Untitled makes the leap westward for its inaugural San Francisco edition

Art gallery
Untitled San Francisco, the city’s first major fair devoted solely to contemporary art, opened within the rusty walls of a former warehouse. Courtesy of Untitled
(Image credit: Untitled San Francisco)

Between the grand opening of the gargantuan new SFMOMA, the emergence of a buzzing young arts district, and the recent arrival of mega-galleries Gagosian and Pace to the Bay Area, San Francisco is having a ‘super-major moment’, quipped LA gallerist Hannah Hoffman. Last Thursday, she and 54 other exhibitors launched the inaugural Untitled San Francisco, the latest addition to the art world’s growing calendar of global events.

The West Coast edition of the annual Miami Beach fair took place within the rusty, corrugated confines of a former warehouse on Pier 70, giving it a decidedly scrappier feel than the plush, red-carpet holdings of the city’s coinciding FOG Design+Art fair. Untitled certainly had blue-chip works to offer local and visiting power collectors, with galleries that, in Miami, would have featured at Art Basel.

Man standing in a picture

Jill Magid's 'Roof Terrace with spout', 2015, is part of a body of work exploring the late Mexican architect Luis Barragán.

(Image credit: Luis Barragán)

Hannah Hoffman Gallery brought works by Sam Falls and Barbara Kasten, while Galerie Perrotin’s spread included Elmgreen & Dragset, Sophie Calle, and Maurizio Cattelan. Galleries like Madrid’s Max Estrella courted the ever-elusive, tech-mogul art collector with digital work such as Daniel Canogar’s Ripple (2016), a DayGlo screen of scrambled CNN clips. The gallery also brought Bilateral Time Slicer (2016), Mexican artist Rafael Lozana Hemmer’s interactive selfie machine that had been a hit at Untitled’s Miami Beach edition the month before.

But the real highlights of this new fair were the works you were unlikely to see at any others, including those from local institutions like the 500 Capp Street Foundation. The estate of the late American artist David Ireland presented limited-edition prints of his sketches, offering a rare look into his hand-drawn archives.

Artwork with curtain and metal bars

'Neutral (Itchy)', by Anouk Kruithof, 2017.

(Image credit: Casemore Kirkeby)

Next door to Galerie Perrotin was Casemore Kirkeby, a young gallery housed in San Francisco’s much buzzed-about Minnesota Street Project complex that had never shown at any art fairs before. A specialist in photography ‘in all its forms’, according to associate director Jennifer O’Keeffe, its highlights included Anouk Kruithof’s Neutral (Itchy) (2017), pictured above, comprising streaks of colour printed on a PVC curtain and pinned to the corner with metal bars; or Owen Kydd’s Heavy Water (2015), hypnotic video footage of a black droplet of water.

A Pull of the Sun and Moon artwork

Prosjektrom Normanns brought work by Ann Iren Buan to the fair. Pictured, A Pull of the Sun and Moon, 2015

(Image credit: TBC)

Prospect artwork

Prospect, by Chris Engman, 2016, presented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

(Image credit: TBC)

Room filled with artworks

Institutions like 500 Capp Street gave the fair a sense of local identity, printing works from the late artist David Ireland’s archives

(Image credit: David Ireland’s archives)

White 3d artwork

Untitled (Scheme #2 M.O.C.A. L.A.), by David Ireland.

(Image credit: David Ireland)

Artwork with an balloon

Harmony Murphy Gallery was part of the fair’s sizeable Los Angeles contingent. Pictured, Self portrait from March 2016, by Kathryn O’Halloran, 2016.

(Image credit: Harmony Murphy Gallery)

Artwork with colours and geometrical shape

Things As They Are #39, by Erin O'Keefe, 2016, at Denny Gallery

(Image credit: Denny Gallery)

A girl singing

The fair programming included artist Constance Hockaday’s Attention! We’ve Moved, 2017, a series of performances in collaboration with The Lab on queer identity and displacement that took place during a series of bay cruises.

(Image credit: Robert Divers Herrick)

Newz! artwork

Newz!, by Math Bass, 2016.

(Image credit: Overduin & Co, Math Bass)

Flower pot artwork

For emerging galleries like Manhattan’s FOUR AM, Untitled San Francisco marked its first fair appearance. Pictured, Vayyyyyyyyyse, by Robin Cameron, 2015.

(Image credit: FOUR AM, Robin Cameron)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Untitled San Francisco website

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Matt Paweski, Chair 1 (Melon) Chair 2 (Butter) Chair 3 (Avocado) Chair 4 (Rootbeer) Work Table (Melon), 2023. Birch plywood, aluminium, aluminium hardware, enamel. Courtesy: Herald St, London
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