John Bock, Marlit, 2003; mixed media; 86 5/8 in. x 141 3/4 in. x 49 3/16 in.; Collection SFMOMA, Purchase through a gift of Chara Schreyer
From May 10, 2009 to January 3, 2010, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) presents the reinstallation of the exhibition Between Art and Life in the museum’s fifth-floor galleries.
Organized by Gary Garrels, SFMOMA Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, the exhibition presents paintings and sculptures made in the past three decades, concluding with works by artists working today. More specifically, Between Art and Life explores the concept of the crossover (as well as the gap) between art and life. As a whole, the exhibition acts as a reflection on the pluralistic landscape of contemporary art—one in which artists are driven less by an overriding art movement or medium and more by the investigation of personal visions, with reverberations both poetic and political.
In a similar spirit of experimentation, the galleries will be used as a laboratory, or testing ground, for new ideas within contemporary art, highlighting unexpected connections among artists of multiple generations and across various media while focusing on key movements and debates within recent art history.
Featured artists in Between Art and Life include Franz Ackermann, Damien Hirst, Zhang Huan, Dinh Q. Lê, Chris Johanson, Glenn Ligon, Beatriz Milhazes, Chris Ofili, Robert Rauschenberg, Matthew Ritchie, and Andrea Zittel.
In conjunction with the opening of SFMOMA’s Rooftop Garden, the museum will also debut the new Patricia and William Wilson III Overlook, an extension of the fifth-floor galleries that looks out onto the Rooftop Garden, a new outdoor space atop the SFMOMA Garage. The exhibition in the Rooftop Garden will be complemented by works in the overlook gallery, such as Richard Long’s Chalk Circle (1986), Expanse (1969/2009), by Mel Bochner; and Lawrence Weiner’s Pearls Rolled Across the Floor (Untitled #750) (1994).