Fraenkel Gallery

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Sophie Calle. For more than forty years Calle has made work that draws from her life, transforming elements from her public and private relationships into intimate narratives. The exhibition features several series exploring questions about legacy and loss, topics Calle approaches with her typical humor and candor.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Carrie Mae Weems featuring new work as well as highlights from several key series in the artist’s four-decade career. The exhibition continues Weems’s long exploration of questions about power, history, and identity. Two new photographs from Weems’s ongoing Museum Series depicting San Francisco’s Legion of Honor will be on view for the first time, shown with other selections from the project. Large-scale photographs from Painting the Town present boarded-up storefronts in Portland, Oregon following protests against the murder of George Floyd. Other works reference earlier moments in the struggle for racial justice, including scenes from Civil Rights protests in the 1960s.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Kota Ezawa featuring a number of important new works. This will be his first solo show with the gallery since joining the roster last year. Ezawa reimagines key images from media, art history, and popular culture, translating complex visual information into its essential elements to explore the construction of shared experience. The Bay Area-based German-Japanese American artist has described himself as a kind of modern-day history painter, drawing attention to the emotional core of scenes that define the cultural narrative. Encompassing a range of media, the show brings together Ezawa’s most recent output as well as works from earlier in his career. An open house with the artist will take place on Saturday, November 16 from 12‑4pm.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Elisheva Biernoff: Smashed Up House After the Storm, an exhibition of 14 recent works tracing the artist’s expanding approach. Biernoff makes delicate paintings that meticulously recreate found, anonymous photographs—astonishingly faithful renderings on thin sheets of plywood that match the intimate scale and detail of the originals. Severed from their original role as personal memories, the enigmatic photographs Biernoff selects evoke an element of ambiguity. By paying close, sustained attention to these objects, Biernoff brings their buried mysteries and emotions to the surface. Recent work has incorporated multiple images and non-photographic objects from sources such as nature or architecture, using these to make larger, more complex arrangements. This will be Biernoff’s third solo exhibition at the gallery since 2017. A reception with the artist will take place on Saturday, September 7, from 2-4pm.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Fraenkenstein, an exhibition tracing the persistent resonance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein through work by more than 20 artists. The project is a collaboration between Fraenkel Gallery founder Jeffrey Fraenkel and curator and writer Jordan Stein, of the San Francisco exhibition space Cushion Works. Bringing together an eclectic selection of photographs, collage, sculpture, painting, and film, the exhibition will take an expansive and incomplete look at fear, the unknown, the threat of technology, and the ways in which the Frankenstein story and its characters have moved through popular culture. A public reception for the exhibition will take place on Saturday, June 1, from 2-4pm.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Modern Utopia, an exhibition of new multimedia work by Wardell Milan. Ranging from intimate collages to large-scale narrative paintings, the artist depicts scenes of pleasure or violence, often imbued with a sense of unease. Long grounded in photography, his work is open-armed in its approach to materials. Images from photojournalism and news media often serve as references for figures in acrylic and oil pastel, and photographs by artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe are cut and recombined with graphite markings. This will be Milan’s third solo show with the gallery since 2019. A reception with the artist will take place on Saturday, March 23, from 2-4pm.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Ambient Jukebox & Other Stories, an exhibition of new work by multidisciplinary artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Atmospheric, dreamlike, and theatrical, the duo’s work often explores how sound affects perception. This will be the artists’ second solo exhibition with the gallery since 2018. A public reception with the artists will take place on Saturday, January 13, from 2-4pm.