Arts Extra! San Francisco

DOWNTOWN — First given exactly forty years ago in 1967, the SECA’s bi-annual award remains one of the most coveted Bay Area fine arts honors. SECA (stands for “Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art”) is an auxiliary of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has more than eighty members who are: art historians, collectors, critics, gallery owners, and other art enthusiasts. Among the early award winners was David Best, who later became one of the chief inspirational forces behind the “Burning Man” project.

The monetary value of the prize – a modest but surely welcome addition to a shoe strung budget- is amplified by the boost that it delivers to the career of an emerging artist. Rumor has it that the art work by some of this year’s winners is already in high demand from the private and public collections nationally and internationally.

Let’s take a look at the selection process that has been developed over the years The members of SECA as well as notable local art professionals are asked to nominate artists. Those nominated submit their portfolios and biographies. In 2006 over 200 artists submitted their work. In early December the members of SECA had two nights where they culled through slides and essays from the candidates. By January the curator of painting and sculpture, Janet Bishop and her curatorial associate Tara McDowell winnowed the list to roughly thirty artists for six days of studio visits. After each visit, the SECA members and curators discussed their impressions and upon completion of all visits the winners were picked by the final choice of the curators. The guiding principles for awarding this honor were individuality, innovation, and courage of the emerging contemporary artists.

The culmination of the process is the award ceremony and party that filled two floors at SF MoMA on last Thursday night on January 25th. The gathering are invigorating. You meet and greet friends, colleagues, catch up about this and that, exchange opinions with dozens of people. In New York this is called the “art course” (like in “golf course”). An art reception is also an exceptional opportunity to include everyone from your family to enjoy a nice evening out. As a proof, here is the picture of Daniel Lucas and Svetlana Lyapina during the VIP preview party with their newborn daughter, Alina.

The Art

Concurrent Bay Area exhibitions: Anselm Kiefer (the outgoing MoMA show), Brice Marden (the incoming MoMA show), and the “Lucky Day,” a group show at the SF Arts Commission Gallery; all focus on abstraction and nature as a subject of the artistic expression. It is within this context that the SECA show can be understood.

Sarah Cain’s abstract oeuvre grapples with man’s imprint on nature. She uses spray and latex paint to cover surfaces of white paper and canvas with colorful lines and shapes while leaving plenty of white space. An elegant piece is a tree branch painted in Sarah’s signature “white and color” tones. It reclines against the wall casting an illusory (painted) shadow on it, sort of a “four” dimensional sculptural composition (the “fourth” dimension being the color interaction).

Mitzi Pederson is the award’s main sculptor. Broken glittery cinder blocks are placed in chess like positions on top and next to one another, cellophane is stretched in a membrane, wooden filaments are hanging in the air…. The tense but balanced fragility of her abstract sculptural compositions leads an inquiry into the expressive qualities of the common place objects and materials.

Abstract landscapes of Leslie Shows are “surrealistic” and reminisce of the glacial nature of her native Alaska and man’s tenuous existence within this landscape. She contrasts white shapes by the grandiose emotionally charged explosions, color layering, and variety of mysterious shapes to mimic man’s own destructive impact on the fragile environment through mining the natural resources.

Kota Ezawa has gained a nation wide recognition for his cartoon stylized video of the O.J. Simpson trial “The Simpson Verdict.” He returns to this interesting mode of expression with his recent work “Hardcore and Censored Trailer.” It is based on the home porn video of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.

The work of Amy Franceschini is an unexpected turn. She is an activist artist or “interventionist.” Her themes are human interaction with nature, nature’s preservation and exploitation, renewable energy, health, and many others. Her most recent project is to remediate the 22 Superfund sites in Silicon Valley contaminated by the waste from early semiconductor firms by inciting an underground movement to reclaim the land by “gardening” it with native plants . Reading through the essays and artifacts in her exhibition room is very educational.

Looking forward

We are wishing the best of luck to this year’s talented five recipients and look forward to the next award cycle where we will continue to explore the Bay Area’s creative milieu, visit artist studios, and encourage the emerging contemporary art course in San Francisco. We’re also wishing Daniel and Svetlana happy parenting to the newest member within a generation of art collectors in a world free of war and mayhem and full of exquisite abstract art with peaceful references to the nature’s unfolding beauty.

For more information on SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art), visit sfmoma.org.

– article by Dmitriy Kustov and Mary Dell Napier

Copyright (C) 2007 Jamie Windborne, Arts Extra!. All rights reserved.