November 7–December 12, 2015
Leslie Shows
Emanuel Walter Gallery
Free and open to all.
Leslie Shows (BFA 1999) recently spoke of her desire to “make work that is so secret from myself that I would be seduced into making it.” In a series of sculptural paintings commissioned for this exhibition, Shows’s striking materials—engraved aluminum, synthetic rubber, cut Plexiglas, silk, and digitally printed sand—appear as just-formed thoughts.
Shows’s new works further dissolve her earlier imagery, akin to abstractions of pyrite or glaciers, which seem to crawl out of, and back into, the landscape. Her works vary in scale from picture-sized to room-scale installations and shiver in light. They evoke the unknown and are particularly unknowable. Even as they slip from one’s grasp, one is compelled to learn their vocabulary. Yet the paintings don’t arrive at an end—rather, they are happening to themselves, and becoming together to perform in concert.
The same could be said of our earth and of human complicity within it, and Shows’s expansive and cryptic paintings connect geologic timescales with urgent and intense imagery.
About the artist
Leslie Shows received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1999, and her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2006. A 2015 Clive Foundation Fellow, she has presented solo exhibitions at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; Haines Gallery and Jack Hanley Gallery, both in San Francisco; and group shows at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. The Los Angeles–based artist is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Artadia Award and the SECA Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
About the Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Painting Fellowship
The Clive Foundation Fellowship supports visiting artists working at the leading edge of contemporary painting practices. The Fellowship offers student-artists opportunities for deep engagement with internationally recognized painters. During the 2015–16 academic year, four artists will work directly with student-artists through critiques, discussion, workshops, public lectures, and this exhibition.
Related events
Opening reception
Saturday, November 7, 7–9pm
Walter and McBean Galleries, 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco
RSVP online
Visiting artists and scholars: Leslie Shows
Tuesday, December 1, 7pm
SFAI Lecture Hall, 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco
RSVP online
Events are free and open to all.
Also on view
Alejandro Almanza Pereda: Change the world or go home
Diego Rivera Gallery: Through December 12
G.H. Rothe: Seven Paintings
Atholl McBean Gallery: November 7–December 12
The Walter and McBean Galleries, established in 1969, present exhibitions at the forefront of contemporary art practice. The gallery serves as a laboratory for innovative and adventurous projects and commissions new work from emerging and established artists. Together, SFAI's exhibitions and public programs catalyze the creative processes of its student-artists and thinkers, and creates intimate connections between the SFAI community and the public.
Join SFAI’s mailing list: sfai.edu/eventmail.
SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs are made possible by the generosity of donors and sponsors. Major support is provided by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.
Program support is provided by the Harker Fund of The San Francisco Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Kadist Art Foundation, Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, Meyer Sound, Fort Point Beer Company, Gregory Goode Photography, and Thomas J. Fogarty, MD. Ongoing support is provided by the McBean Distinguished Lecture and Residency Fund, The Buck Fund, and the Visiting Artists Fund of the SFAI Endowment.
This project was made possible in part by Headlands Center for the Arts.
