Exhibition

What Matters: A Proposition in Eight Rooms

July 22, 2023–September 2, 2024
Floor 4

Episode Two

This exhibition brings together an evolving body of contemporary works from the museum’s collection that addresses questions about life and art. These quiet works propose celebration, mourning, and transcendence. Together, they initiate a stimulating composition about life and freedom.

Presented as related episodes over time, it offers deep engagement with ideas, materials, and structures that order meaning, understanding, and purpose. This second episode includes recently acquired works by Patty Chang, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Sky Hopinka, Deana Lawson, Minouk Lim, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Oscar Murillo alongside those by Matthew Barney, Walter Hood, Byron Kim, Yoko Ono, and Ebony G. Patterson that remain on view from the first episode.

Murillo’s canvases from for the souls of the rotten mighty (2016) were made in the Korean city of Anyang in collaboration with a local mudang, or shaman, to harness the spiritual power of the land in his works. Hopinka’s elegiac video I’ll Remember You as You Were, Not as What You’ll Become (2016) offers a new mythology for reincarnation and presence among the living. In Discreetly (2021), Lim attached drops of liquid adhesive to strands of fishing line to form an invisible wall of tears to process loss and transformation. Made of found materials gathered over thirty years, Cruzvillegas’s Rastrojo (2021) conceives the life of objects as regenerating in a cyclical way, nourished by and strengthening the environment.

Exhibition Preview

An abstract sculpture of three large metal hoops suspended from the ceiling with a variety of materials such as wood, fabric, lambskin, plastic, cardboard hanging from each hoop.
Guadalupe Maravilla, Disease Thrower #15, 2021; collection SFMOMA, purchase, by exchange, through gifts of Michael D. Abrams, Peggy Guggenheim, and the Accessions Committee Fund; © Guadalupe Maravilla; courtesy the artist and P·P·O·W, New York; photo: Don Ross
Sky Hopinka, I’ll Remember You As You Were, Not as What You’ll Become, 2016 (video still); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Sky Hopinka, courtesy the artist
Deana Lawson, Latifah’s Wedding, 2020; collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; © Deana Lawson; photo: Katherine Du Tiel
Ebony G. Patterson, …three kings weep…, 2018 (installation view, Pérez Art Museum Miami); collection SFMOMA, Shawn and Brook Byers Fund for Women Artists; © Ebony G. Patterson; photo: Oriol Tarridas, courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery
Oscar Murillo, for the souls of the rotten mighty, 2016-2023; collection SFMOMA, gift of the artist; © Oscar Murillo; photo: Don Ross
Byron Kim, Sunday Painting 5/6/01, 2001; collection SFMOMA, gift of Rosina Lee Yue; © Byron Kim; photo: Katherine Du Tiel
Abraham Cruzvillegas, Rastrojo, 2021 (installation view, kurimanzutto, Mexico City); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; © Abraham Cruzvillegas; courtesy the artist and kurimanzutto, New York / Mexico City; photo: Gerardo Landa / Eduardo López (GLR Estudio)

Presenting support for What Matters: A Proposition in Eight Rooms is provided by The Norah and Norman Stone Fund for Exhibitions of Contemporary Art.

Header image: Abraham Cruzvillegas, Rastrojo, 2021 (installation view, kurimanzutto, Mexico City); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams; © Abraham Cruzvillegas; courtesy courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, New York / Mexico City, photo: Gerardo Landa / Eduardo López (GLR Estudio)