Fraenkel Gallery

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present 'On the Road,' the fourth installation in our series of online exhibitions, For the Pleasure of Looking, which highlight our philosophy of living with art. The presentation will be on view through September 7, 2020. On The Road is a celebration of the American road and the mythic role it has played in photography. The exhibition presents work from Robert Adams, Johnnie Chatman, Lee Friedlander, Katy Grannan, Peter Hujar, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Richard Misrach, Alec Soth, Richard T. Walker, and Garry Winogrand.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to take part in Art Basel Online and present this extended selection in our online viewing room. The gallery exhibits work by Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Elisheva Biernoff, Sophie Calle, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Christian Marclay, Wardell Milan, and others.

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: Beginnings is a presentation of the three projects that first landed Sugimoto on the map—Seascapes, Theaters and Dioramas. Beginning in the late 1970s and spanning four decades, these pillars of Sugimoto's practice form the foundation of an oeuvre that now encompasses many disciplines. Embedded in these series are the questions that Sugimoto's work has continued to pose about the nature of time and human experience. Included in the exhibition are key works from each series, such as Sugimoto's iconic view of Radio City Music Hall, and his first seascape, made in Jamaica in 1980.

DANCING IN THE STREETS is our second presentation in a new series of online exhibitions, For the Pleasure of Looking. With this selection, we look forward to the moment when we can all celebrate together.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Hiroshi Sugimoto: Opticks, an exhibition of new large-scale photographs on view for the first time in the U.S. The images depict the color of light Sugimoto observed through a prism in his Tokyo studio. Using Polaroid film, he recorded sections of the rainbow spectrum projected into a darkened chamber, paying particular attention to the spaces and gaps between hues. The resulting works, each measuring approximately 5’ framed, are vivid, near-sculptural renderings of pure light.

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 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 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.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by artist Richard T. Walker, continuing his exploration of our relationship to the natural world using photography, video, music, sculpture, and performance. Pairing photographs of the Western American landscape with fragments of 19th-century etchings, found rocks, bronzed tree branches, guitar recordings, or drawings made by the artist’s father, Walker reorders the elements of our environment, upending assumptions about our place in nature. This will be Walker’s second solo show in the gallery’s 49 Geary space, following exhibitions at FraenkelLAB in 2016 and 2017. A public reception with the artist will take place on Saturday, September 9.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce New New Pictures/New Old Pictures, an exhibition of large-format photographs by Richard Misrach, his fifteenth with the gallery since 1985. The exhibition marks the debut of his new series, Cargo, atmospheric studies of maritime traffic that raise questions about international commerce and the supply chain upon which the world now depends. Also on view will be works made from recently discovered negatives produced throughout Misrach’s near five-decade career. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Thursday, June 29, from 5:30 to 7:30pm, and a book signing with the artist on Saturday, July 29, from 2 to 4pm.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS, an ambitious new body of work by artist Martine Gutierrez. The series continues her exploration of identity across the cultural landscapes of gender, race, and celebrity. In 17 new works, Gutierrez has transformed herself into a multitude of idols—a selection from the series comprises Gutierrez’s second exhibition with the gallery. Costumed by the barest of essentials, Gutierrez’s figure is the catalyst, reflecting dystopian futurism upon the symbols of our past. Through each metamorphosis, Gutierrez re-envisions a diverse canon of radical heroines who have achieved legendary cultural influence over thousands of years in both art history and pop culture.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen, an exhibition of Friedlander’s photographs curated by the widely acclaimed filmmaker. Rather than focusing on a single subject or period, Coen’s selection concentrates on Friedlander’s singular approach to composition. Through the approximately 45 images in the exhibition Coen surveys the range of Friedlander’s 60+ year career, bringing many lesser-known images into the equation. The selection evidences an unexpected affinity between Friedlander and Coen, both of whose work explores the sly power of images.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by Nan Goldin, her fifth with the gallery. Featuring approximately 20 images from the past decade, the show continues Goldin’s intimate and personal approach to photography, exploring questions of memory, loss, and addiction. The exhibition will also feature a selection of work drawn from the gallery’s inventory, curated by the artist.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition of photographs by celebrated German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, their fifth with the gallery. The exhibition features a wide range of work, including examples of the artists’ pioneering typologies, which group images of blast furnaces, grain elevators, and other industrial structures into grids, transforming them into “anonymous sculpture.” Other highlights include early industrial landscapes, and a selection of photographs of a variety of water towers from the U.S., Germany, France, and Great Britain.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present a new survey of the work of Liz Deschenes, who uses photography’s fundamental elements of light, chemistry, and time, to explore the inherent meaning of the medium. The exhibition features installations that incorporate silvery cameraless photograms, made by exposing photographic paper to moonlight or sunlight, as well as work focused on the significance of color in industrial and commercial processes. This will be Deschenes’s first solo show with the gallery, following a 2017 exhibition that paired her work with Sol LeWitt’s.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present A Pound of Pictures, a new body of work by Alec Soth. In photographs made on a series of road trips across the U.S., Soth records people and locations with subtle connections. The series features images that reference photography itself, investigating the physicality of the medium and its limited ability to preserve what is fleeting. The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by MACK, and will have concurrent presentations at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, and Weinstein Hammons Gallery in Minneapolis. Fraenkel Gallery will host a ticketed opening reception with the artist on Saturday, February 5, from 1-4pm.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition of work by Martine Gutierrez, opening November 18, 2021. Gutierrez’s elaborately produced narrative scenes reference pop culture to explore the complexity of identity. The show will highlight images from two recent series, Body En Thrall and Plastics, as well as Indigenous Woman, the 124-page magazine for which Gutierrez produced every element, from fashion spreads and ads to an editor’s letter. Gutierrez uses herself as a model in the magazine’s glossy, seductive imagery, and has described the project as a celebration of “ever-evolving self-image.”

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present a survey of the work of Carrie Mae Weems examining her extraordinary achievement over four decades. Weems’s inaugural show at the gallery includes early documentary-style photographs of family, and her iconic Kitchen Table series. The show features groundbreaking conceptual work spanning Weems’s career, including Constructing History, 2008, which re-enacts moments of social upheaval from the 1960s, and People of a Darker Hue, a 2016 video commemorating Black men and women killed by police. The exhibition follows the gallery’s recently announced representation of Weems.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition of photographs by Diane Arbus, curated by acclaimed contemporary artist Carrie Mae Weems. Weems, a long-time admirer of Arbus’s work, has selected 45 photographs spanning Arbus’s fifteen year career, from 1956 until her death in 1971.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present its second exhibition of new work by Elisheva Biernoff. Titled Starting from Wrong, the exhibition features nine meticulously detailed paintings measuring no larger than 4 x 5 inches each. All completed since 2017, Biernoff’s recent paintings are carefully observed, two-sided works based on found and anonymous photographs. The exhibition will be on view from April 1 to May 28, 2021, and will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Fraenkel Gallery. Each of Biernoff’s paintings requires three to four months to complete, belying the instantaneous nature of the source material. Aptly beginning with a work titled Wrong 1966, Biernoff’s new paintings depict photographs that may be considered to have failed in a variety of ways. These “failures” include various forms of fading, sun flares, and color shifts, with elements that appear to be damaged or missing. In Him, 2018, a man in a suit is obscured by sunlight coming from behind, rendering him anonymous, and breaking photography’s classic taboo against placing a subject in front of bright light. A mysterious Polaroid verges on jarring abstraction in Instant, 2021, as dark grey patches of “damaged” emulsion appear to rend a light-dappled oceanscape. Biernoff’s double-sided paintings are displayed on stands that allow them to be viewed from multiple perspectives. Ripple, 2020, features figures on a sandy expanse with scribbled handwriting on the verso that references the odd look of the print: “Can’t figure out why the waves unless it’s the heat? Do you have any idea?” With attention to even the most seemingly insignificant detail, Biernoff’s work conveys a sense of a photograph’s history before it arrived in her possession. To accompany the painted works, Biernoff has created a set of 50 “mistake” postcards based on her own photographs, some with photographic errors, others altered to appear misprinted. Gallery visitors will be invited to select a card to take home. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring all fourteen paintings the artist has completed since 2017, when her first monograph was published. Each work is reproduced to exact scale and, consistent with the original publication, all paintings are reproduced recto and verso. Elisheva Biernoff (b. 1980) received an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BA from Yale University. She also studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and was a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Copenhagen’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Her work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, among others.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present new work by Christian Marclay, incorporating collage, video animation, and photography. The exhibition continues Marclay’s investigation into the relationship between sound and image through sampling elements from art and popular culture, and reflects the anxiety and frustration of the current global pandemic and political crises. The exhibition will be on view in the gallery from January 21 to March 26, 2021, and will be accompanied by a musical performance in which Marclay’s collage No! serves as a score, on a date to be scheduled soon. The voice is at the center of the exhibition. In a series of photographs showing screaming faces, cut and torn fragments from comic books, movie stills, and images found on the internet are arranged into haunting, mask-like composites, and then recorded by the camera. Capturing the paper’s inherent creases and tears, the photographs mix analog and digital elements, and investigate the computer screen as a contemporary physical surface. This exhibition marks the premiere of Fire, 2020, a hypnotic new animation. Using small pieces cut from comic books, the single-channel video work is an impressionistic representation of fire. Hundreds of photographs shown in rapid succession suggest a flip book, creating the illusion of a flickering, fiery mosaic in motion. Flames are also the subject of Raging Fire, 2020, a large collage made of paper cutouts from comic book illustrations of fire. The piece transforms representations of all manner of war, catastrophe, explosion, and arson into abstracted yellows, oranges, and reds in a variety of styles. Also on view will be No!, 2019, a set of 15 original collages made from comic book fragments, and No!, 2020, a graphic score for a solo voice that comprises a facsimile of the 2019 collages. While earlier works such as Manga Scroll, 2010, incorporated onomatopoeias disconnected from their generative action, No! uses vocal utterances, facial expressions, and body movements to prompt a performance. Writes Marclay, “Like my earlier graphic scores dating back to the 1990s, the use of words that illustrate their sonic counterparts engages non-traditional visualizations of sound as a possibility for generating music.” As in his music and video works, which splice together found recordings and film footage, the comic book segments are culled and re- contextualized in vibrant, dynamic ways. Christian Marclay (born 1955) works in a sampling aesthetic, using fragments from the ephemera of popular culture to create new forms and meanings. Marclay’s work has been shown in museums and galleries internationally, including recent major one-person exhibitions at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as Kunsthaus, Zurich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Marclay received the Golden Lion award for best artist at the 54th Venice Biennale for his 24-hour virtuosic video piece, The Clock, which has been shown widely to great acclaim. His work is in the collection of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthalle Zurich; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present new work by Wardell Milan. The gallery’s second solo show of the New York-based artist will be on view from October 29, 2020 to January 15, 2021. The exhibition features Milan’s ongoing series “Death, Wine, Revolt,” which combines photography, drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture to explore themes of over-indulgence, destruction, and revolution. While earlier series such as “Parisian Landscapes” looked inward, to personal questions of freedom and desire, Milan made the works on view in response to the turmoil of the global moment. In several large-scale works, Milan uses enlargements of his own photographs of specific locations—the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was assassinated, or the city of Venice—setting his images in dialogue with historical sites of racist violence or political rebellion. Populating the works are a range of human figures, often nude, whose bodies are pieced together from fractured drawings and photographs, and overlaid with blue and white paint. Some groupings suggest erotic coupling or violent encounters, and many arrangements are based on photographic sources. In 2020, Los Feliz, Los Angeles, Milan positions five figures in white Ku Klux Klan hoods against his own photograph of the city’s hills. The arrangement of bodies is based on a found image of a Klan social gathering, and presents the white nationalists in a bland, contemporary California suburb. In The Parade, the arrangement of figures echoes Diane Arbus’s Untitled (7), from her final body of work made in a home for the developmentally disabled in New Jersey. Also on view are a selection of smaller works, including white-on-white cut paper collages depicting hooded Klansmen, and paintings from Milan’s ongoing series of tulips. While earlier flower paintings were inspired by the 17th-century Dutch tulip craze, the new works deconstruct the flowers, transforming them into chaotic arrangements of petals and leaves, hinting at the dissolutions the past year has wrought. Wardell Milan (b. 1977, Knoxville, Tennessee) studied photography and painting at the University of Tennessee and Yale University. His works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Denver Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; UBS Art Collection; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Milan’s work was the subject of the 2015 monograph between late summer and early fall, edited by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz and published by Osmos Books.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present I’m Not the Only One, a group exhibition that explores solitude alongside our relentless yearning to connect, in photographs and videos from 19 artists that echo and reflect our current socially distant world.

Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present Sophie Calle: Because, an exhibition of new works on view for the first time in the U.S. In each piece, a felt curtain embroidered with Calle’s writing conceals a hidden photograph behind it. In presenting viewers with the text before the picture, Calle upends the usual order in which images are read, creating a poetic surprise or puzzle. The exhibition is Calle’s fourth at Fraenkel Gallery. For almost forty years, Calle has made work that exposes intimate experience to public view, using still images, video, film, books, performance and text. Her work has often drawn from difficult moments in her personal life. “In the process of turning these experiences into art, they somehow become a type of fiction,” she has said.