy, London, UK. The conversation will explore Jonas’s performance "Moving Off the Land," commissioned by TBA21, which meditates on the ocean, its fragility due to human impact, and our relationship with all the life there. Jonas’s 2015 presentation for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, They Come to Us Without a Word, will make its U.S. debut in a contemporaneous three-month run at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

• Art and Activism In and Out of Institutions: Artist Stephanie Syjuco will join Milwaukee Art Museum Curator of Photography and Media Arts Lisa Sutcliffe in a conversation about how artists are responding to and engaging with social and political issues in their work, and how institutions can act responsibly when showing this work.

• FAR OUT: Cultural Cosmonauts and the Artifacts of Extraterrestrial Exploration: Fifty years since the first footsteps on the Moon, the exploration of the “final frontier” remains irresistible, and the ambition to establish commercial space travel and planetary colonization continues. Artist Tom Sachs, Savage Industries’ Adam Savage, and SFMOMA Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, Joseph Becker, will discuss human ingenuity, the creative process, and our collective infatuation with the final frontier.

The programming will also feature panel discussions and conversations with dealers, artists, curators, and designers that explore today’s contemporary art and design, including:

• An Expanded Practice: Photographs, Periscopes, and Granite Walls: This conversation between San Francisco-based artist Catherine Wagner and Baker Street Foundation Associate Curator of Photography at SFMOMA Erin O’Toole will consider the field of photography through the expanded practice of installation and photographic work in varied contexts throughout Wagner’s career.

• Designing Art: Douglas Durkin in Conversation with David Gill: London- based dealer David Gill will join FOG Forum Chair and Steering Committee Member Douglas Durkin for a discussion of the contemporary market for art and design.

• Young Bay Area Artist Panel: Moderated by independent curator Natasha Boas, this panel introduces FOG visitors to three vibrant emerging Bay Area painters. Koak, Muzae and Sofie Ramos will discuss their work, recent San Francisco art history that has influenced them, and the communities that support them. The panel will also address how they have developed and maintained a sustainable art practice while navigating the challenges of living as an artist in the Bay Area today.

• A conversation between artists Elisheva Biernoff and Luke Butler moderated by independent curator Jodi Roberts.

• Artist Pae White will be joined in conversation with Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA, Nancy Lim.

Other special presentations, screenings, and events will include:

• Barbara Stauffacher Solomon in Conversation: ‘Make it Happy, Kid!’: Solomon will be joined by Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher to discuss her 70-year career as an artist and designer. Solomon is credited with bringing Helvetica from Switzerland to San Francisco, starting Supergraphics in the 1960s with her wall-to-wall paintings at The Sea Ranch, defining green architecture, and merging design, art, and writing in several content-rich books.

• Artist’s Talk: Amie Siegel, presented by Christie’s: Amie Siegel will speak on her work’s recent focus on the shifting value of cultural objects, including images and video excerpts from her works Provenance (2013), Quarry (2015) and Dynasty (2017). The artist will be in conversation with independent curator Elizabeth Thomas following her presentation.

For further details, please visit www.fogfair.com